Aquarium Trip

We went to the local aquarium today. But it was closed. So instead we went to the fair. We went on the carousel (except there are signs saying that people over 200 lbs aren't allowed on the horses - they have to go in the chariots instead. :(

Then we went to a thing where you had to try to climb a horizontal ladder, which spun around. There was an adult one and a kiddie one, so A and D went on the kiddie one. Fairground attendants are traditionally supposed to be surly, but this one was the surliest one I have ever met. I paid my $4 for two goes. Poor D went on, got about half way and fell off. The ladder swung around and biffed him on the head, just above his eye, and he cried (of course). The attendant continued to stare straight ahead.

There was a sign that said "Prize every time", so I told D that, because he had done so well, he would get a prize. I asked the attendant for the prize. (She was standing next to a bucket of cuddly toys). She looked straight ahead. I asked again, and she looked at me, looking confused and blank. I asked again, pointing at the sign. She said "None left". I suggested that perhaps she might have mentioned this before I coughed up my money. I asked for my $2 back that I hadn't used, and she then searched through the cuddly toys, and found a keyring for D. A went on, with a similar result (without getting bashed on the head though) and this time got a keyring without another word being exchanged.

Then we went to the beach, where there were some ropes and things. I climbed a rope, for about the second time since I was at school. But I need to work on my technique - it scraped my ankle in a rather painful fashion. (Or maybe I need to wear boots - I noticed a couple of people who were very good at climbing were wearing boots.)

Getty Centre

We went to the Getty Centre today. It's a museum full of art and stuff, which wasn't going to go down a storm with A and D. So, while S looked at the pics, the boys and I went to the cafe and drank smoothies. Given how vast and posh everything was (polished marble floor that made D fall over and hurt his bottom - then he bent over with his bottom in the air demanding I blow it better), it was all surprisingly bargainacious - smoothies were $2.50, and were made of fruit juice with no added sugar - although actually they were slush, but that was OK. (Well, it would have been OK if they didn't come in such vast containers which D and A had no hope of finishing, so I had to drink, well, probably two in total).

Then we ran around the garden (well, they did), and then they went to the "family room" and frolicked, with S, while I went and looked at some stuff.

It's a weird place. Firstly, because it's vast. it must have cost a terrifyingly large amount of cash to build, and that's before you put any art in it. You enter, and park in a car park with 7 levels (going down into the ground) - it's $8 to park, but that's all we paid.

Then there's a tram which takes you up the hill to the centre - the tram seems to be a hovercraft type of thing - it had no wheels, or tracks (see first picture for the track), and it had an impressive view of the Interstate 405 (second picture - this was about 5:30 on a Saturday afternoon - people joke about it being called the 405 because you go at 4 or 5 mph).
At the top of the hill, you get out of the tram, and potter about - and marvel at the vastness of the place - third picture is taken from the garden, but you get a better sense of it on Wikimapia.

There were some nice views of the haze that covers Los Angeles. The last picture shows (I think) the San Fernando Valley, which is just called "The Valley". Valley Girls (or Vals, for short) come from the San Fernando valley.

The car

On Wednesday we picked up the car. We had to drive quite a way to get it, so we hired a car from Enterprise, on a one way hire. They come and pick you up from where you are, and then the return place was close to the garage. Hiring a car was 60 dollars, a cab would have been 80. On the way we had to go and see M, from State Farms Insurance. He played basketball in a spare office with A and D, while someone else sorted out all the insurance business, and then we had proof we were insured, so they would give us the car.

Weirdly, we got house contents insurance for better than free. Car insurance is fairly expensive where we are (we are paying about $700 for 6 months cover). House contents insurance is cheap (it's pretty secure, we haven't got much, and the house itself is someone else's problem), but if you take up the house insurance, you get a percentage discount on your car insurance. It turns out that the amount the car insurance goes down is more than the house insurance costs. So they effectively pay you to get insured.

When we arrived at the garage, we had to meet a chap called W. W, it turned out, was out, so we sat around for about an hour waiting for him. (We were late, so he was just about forgiven.)

When W turned up, he turned out to be about 107, and used the computer very, very slowly. There was an important form, which it was not possible to duplicate, that he had to run through a dot matrix printer. That made me somewhat nervous. He practiced three times, and then did it with the form (but it worked OK).

We got the car, and S was going to follow me in the new car, while I drove the hire car to the rental place. But we couldn't start it. Eventually, we gave up, and I went to find W. (He'd pushed his computer to one side to use an electric typewriter on his desk). The trick is to press the clutch when you turn the key - then it starts.

The car is moderately exciting - we spent a while pressing buttons and opening windows and little storage cubbies and things. There's only one drink holder in the back, which is a slight pain. There's also an arm rest that I bang my elbow on when I change gear (S doesn't, 'cos she has the driver's seat slightly further forward).

There were a lot of things that were optional extras, which you wouldn't expect to be. Electric windows, remote control opener, central locking, ABS, were all options. Surprisingly (to me) despite having most things you could ask for, it's got drum brakes on the back.

It's got traction control, which annoys S, because she doesn't understand what it's for. You can turn it off by pressing a button (but you have to press it for 1 second, I had to read the manual to find that out).

My favorite thing about it is that it's no problem at all to find it in a car park.

Farmer's market

I took the boys to German school today, and then went to the Farmer's Market. It sounds like a cliche, but it's true that there are always so many weird and interesting things to buy, that it's amazing, and I always buy more than I can carry.

Today I bought some cherry tomatoes. Nothing unusual there, except that one lot was very pale yellow (some were absolutely white, but they cost more) and one lot was a deep reddy-browny-purple (that's the first picture). I also got some fresh pistachios (second picture) - I've never seen fresh pistachios before, the woman that sold them said that they are only available for a few weeks, and they don't keep, so you have to eat them. They look like pistachios, except they are soft and raw, and you peel them, like, ermmm.... like I can't think what. I got some pistachio oil from the same place - I don't know about you, but I've squeezed pistachios pretty hard, and no oil has come out of them.

Then I bought the (now traditional) 8 pound bag of (organic) oranges, for $5, and some grapes and strawberries (which weren't really interesting, but I'm being completist). Oh, and a white orchid in a pot, for S. I'm going to surprise her with it later. It's OK to write it here, because she never reads this (it's mine, and it's on the internet. Two reasons it's boring. Shortly after we first met, I gave her a final draft of a book I'd just finished. She said it was great. A couple of months later, I went to check something in it, and I'd missed a chapter. She hadn't noticed. And that wasn't on the internet).

