The price of luxury

In October, it's Oma's birthday so it seems we are both morally and legally obliged to take the twins to her birthday party so that they can knock people's drinks over for a half hour, shout that they want to go home, cause a general tantrum and be dragged away after an hour.

In my extensive searches on the interweb, I've found that Air India fly from LAX to Frankfurt, and they charge about $200 less per ticket than anyone else. That's £400 total savings, in old money.

The reviews I've found aren't really all that mixed. It's crap. Well, the food is good (if you like vegetarian food, and curry - so two thumbs up there) but everything else is a bit grim.

It's about 24 hours of total flying time - which makes £16 per hour. I can't decide between statement A:

• Flying is really grim anyway. It's only going to be relatively a tiny bit grimmer.

And statement B:

• Flying is really grim anyway. It's worth paying to make it less grim.

Coincidental Reunions

When I was in London, I chatted with my uncle. He said that he thought that L, my cousin, might live somewhere in Los Angeles, but he would speak with his brother (that's my other uncle) and find out.

And, indeed she does. Let's have a bit of background. My father's brother, which would be my Uncle David moved to Canada, ooh, a long time ago, and had three children (they would be my cousins). I have only ever (in my memory) met one of these three cousins, at that was (I think) in about 1975 (or maybe 1976), when she was in England at our grandparents house. Other than that, I knew pretty much nothing about them - we're not the best of extended families at keeping in touch.

Anyway, it turns out that not only does she live in Los Angeles, but she lives about 8 miles away (less, if you didn't have to drive around the airport), and used to live closer than that - she would buy lunch from our local Indian restaurant.

I mentioned this to someone at work, and they explained that it wasn't really a coincidence, after all, LA is a big place, and it's very common for people to move here (very few people are from around here), especially people from other countries, and I have a number of cousins, and started to do calculations on my whiteboard.

Today she, and her 18 month old offspring (who is, according to my mother, D and A's second cousin - but I've never understood that) came to visit, and she turned out to be not unpleasant at all. We gossiped about various family mysteries - I had hoped she might have answers to questions that have been family hearsay and gossip for as long as I can remember, but she knew even less than I did.

We had lunch, and then she was going to have to leave to go to a barbecue, but it started to rain (!) so she stayed a bit longer and generally hung out. A and D were extremely grumpy - partly because they were a bit tired, but also I think because they were not used to having a younger child around, who garnered more attention than they did. (When their cousin came to visit, there was the opposite effect - she got grumpy because they were younger and got more attention).

Earthquake!

Well, more like earthquake .

There was an earthquake here the other day. It happened at about 1am, and woke me up, although I didn't realise it was an earthquake, until someone asked me the next day if I had noticed the earthquake. It scored 4.5 on the Richter scale, as opposed to the recent earthquake in Peru, which was an 8. (And remember, kids, that the Richter scale is logarithmic, so 4.5 to 8 isn't twice as high, it's about 3000 times higher. Its epicentre was the Simi Valley, which is a bit of a way from us (and also where the Ronald Reagan presidential library is based. Coincidence? I think not.)

Apparently a plate somewhere fell off a shelf, and was slightly damaged.

Google Maps has streets

Google maps has added street views of bits of Los Angeles. The photos near us are on the old side - there's a hotel near us that has been (mostly) demolished since we've lived here, but it's in the pictures. I tried to find something profound and interesting near to us (our street isn't on it), but failed.

Never mind. Here are some unprofound, and uninteresting things.

Our local Trader Joe's. This is on the street, but you can't get in this side.

The bus stop where I catch the bus to CoCE. That's the bench I sit on.

CoCE - the ramp on the right is where I ride into the car park. And here's the other side.

Our local Taco Bell, mmmm... 7 layer burritos.

Santa Monica pier. The thing that looks like a warehouse was a movable museum made of shipping containers. It was there in the summer of 2006.