The Secret Magic Toilet Roll

Our groceries from Amazon arrived, including 96 toilet rolls. I got home today, to find this. The cat must have thought that there was a Willy-Wonka-esque secret tuna fish flavored toilet roll hidden somewhere amongst the toilet rolls. I wonder if she was disappointed not to find it.

The first Americanism

This morning D had a set of stickers of letters of the alphabet. He was going through the letters, asking naming them, and when he didn't know their names, asking me what they were called. When he got to the end, he said "Ex, Wye, Zee" and walked away, looking pleased.

Thai-Italian Restaurant

We went to buy a car today. But I'm not going to write about that now, 'cos I'm a bit tired. However, after we'd bought the car, we went to a Thai-Italian restaurant. I thought that this would have some Thai stuff (so S was happy) and some pizza (so A and D were happy).

But it wasn't. It really was Thai-Italian fusion, which is hard to imagine, but it was actually quite tasty. S had a yellow curry pizza, which is like a pizza, except instead of tomato sauce as a base, it had Thai yellow curry sauce (I didn't think it was that great, but she really liked it). I had aubergine (egg plant I have to say now) stir fried with Thai sweet basil, with linguine and marinara sauce. A and D had spring rolls, stuffed with mozzarella and tomato, and ravioli with spinach and ricotta. (That last one didn't seem very 'fusion'). The boys ate virtually nothing as is their way.

And D fell asleep in the car on the way home, and then got upset as he weed himself.

Adverts

D and A have been raised on a diet of CBeebies, which has got no adverts. However, that's not available here. In the morning, they watch PBS Kids, which has only very small numbers of wholesome ads ("Read books! They're great!"). But in the afternoons, it's channels with ads.

To start with, they were a little confused - they thought the program was over. They asked what the little programs were, and we explained that they are telling you about things you might want to buy.

And now, every single time they see an advert. That's Every. Single. Time. They say "Buy that Daddy! It's a digger! It goes chung-kerchung-kerchung with its arms!" Then they have to run back to the TV, to see the next thing "Buy that Daddy! It's a doll and it's got a pony! A pony Daddy!"

S explained that we can't buy every single thing that's advertised, because we wouldn't have enough space. A and D thought about this for a while. Now they say "Just buy that Daddy! Just that! It's a car! And it's red!"

Got a Soda Stream

Except it's now called a Soda Club Soda Maker. I ordered it on Sunday, they said it would tak 7-10 business days, and it took 2. Well, one and a half days even.

S saw it, and then saw the booklet, and said "Why didn't you get the white one?"

It came with 18 samples of different flavours to add to it, the boys tried Mango and Orange, but said it made their lips hurt.

I said that if they are naughty, I'll make them drink root beer. They said that they'll cry, and then they'll buff (hit) me, and then they'll make me drink root beer.

Exhausting boys

S had a report to finish today, so I had a plan to try to wear the boys out.

First, we went to the beach, to try out the hovercraft, but I've already talked about that.

I had a look on some websites, to see if there was anything exciting we could do, that was within walking distance. (What with still being carless). It said that on the other side of the harbor, there were boat trips lasting about an hour. I told A and D about this, and they thought it was suitably exciting, and so off we set. Me on foot, them on their Likeabikes. I'd checked on Google Maps, and it said it was 2.4 miles to where we wanted to go. I was hopelessly optimistic, so off we set.

We walked along a fairly unpleasant road, with a pavement. On the other side of the road was a long, thin park with a path running through it. Irritatingly, there was absolutely nowhere to cross. We had done (according to good old GM) 1.7 miles, when the inevitable "wee coming" happened, so we went into a Ralph's supermarket, and used their bathroom (as I've learned to say). Which was a bit tricky as I had to carry the Likeabikes.

It was about time to refuel the boys, so we went to an ice cream place. D was absolutely convinced he wanted plain sorbet, but he got a free sample, and that persuaded him to have strawberry.

The ice cream place was called Cold Stone Creamery, and I imagined that was just a name (Like Red Rock Cider "It's not red, and it hasn't got rocks in it" - remember that?) But it wasn't. You chose your flavour of ice cream (from a selection of about 100) and then chose a thing to go with it (from a selection of about 100). D chose strawberry/cherry and A chose vanilla ("French vanilla?" "Errr... normal vanilla" "French vanilla?" "Err.. normal vanilla" - turns out that French vanilla is normal vanilla, there's also vanilla bean, and light vanilla), sorry, vanilla/apple.

Anyway, they take the ice cream, dollop it onto a granite worktop (stone) which is frozen (cold) and stir the extra bit into it, with a couple of palette knives.

We ate that outside, and A choked and was nearly sick - I picked him up and ran to the nearest flower bed that was out of sight of (most of) the people eating - kicking chairs and small children out of my way as I ran, but then he stopped and said "I've swallowed it". Which was a relief, but didn't provide a satisfactory explanation for what I'd just done, in the way that vomiting would.

We finally got to the place that did the boat tours, to find that there were no boat tours. Well, I couldn't find a place that had a boat that was doing tours. A couple of places looked like they would do tours, and some places did special tours (like evening meal tours), but there were no tours available.

While we were wandering around, we saw a seal in the water. I was holding D up so he could look through a telescope - "There's a seal" I said. "I can see a building site" he said. The seal flopped onto the dock, looked about and got back in the water, before I could persuade D to stop looking at the building site. A asked if we were going to see the whale again.

There were also pelicans there. My main experience of pelicans has been flocks of them flying over reefy glades, with beaks full of fish, as the sun sets behind them, in a slightly idyllic fashion, and David Attenborough's hushed tones describe what's going on. But these pelicans were just hanging about on the dock - mostly by a place that sold or collected bait or something like that. Like a common seagull or pigeon or something.

Here's a pelican swooping majestically above the waves.



Here's a penguin scrabbling around for bits of food like a common pigeon or seagull or something.




This post is a bit rambling isn't it? Sorry.

Anyway, to salve A and D's disappointment, we hired a powerboat. It wasn't very powerful, but it was powerful enough for me (and for them). - 10hp, if that means anything in boat world, and 16ft long. I didn't take many photos, because I was holding onto the steering wheel most of the time. But here's one:

We were passed by a police boat, going fairly swiftly, which made big waves in its wake. A and D thought that was exciting, other than that they spent a lot of the time lying down (which confused the people at the boat place when we got back). When asked, they said that they had fun, and would do it again though.

On the way back, we had to make a bathroom break at the same place - this time we went to a health food shop across the road, which had a snack bar. A and D asked for apple juice, the person serving us took some apples, put them in a juicer and gave the boys the juice. They said it didn't taste like apple juice, which reminded me (only a little) of a child I knew once who was shocked to find bones in chicken.

We went on the correct side of the road on the way back, through a very long, thin park. One of those parks that have exercise structures and instructions on them for doing exercise. Boys thought this was very exciting ("A playground. For grown ups.") and wanted to do all the exercises. Worse, they wanted me to do them first, so they could see what to do. Luckily, we'd missed a few out at the beginning. Also, if there wasn't a structure, just a sign, they missed it. (Like the sign that said: "Number 12, do some star jumps here.")

In the end, we'd done around 5 miles of likeabiking/walking, along with all the other adventures. Which was probably a record for A and D, and meant that they were pretty exhausted. But they had come close to exhausting me. When we got home S was watching CSI. And now I have to read S's report. (It's 56 pages long, but she claims it's mostly appendices).

Update on the hovercraft

We took the hovercraft to the beach - I thought it might work well on flat sand. But it doesn't. It sits there blowing air in a lot of directions, and not moving.

However, it did work shockingly well on water (well, it worked, which shocked me). It didn't reverse well, but it moved around at a moderate pace. A and D paddled in the water up to their knees, and pursued it, and were pursued by it, and tried to sink it.

They didn't really get the hang of using it - they just pressed forwards, and it sailed off into (potential) oblivion, and I had visions of it's battery running out and it sinking. Actually, as the battery got lower, the fan that was supposed to raise it off the water slowed down, and if you also tried to make the device go forward as well, the fan just stopped, and it didn't sink. Given that this fan (a) should make it go on the ground, and it doesn't anyway and (b) doesn't seem to be needed to make it go on water, and (c) and (d) makes quite a lot of noise and must eat batteries, I wonder if it would be OK without it.

The fan fills a skirt/cushion with air, and this raises the hovercraft. I have a plan to filk the skirt with something else (polystyrene beads?) and then disconnecting the fan, and seeing if that works.

Could have just bought a boat, I suppose.

Trolley adventures

We are still are still carless, so this morning the boys and I got a taxi to the German kindergarten. After spending 20 dollars on a taxi there, it seemed excessively profligate to get one home again, so I waited. Instead of just sitting around for 3 hours, I walked about, and looked in shops. I went into a thrift shop and bought a book (The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth, which I got about half way through several years ago, and then left on a plane).

Then I went further and found a hardware shop, which sold a trolley - the kind one can put children and stuff into and drag behind you. When we were in England, S had expressly forbidden me from buying such a thing, but that was in England, and maybe the rules are different here. (Besides, it's a long way from the car to the apartment, and it's me who has to make 5 trips carrying shopping bags). I was going to try to sneak it in past S, but I had forgotten my keys, so I had to knock and then look slightly sheepish with my trolley.

So this afternoon, the boys and I went to the beach. They sat in the trolley, and we made much faster progress than usual. I bought a basketball - I've wanted a basketball for ages, because there are basketball courts next to the playground and that would give me something more wholesome to do than sit and hope that other parents turn up and give me someone to talk to (and that they are not mad - as they often seem to be).

While I was in the shop, I saw a remote control hovercraft. I've always wanted a remote control hovercraft (in a bit of my mind that's not accessible to consciousness) and it was only $20 (plus tax, of course), so I bought it. Then I immediately regretted it. "Yes, sir, I know that this item you have bought is a completely useless piece of tat, but we are a beach side shop, and therefore not only permitted, but obliged to sell useless pieces of tat to impulsive consumers such as yourself." I also imagined that it was going to need about 100 batteries, and my supply of rechargeable batteries and battery charger haven't arrived yet.

[Aside: CoCE has the finest stationery cupboard I have ever seen. By a long way. It's got batteries. Batteries! In AA and AAA sizes! I don't know why, but it's tempting to never buy another battery again. Except (a) that's not very environmentally wholesome, and as I've got a supply of rechargeable batteries and a posh battery charger, batteries are effectively free anyway, and (b) there's probably a hidden camera somewhere, and then they'll sack me. (They'll probably wait a year before they sack me, because if you sack someone on an H1B visa, within a year of them starting their job, you have to pay their expenses to get home again). It always makes me think of that Dilbert book called "Build a better life through stealing office stationery supplies."]

Where was I? Oh yes, I opened the hovercraft and it had a battery for the remote control and a rechargeable battery pack (8 AA batteries - NiCad, rather than NiMH, but you can't have everything) and a battery charger. So I put the batteries in and turned it on and the fans spun sort of uselessly, and then stopped. So maybe the batteries were flat, or maybe it is a useless piece of tat.

Meanwhile, D was playing bulldozers with the remote control, so it made a sort of grating noise when you wiggled the levers (until I spent quite a while shaking it) and the skirt bit underneath seemed to need tucking in. But all will be revealed when the batteries are charged and we try it out tomorrow.

CSI

We've got cable TV in our current apartment thrown in with the price. And, as we're not paying (directly, anyway) we've got a lot of channels.

CSI is the most watched programme in the USA, and so there are a lot of repeats, on a lot of channels (that's without the new ones). Most evenings, it seems to be possible to watch 2 hours of CSI, and sometimes 3. S manages to watch almost nothing else. (Except we managed "My name is Earl" tonight).

If the new series of 24 clashes with CSI (and given how there's CSI everywhere, it's almost inevitable) we'll have to get divorced or something. And if we get divorced we have to give lots of money back to CoCE.

Squeaking Tyres

On American TV shows, the tyres squeak, when they go around corners. I always thought that was for dramatic effect, but it doesn't matter how slowly I drive around the corners in multi storey car parks, the tyres always squeak.

Eating out

Some things might be expensive, but eating out isn't one of them.

At our local convenience store, 6 English muffins cost $4, which is about 66c each. In the canteen at work, a muffin, toasted, with a plate and a knife to throw away, and butter or margo, costs 60c.