Children's Planting Day

One of the nice things about living in the kind of apartment complex we live in is that one never has to do any gardening at all. Everything is done for you. But one of the less nice things is that you can't do anything, even if you wanted to. But today, that changed - just a tiny bit.

One area of ground had been prepared for a children's garden. The area was divided up with paving slabs, and each child got about a 5 foot square area, to plant. The organiser was, as organisers tend to be, incredibly officious. You had to have signed up by Thursday and if you didn't, you didn't get a bit of garden (we had signed up, very early on). You could not choose plants - these were assigned, you could only choose where to plant them. We have had a shrub on the balcony that has been slowly dying since we moved here, so we planted that too (we had to ask permission first - we were a little nervous.)

Alex planting:

Alex's garden, nearly complete:


Daniel digging, in a fashion proscribed by the medical profession.

Riding South

On Sunday, the boys and I headed south along the bike path - me on the bike, them in the trailer. We started at Playa del Rey, then El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, and Torrance, and would have reached Palos Verdes, if we'd gone a bit further.

I always feel that Torrance got the raw end of the deal when they were naming these places. Playa del Rey (Beach of the King - or King's Beach), El Segundo (which just means 'The Second' and apparently is so called because it was the site of the second Standard Oil refinery on the west coast - which is still there, along with the sewage works and power station), it doesn't really matter what Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo mean (although Manhattan is named after Manhattan in New York, Hermosa means 'beautiful' and redondo means 'willow'). Torrance was named after someone, who was, surprisingly, called Torrance. (Palos Verdes is actually an area that contains four cities, but if you really care, you can look it up on Wikipedia.)

Here's a picture of D on Manhattan Beach pier.



Anyway, we rode the 12 or so miles to Torrance, where the beach bike path (and the beach) end, and S came in the car to take the boys home, and I rode home.

We met at Redondo beach, about half way home, and went on what was called a "Glass Bottomed Boat" and "The Submarine", which was actually a boat with glass sides under the water, with a slightly grumpy guide / driver (is that what the person who steers a boat is called?) The picture below shows the 'bottom' that you could look through but "don't touch the glass 'cos it's really hard to clean."


Some people who'd hired a pedal boat incurred the driver's (?) wrath by coming too close. "Cut me some slack, I've hardly got any fish" he said. Then he phoned someone and told them about the incident (including the "cut me some slack" bit.)

He also told us (before we'd paid our money) that we'd see sealions. I imagined that this would mean watching sealions majestically gliding through the water. Not a big heap of sealions lying in the sun.


I had wanted to go on the boat that said "30 minute thrill ride", but when we got back from our glass bottomed boat trip, the superfast boat was trundling in to the dock, with one engine obviously not working, and the other one pouring out black smoke - so maybe it was better that we didn't.

Then we went to a Mexican restaurant - a Mexican restaurant which conveniently sold children's meals of pizza. It had quite an impressive view from the window.


We ordered guacamole, and to prove it was fresh, they made it at the table. They brought avocados, and a little bowl of chilies, a lime and the other stuff, and mashed it up there and then. Which I thought was partly a nice touch, but also let you personalise it with your choice of how much chili, lime, onion, etc, you wanted.

Here's a photo of the same place from the outside.

CostCo

We'd been sort of meaning to go to CostCo since we arrived here, and today, we finally managed it. First we had to battle through the line to pay our $50 to join, and then, armed with our cards, we were in.

CostCo sells absolutely everything. You can buy a tire for your car, and a loaf of bread and a TV and a sink. (I didn't actually see a kitchen sink, but I did see someone with a bathroom sink on a trolley. And you can't buy a loaf of bread, because everything comes in bulk, so you have to buy two loaves of bread).

We spent $420 (not including our $50 membership fee), which was a lot, even for us. And I'm wondering what I should now do with 1.75 litres of tequila ($26.99 + tax).

Like an American ...

I went back to England. I went to shops. I thought "These shop assistants are surly." I went to restaurants "These restaurants are expensive". I went outside "It rains a lot here."

I'm worried I've turned into an American. Already.

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