My whole idea of what should be paid in a restaurant has changed. There is an Indian restaurant near us, it looks quite good - it advertises outside that they use no butter, it's low fat, no artificial color or flavor. But it costs around $10 for a main course, and you have to add a tip and tax to that, so it will be about $14, which is 8 around 8 pounds, and includes rice and (organic) salad. Phew! It would have to be a special occasion to go there.

Instead, we go to the Mexican place next door, which is $5 for a burrito that I can't eat, which comes with guacamole. There are little pots to put salsa in (there's 4 kinds), freshly chopped coriander (I say cilantro now), sliced chillis and chopped onions and tomatoes.

There was discussion on the freakonomics blog about tipping recently. I tip pretty generously at places like that (20%-25%) because I reckon that I'm probably the only person with an English accent who wears a t-shirt that says "I am statistics Ninja", so they are going to remember me, and then next time, I'll get, well, I don't know what I'll get, but it will be good.

Water, water everywhere

I vaguely remember (possibly from Geography lessons in school - see Mr Roberts, I learned something in your dull lessons) that the definition of a desert is based on annual rainfall. I don't know what the annual rainfall is here, but it hasn't rained since we arrived (at the beginning of September, almost 6 weeks ago), although occasionally the weather forecast says that it might rain soon. So, if it's not a desert officially, it's got to be close.

despite this, everywhere is lush and green. Every house we have looked at had a lush green lawn. One place told us that the only gardening duty of the tenants was to water the lawn. Another that they were going to have automatic sprinklers put in. If one happens to to be awake in our apartment at about 4am, the sprinklers come on outside, and they are loud. In the morning, there are large puddles all over the paths.

It's the same on the bike path on the way to CoCE, the grass is lush and green, and there are puddles everywhere in the morning. No one (well, almost no one) seems to think this is weird or bad. Well, maybe the people who live in the place where the water comes from, and now don't have any.

CoCE seems slightly better. They use cleaned up urban runoff water to flush toilets and water the lawn. And it's not grass, it's something else, which (I like to think) doesn't need watering as often. But I can't believe that there's that much urban runoff left.

(Urban runoff, it seems, is grim stuff, and it's better to avoid chucking it in the sea - it's got engine oil and dog shit and all sorts of nasties in it.)

No buts ...

I went to our local convenience store last night, to buy some butter. (We had interestingly different colored boiled potatoes to eat, but S wouldn't eat them without butter [or margo]). It's called a convenience store, because it's nearby. It should be called an inconvenience store, because it's almost physically impossible to carry enough money there to actually buy anything.

Anyway, it's run by a Korean lady, who is very friendly and nice, and knows D and A's names - she shouted their names when they went in, but they didn't notice, because of her accent they didn't understand what she was saying.

I asked her where the butter was. She didn't understand. "Butter", I said. (The best approximation I can do to my pronunciation is to say that it might almost rhyme with the way you say 'footer'.) I was about to start mimicking spreading something on bread, when she understood. (Which is good, my attempts at sign language usually just lead to confusion.)

"Ah!" she said "badder". So now I have to ask for badder. Honestly, it's bad enough having to pronounce the symbol b as 'baider' (I have to say that surprisingly often at work), I don't know if I can ask for badder.

A New Beach

On Saturday we went to look at the place we are going to be living, and looked to see how far it was from the beach. It was a bit hard to tell, because it’s down a steep hill, so the road winds a lot, and the shortest route (which the map lady sent us on) is quite complicated.

The beach is very different from where we are now. Fewer freaks and weirdos (as S put it). Well, no freaks and weirdos (that we saw). What it does have though, is aeroplanes. The planes are not so bad just where we are going to be living, but the boys and I walked (they likeabiked) along the path towards the airport. The planes varied, in how steeply they climbed and what angle they went when they took off, but when a big one came over us, they seemed very close, very loud, and very low. A and D thought it was quite exciting. There were quaint looking houses and villas all along the beach front – it must be a rather unrelaxing place to come on holiday (and when a tsunami comes, they are in a whole heap of trouble).

We met a man on a bike who’d come from England when he was 6. He told the boys that they should concentrate on keeping their accents, ‘cos then the women would like it. They looked nervous and backed away slightly.

We drove through a weird ghost towny sort of place. Their used to be houses there but when the airport expanded they were right under the flight path at the end of the runway, so the airport bought the land, and knocked down all the houses. But it left the roads, so there is an area that looks like a town that a really strong wind blew through, about 40 years ago. There are still slightly recognizable boundaries, and small plants growing up through cracks in the street. The area is fenced off and is a nature reserve now.

La Brea Tar Pits

We went to La Brea Tar Pits today. The tar pits are, well, they are pits full of tar. Except where the tar has been dug out and then they are pits full of water, with really, really disgusting oil floating on top of them, and bubbles of natural gas bubbling up every now and then. Around the park there’s tar bubbling up from the ground – mostly in fenced off bits, but there are some little spots on the grass.

What’s interesting about the tar pits is that for about 40,000 years they acted as a trap and a preserver of animals that fell in. There are some staggering statistics of what has (so far) been dug out – something like 1,000,000 bones. Including 1600 wolf skulls, bits of wood, woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths, and all sorts of birds and bits of wood.

There’s a museum with the skeletons and things in it, and some displays, which was OK, but not desperately exciting.

It also smells pretty bad.

It’s all set in a park and nice and pleasant, but if Shell or Exxon or some other evil corporation had dumped a load of crude oil (‘cos that’s what it is) in a park where people went, there would be a big fuss. But it’s natural, so it’s OK.

(That’s not to defend Shell or Exxon – they are, of course, evil corporations, but it’s interesting that people mostly don’t mind.)

Final fact for the day - La Brea means tar, in Spanish. So the La Brea tar pits are the tar tar pits. NewScientist had a word for this sort of thing a while ago, but I forget what it is.

Thrift Shop

We went to a thrift (charity) shop today. S had been wanting to go for a long time, but we'd never got around to it. Anyway, today we went to Radio Shack (to swap S's cellphone for one with a battery that last more than 5 minutes) and two doors down was the Goodwill Donation Centre.

The shop was enormous, and had rows and rows of stuff. This is maybe the effect of living in an affluent area in a consumerist society, but with lots of poor people around to remind you to give stuff to people. Clothes were sorted by type and colour, but not by size, and there was no indication of size on them, so it was slightly arduous. I bought a collared t-shirt (tennis shirt? Is that what they are called) and a pair of shorts (Ralph Lauren). S bought some shoes, and not much else - I think there was too much choice.

Unlike charity shops that I'm familiar with, they sold electrical stuff. So we know where to come when we want a telly. I bought an electric grill as well. I have learnt that a grill to an American is something like a barbecue, that grills from beneath. A grill that grills from the top is a broiler. (It took me a few days to understand why our cooker didn't have a grill, until I looked it up on wikipedia.)

I had a plan to put the grill on the patio, and pretend it was a barbecue, but we used to empty the cat litter there, and I wasn't sure it was completely clean and nice. (It's hard to sweep up every last dreg - the edge of our balcony is above the people's below, so anything that goes over the edge has a good chance of landing on them /their stuff. I'm waiting for rain, but that hasn't happened yet.) So I did it in the kitchen and set the fire alarm off.

Poor D waited for a long time for his sweetcorn, and eventually gave up, it never really seemed to cook.

Price of Bread

Bread seems particularly expensive. It's hard to pay less than two dollars for a bog standard loaf of sliced bread, and easy to pay almost 4 dollars. Fresh bread is cheaper though - something like 1.29 for a large, fresh loaf.

Bananas are cheap though. 49c/lb, and 99c/lb for organic.

The Map Lady

Today, we hired a car, because we had stuff to do at the weekend. As the previous car was paid for by CoCE, it had many optional extras, including a satellite navigation system. However, the new hire car doesn't, so today I bought one.

A and D think it's great. They call it The Map Lady (it's a female voice). They say "Daddy, why the lady saying 'Keep right'?". They have a Map Lady on their like-a-bikes, and today A sat in the trolley at the supermarket, while D pulled the trolley around saying "Right turn approaching in 5 miles". When the trolley crashed, they blamed it on the map lady.

mmmm.... watermelon

I've always liked watermelon (or any kind of melon) and here they are cheap. They sell by the pound, and in supermarkets are typically 50c/pound, so a 16 pound watermelon (and that's a pretty big watermelon) costs $8. A couple of days ago, I bought a watermelon, not a massive one, probably only 10 lbs. And last night I ate it. Well, not all of it, S and the boys had a slice each, and I had the rest.

Well they're not called watermelon for nothing. I've never micturated like I micturated after that. I had to get up and piss in the night about 8 times, and I've been three times at work today. Still, it's probably a week or so's 5 a day (except here it's 4 and a half a day, 'cos 5 was too confusing).

World's worst credit card

We've got no credit history here. Which means that no one will consider lending us any money. It also means that we don't look good when we try to rent a place. The way to get a better credit rating is to borrow money, and then pay it back. However, we can't, because no one will lend us any money.
So I went to the Household Bank website, and after much faffing, found a number to ring someone. They'll give us a credit card. Except they won't give us credit, because we have to put the money in first. And they charge $35 to set it up, and then $3.50 per month. So it's a bit crap, but it's the best we can do.

Car(e)less

I had to return the hire car this morning, but we haven't managed to get our new car yet. So, we're carless, which was careless of me (geddit?). The people at International Autos were lovely and efficient while they were selling you a car, but once you're committed, they take about 2 days to answer each email.

And I think I've done everything, and they say "We'll send you the contract tomorrow." And I say "How long will it take to get here? Can you send it quickly?" and there's a chance that the contract will get here before the email reply.

Not sleeping in my office

We found somewhere to live, which is nice.

It looks like a large apartment, but is actually a condominium (condo). Condo is actually a legal, not a descriptive term, it's just that most condos have a similar set up, so the term is almost descriptive. (Some condos look like houses, some look like apartments; if you care, click the link).

The landlady (I don't think they say that here) is a relatively recent immigrant from Hungary, which is good, because she understood that we didn't have a credit history. (Some owners didn't - they said "Yeah, the agency will check your credit history", and I'd say "no, they won't", I'd rung and checked, so I knew. They'd say "Oh, they'll check it, it will be fine", and repeat.)

Everywhere makes you fill out an application form, and then they select from everyone who filled one out. You also have to pay something (usually $20) for them to do the credit check. However, we didn't.

Anyway, back to the apartment. It's in a complex - lots of condo are in complexes, these vary from three to lots of dwellings. Our complex is about 500. It's got two swimming pools (one is ostensibly for kiddies, and one for growed ups, but no one cares really), a gym, sauna (separate male and female. S doesn't approve of that), jacuzzi (separate again), and a dry cleaners. There's also a laundry on site, and it's next to the playground.

Aside: While we were looking at one apartment, there was a washer and a dryer, and the owner said "Ooh, we'll take that out, you don't want a washing machine in your house". I asked why not, and they said "Ooh, what if it leaks", someone else (who was also looking around) told a story of a friend of theirs whose washing machine leaked, and how dreadful it was. I always thought that it was bizarre that people didn't have washing machines - that would be a sign of poverty in the UK, but here it's not. But everyone has dishwashers. (We've only seen one place that didn't).

The place itself is pretty large, 1300 sq ft, or so (which means nothing to me) but that means an OK sized living room, with a sort of dining area and kitchen attached, 3 decent sized bedrooms (if I were an estate agent I'd call them double bedrooms), and 2 bathrooms (one with a bath, one with a shower, some houses have half and 3/4 bathrooms in them, according to the ads, I've never worked out what that means, or found anyone who knows who can tell me).

It's near the beach (15 minute walk, if you haven't got 2 4 year olds), and also near the airport. Being near the airport has one large-ish con, which is that you can hear the planes. But actually, it's to the side of the airport, so when the planes are taking off and landing, they are close to the ground, and the sound can't reach you. You can be a lot further from the airport and under the flight path and it's a lot louder (I found some noise maps on the web, which showed where the noise was). We are also on the correct side of the block, to reduce the noise. (We noticed the sound of the planes as we went in, but it wasn't disruptive).

Being near the airport has two pros. First, is that there is public transport to and from the airport, to most places, so we can actually get a bus, or even (shock!) a train to places. Second is that it's near the airport, obviously. We will be about 8 miles from CoCE there, a colleague lives about 15 miles in the other direction (about 23 miles to the airport, maths wizards). On the Friday of a holiday weekend, she had some friends visit. It took her 3 hours to get to the airport, and 3 hours to get home again. So, when y'all come to visit, that will be pretty handy.

I can cycle to CoCE, I think it's around eight and a half miles, via the scenic route. There's a creek (well, it's called a creek, it's really a concrete drainage channel) between there and CoCE, and there aren't many places to get across it - the quickest involves a rather busy, and unpleasant, and large road (which currently has roadworks which has narrowed it, so cars drive about 6 inches from the barrier). The scenic route is much, much more scenic, and a bit further. It's got about 3/4 of a mile which isn't on bike path, and most of the bike path is along the beach, past the restored wetlands (where, I've heard, one sees flamingoes on the way to work), which I like the idea of. (I guess you get blase though - although I've been riding for 2 weeks, I have not a hint of blaseness yet, at the things I ride past on the way to work.)

The complex is a tiny bit naff, it reminds me of the line in the Frank Zappa song 'Flakes' (actually, a lot reminds me of the line in the Frank Zappa song Flakes) "All that we've got here's American made, it's a little bit cheesy but it's nicely displayed." There's a little wooden bridge over a stream that you have to go over to get in - I wasn't absolutely sure, but it didn't look like a real stream - I mean, obviously it wasn't a real stream, but it pumped water into one end, and the water went down a plughole at the other. After a minute or two of this, the process stopped, and the water came out of the plughole, and went back the other way. There was also absolutely no algae or anything similar in it, so I suspect it's actually 20% Domestos. One day I'm going to write another post about water here, so I mustn't digress now.

Oh, actually, I could have digressed, because I've finished.

Driving Test (part 2)

Today, I successfully took the written part of my driving test. There was more waiting than yesterday, and the whole process took about an hour. I took my ticket, waited, saw the first person at the desk and paid my money. Behind each desk on the ceiling were eye test cards, a little like those in opticians, except all the letters were the same size.

I had my photo and thumb print taken. Then I went to the testing area - I sat at a school desk, with the chair attached, just like in The Simpsons, and put little crosses in the little boxes.

I scored 34 out of 36 (30 is the pass mark first time, if you fail it first time the pass mark goes up to 33). I got one wrong, which was about when you've had an accident, as well as driving license information, what else do you have to exchange with the other driver:
- registration
- registration and insurance details
- registration and insurance details and home address

I said 'c'. But it wasn't.

I got the other one wrong, because I missed one out. (I was going to go back and check but I couldn't be bothered, I'd have been really peeved if I'd missed it by one).

Present

Someone just came to my office and said that they had finally got my 'new hire gift'. I didn't know that I was due a new hire gift, so it was rather exciting. I got a bag (they called it a duffel bag, but it didn't look like one to me) with Corporation of Current Employment's logo on the side, and a $30 gift certificate to spend in the company store.

I did my Christmas shopping, so I can't tell what I got, 'cos it will spoil the surprise. Oh, all right then. I bought a travel coffee cup thing - I'm going to give that to S, because when we moved into the apartment they gave us two paper cups with lids (like you get at Starbucks) to drink coffee from. S keeps rinsing them out and reusing them. Actually, I got two of them, 'cos if she's having one, I want one too.

I bought two plastic water bottles for A and D, with the CoCE logo on the side, and a DVD on the history of CoCE, which I'm going to give to mum, so that she can see be convinced of what a lovely place this is, and not the evil, right wing, corporate, republican, arms dealing, component of the military industrial complex that she believes (or might believe). But I'm not going to wait for Christmas for that.

There was a special screening of the film here. Actually, it wasn't that convincing.

But that came to $30, so I don't have any Christmas presents left. Maybe I could give someone the bag.

Driving test (part 1)

I battled my way through the extraordinarily complex system to make a telephone booking at the Department of Motor Vehicles (I finally found out what DMV stood for - I'd imagined that the D had to be for Drivers, as it is in the UK). You have to type in, on the telephone the day and the time that you want an appointment. It then spends a while checking the system, and says that there are no appointments at that time. What it doesn't tell you is when the appointments actually are.

Anyway, my appointment was made, and I dutifully cycled there. There was nowhere to tie up my bike - how do they think people get there if they haven't got a driving licence? I went in, was given a form to fill out, and a ticket with my number on.

I had barely filled out the form, when my number was called. I went to the desk, and showed my social security card and UK driving licence. "Need passport and visa, or green card to prove permission to work" said the man. "But you can't get a SS card without permission to work" I protested. (I protested very gently, 'cos I've already learned with US bureaucracy there's no point protesting at all.) "Need passport and visa, or green card to prove permission to work" said the man. I said a cheery goodbye, got back on my bicycle and went to work.

I seemed to have lost one of my gloves on the way though.

More on houses

We've spent most of the day looking at houses. First we drove to one that we'd already looked at - it's been available almost two months, but it was 30 minutes from Corporation of Current Employment, and we thought that was just too far. Weird gated community as well.

Then we drove to the other side of town, to look at an apartment that claimed to be 2 bedroom, two bathrooms, plus a den (a den, according to the dictionary that pops up on Google, is A secluded room for study or relaxation). First, A banged himself, just below his eye, on a door handle, which didn't set things off well. Then the place had a large-ish entrance hall, which led into the living room/dining room/ kitchen, and then there was a bedroom, with no door, and an enormouse bathroom. That was it. The large entrance hall turned out to be a bedroom and a den.

Then we looked at a house about 5 miles from CCE. It had a converted garage, which was a bedroom, but was OK. The drive was so steep, that you couldn't drive up it without scraping the car, so the garage was no use as a garage anyway. There were steps leading down into that bedroom, and the floor was tiled, so easy to clear up any boy related bedroom disasters.

When we got home, I rang another place nearby. It said it was over three stores, which I took to be a typo, meaning it was three storeys. But it wasn't, it was three shops, on a busy street. You accessed it at the back, up some stairs, and then there was a large outside area, and a path all the way around. It claimed to have two bedrooms, a dining room, a den, and a living room. But it only seemed to have three rooms. I kept opening doors to see if there was a missing room somewhere, but I couldn't find one.

Trapped

Well, dramatic license there. No one is actually trapped. But D has managed to lock the bathroom door, and then close it. Luckily, he is on the correct side. The light and the fan are on though, which is a bit irritating.

I tried turning it off by randomly flipping switches on the fuse box thing, which worked. But I turned off the computer first, which didn't go down a storm.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

S took D and A to the zoo, with one of her friends, and their children. They stayed there for about 6 hours, and were reasonably exhausted when they got back.
I asked A and D what they did at zoo. "Played on the playground" they said.
What else, I asked. "Bought things in the shop" they said.
What else, I asked "Ate chips" they said.
"Did you see any animals?" They looked sort of confused and blank. "Did you see a giraffe?"
They eventually confessed that yes, they might have seen a giraffe.
"Was it very, very tall?"
"No, it was a baby."
That was it for animals.

Personalized Licence Plates

In California, it's surprisingly cheap to have personalised license plates. If no one else has got it, you can have it. In the UK, they make you pay some extortionate price for them, but in California, it varies between $40 and $90, followed by an annual renewal fee (which is less).
The money that you pay goes to a specific cause - like the environment, or children's charities, or olympic training, or firefighters memorial, and the one you choose determines the design of the licence plates.
But what I don't know is, is having personalised plates the sort of thing that makes you look like a wanker?
Oh, and I don't know what to have.

Driving Test

I've booked the first part of my test, for next Tuesday at 10am. It's a written test, and you have to get at least 30 answers right out of 36. There are some example questions here. Some of them are staggeringly easy. Here's my favourite:

5. You are driving on a freeway posted for 65 MPH. The traffic is traveling at 70 MPH. You may legally drive:

75 MPH or less.
70 MPH or less.
65 MPH or less.

(The answer is 65 mph or less.)

Another good one:

10. You must obey instructions from school crossing guards:

At all times.
Only during school hours.
Unless you do not see any children present.

(Yep, it's A.)

Some of them you would never know if you hadn't read the book:

2. You are approaching a railroad crossing with no warning devices and are unable to see 400 feet down the tracks in one direction. The speed limit is:

15 mph
20 mph
25 mph

(You'll have to read the book to find out. I haven't yet. It's got a nice picture of Arnie at the front of it.)

Locker Room Rush Hour

This morning I arrived at the locker room at about 8:30, and it was full of people. Well, men. And a disturbing number had no clothes on. Well, 2.
I made some quip about it being rush hour, and someone told me that you had to be either early or later - avoid 8:30, because that's when the most people were there.

Bad Blood

They had a blood donation drive thingy at work. "Help a hero, thank a hero" it said on the posters, with a noble looking fireman standing somewhere that might have been the World Trade Centre in New York, with a policeman looking on. I wondered how often criminals that the police had shot needed blood, relative to how often policemen needed blood. But I suspect most blood goes on really unsexy things like hip replacements.

Anyway, the sign up procedure was really clever. You went to a web page and booked an appointment, and that sent a confirmation email that I clicked on and it added it to my Outlook calendar. So it's impossible to forget. Almost.

I arrived this morning and realized that I'd forgotten my identity card, which meant I couldn't get into the bike store. The security guy on the car park opened the door for me (but not before he'd checked that my bike had the appropriate registration sticker on it - that's what that was for).

On the way in, slightly sweaty, I saw K, the nurse, who asked if I was giving blood.

Shit shit shit shit shit. So I get my temporary badge, and went to the blood place. Luckily, my appointment was at 10:15, and it was 10:00, so I had a shower to make sure I wasn't too sweaty.

I went back to the blood place, and signed in. I was given a very thick booklet to read, and they said I had to read it. Luckily it was in about 7 languages, so it wasn't as thick as it looked. The first part was about HIV. It said that they were going to ask me if I'd had oral, anal or vaginal sex (along with gentle descriptions of those, in case you weren't sure). It asked if I'd had sex with a man, ever been paid for sex, if I'd lived in Chad, Nigeria or Haiti (or a few other places).

The next section was the mad cow disease section. It asked if I'd lived in the UK for more than three months, between 1 Jan 1980 and 31 December, 1996. I said I'd lived there 17 years during that time (notice that cunning bit of arithmetic?) and they said, very nicely, that they didn't want my nasty diseased British blood.

But they gave me a voucher for a free pizza from Papa John's. It looked complicated to get one's free pizza though (you had to go to a web page and type in a code, and get a number and use that), and it's the sort of thing that I either lose immediately, or look at every day with the intention of using. When I got to my office I couldn't get in ('cos my card opens that too) so I gave the voucher to the person who helped me get in.

Environmental Unawareness

The extent to which people here seem to lack any kind of environmental awareness amazes me. Someone at the supermarket stands there and puts stuff into plastic bags for you. Never mind that you stand there, fairly redundant while they do that for you. Sometimes they put such a small amount of stuff into a plastic bag, it's amazing. Yesterday, one bag had a tube of toothpaste in it. The milk comes in gallon containers, which have a handle for carrying - never mind, they'll put it in a bag anyway. But, because the bags are a bit flimsy - they'll put it in two!

No one cares ...

I was wandering about in Borders on Saturday, when I saw a book called No one cares what you had for lunch ... about how not to write boring blocs. However, I didn't buy it, and so I'm going to tell you what I had for lunch. But first, I hear the cries, "J, you have two small children, how to you have time to potter about Borders?"

The reason is that S found a German class, which lasts three hours on a Saturday morning. The boys were very excited, and S made them Schultute and they were very excited about it. The school was held (perhaps surprisingly) in a school. It was a bugger to find, we didn't have a number, we just new the street name, and the street it was off. So we went to the street, and searched for something that looks like a school. American schools might look different, but I still think we'd be able to distinguish them from, say, houses. So we cruised up and down the road, asking confused passers by where there was a school on the street. Passers by were confused - the road was plainly short, and there was no school on it.

S was on her mobile trying to find someone who could find the school details on the web, and get the number for the person in charge, so we could find it. Eventually the SatNav thing on the rental car saved the day. It turned out that the road stopped and then continued about a mile away. When we had that information, finding the school was easy, and there was a sign that said "German class ->", so off we trotted.

This meant that S and I had 3 hours on a Saturday morning. Bliss! Freedom! Excitement! So we went to Borders, and saw the book. We didn't buy it, we bought some other books instead, and then we went to the Farmer's Market, and bought some fruit and veg.

I've been kind of disappointed by the oranges here. My favorite oranges are the big Spanish navel ones. But you can't get oranges like that here (or maybe you can, but I can't find them). They are all smaller, and they all have seeds in. But the oranges at the farmer's market were very, very cheap. Eight pounds of oranges cost $4, and they were really fresh and ripe. Much riper and nice than oranges in England - I guess that's 'cos they can leave them on the trees until the last minute. We also got some small, yellow tomatoes that were very yummy - so yummy that A and D almost ate some. But not quite.

So, we got home and I opened a carton of broth from Trader Joe's. I always think of broth as being sort of thick soup, although this was more like very thin stock. I've just done a search for a definition of broth, and it does say it's thin stock. However, I was expecting something like soup, and so was kind of disappointed. So we threw some spaghetti in, and some peas (from the farmer's market), and it was still less than satisfying but it was better than slightly green water which it was before.

Bicycling

Today is Friday, and I've been cycling to work for a week now (I'd have done it before, except I didn't have a bike). There's a path along the beach bike path, which is quite cool. Except that you get sand in your chain, and there are sometimes really dim people in the way. (Sometimes cycling, sometimes not, despite the fact that it says "bikes only" very clearly in lots of places. There was a bit of debate on the area cycling yahoo group about what to do about that. My personal solution is to ring my bell (great bell that Holly bought me - so thanks) and then cycle past them as close and fast as I dare. This morning there was a big group of old people standing on the path taking photos of something. (I couldn't tell what was so exciting that they all should photograph it). I rode past them very slowly and carefully.

It takes slightly longer than driving (if I drive outside the rush hour; between 8 and 10 it's quicker to cycle), but it's not very far - about three and a half miles, which is enough to get a bit sweaty. Corporation of Current Employment has a locker room, with showers (like where Warrick and Stokes have their little heart to hearts on CSI sometimes), so I have a shower there.

I've got obsessive about trying to save time on my ride. I don't like riding with stuff in my shorts pockets (in case it falls out) so I keep it all in my pannier, and then leave it there all day - that saves a bit of time, so I don't spend time transferring it. (You can pay for food with your identity card, which you need to have all the time, so I don't need money). There are two hairdryers, so I use them both at the same time, and I don't dry my legs with my towel, because they can evaporate while I dry my hair. I don't tie my shoelaces after the shower, I do that while my computer is turning on. If I can do 10 things that save 30 seconds each, that will save 5 minutes twice a day, which means I get home 10 minutes earlier, and have 10 more minutes hanging out.

Trouble with showering fast is that you don't feel like you've had a proper shower, so you have to have another when you get home, which obviously doesn't save time. So I do have to dawdle in the shower a tiny bit, and get thoroughly abluted.

There is a bicycle storage room - you have to register before you are allowed to use it, and put a sticker on your bike to show it is registered too. (My bike is number 1024). If you ride 15 times per month, you get an extra 30 dollars pay. The bicycle storage room has a really good pump in it, screwed to the floor, which was very handy when I had a puncture on Wednesday (the seal around the valve failed, I wonder if it was the stress of the flight for my poor bike). The bicycle storage room also has a shelf for surfboards, and about 8 surfboards on it.

Drying my towel is another slightly tricky issue I've encountered. The first couple of times I hung it on the back of my office door, but then it's not quite dry at going home time, and I didn't want to stuff it in my locker damp, so I hung it on an empty locker door. A lot of people hang their towels on empty locker doors though, and because my towel was pinched borrowed from the apartment, it was white. Like every other towel there. So I'm not 100% sure that I've got the right towel. (When I was much younger, I was discussing the need to wash towels with my mother. "Somebody might have dried their bottom on it" she said. "Yes, but it would have been a clean bottom" I thought of saying, about 10 minutes later, when it was too late. So I've been waiting to use that. And I use it now, as I think about the bottom that might have been dried on the towel that might not be mine.) Ominously, the main other contender for the position of "actually my towel" doesn't seem to have moved. The lesson is to bring a strange colored towel for the office (notice the US spelling there?)

JD suggested taking a series of photos of my ride to work, which is a good idea, when I get my camera-computer link sorted out. (And when I work out the rules of taking cameras into CoCC - I think you have to declare them or hand them in or something.)

Social Security Number

We went to the social security office to get a social security number. This was a bit of US bureaucracy that I wasn't looking forward to, but it was remarkably pleasant. The building had parking outside (a quarter got an hour) we went into the waiting room, took a ticket, and were served within 15 minutes.

I showed her my passport, with the visa inside, and that was all they needed. (She didn't notice, or didn't mind, that the immigration person had stapled Alex's entry form into my passport.)

The room was a bit grim, but the woman behind the window was cheery, and was also a twin, so she was interested in A & D. She said "It should come in the post within a week, if it doesn't come in two weeks, call this number." And that was that.

S couldn't have a social security number, as she's got an H4 visa, she needs to get a taxpayer identification number instead, which involves dealing with the IRS. That might be a whole new level of bureaucracy.

Myth #1: Immigration people in the USA are miserable and have no sense of humour.
Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's Los Angeles Airport (oh, I'm supposed to say LAX now), or maybe it's changed recently, but in the two times I've been through it, they were smiley and made jokes. You can't tell people this:

Them: "Immigration in the USA, dreadful. No sense of humour."
Me: "Well, when I've been there, they've been nice and friendly."
Them: "Oh no, don't make jokes at immigration."

When we went through this time, they made jokes, they let A & D sit on the counter (on a lower bit) and look at what they were doing.

Myth #2: Everything's cheaper in the USA
Maybe this is true of some things, but with the stuff in the shops, it doesn't seem to be true of a lot of things. It’s quite hard to make comparisons, because a lot of things are different (you wouldn’t expect fruit and veg to cost the same) and I can’t remember the price of a lot of things. I've just been shopping to Ralph's, a large-ish chain of supermarkets, and I've got the receipt.

I bought the cheapest apple juice I could find, which came in a 1 gallon container. Gallons are smaller here, and it cost $3.79. It happens that a gallon here is about 3.78 litres, so that’s a dollar a litre (just about). Today, a dollar is 53p, so that’s 53p a litre. I don’t know for sure, but I think that Tesco value apple juice is less than that.

Orange juice, 1 gallon, is $5.69. Quite a bit of maths later (or searching on Google) gives 80p a litre, which is a lot more than Tesco Value range. A loaf of wholemeal bread (made by Sara Lee - who knew they made stuff other than chocolate cakes) was $2 - that's 1.o6 GBP - I didn't concentrate on whether I was buying the cheapest there or not. One and a half pounds of Sun Maid raisins was $4.59, which is 2.44 GBP. I don't remember how much they cost in the UK, but they are from California, which you'd think would reduce things.

Maybe there are cheaper shops, but if there are, I ain't found them. (And I've tried, and I've found more expensive.)

Of course, the petrol gasoline is cheaper.

Storytime

I picked up a copy of The Onion (which exists as a free newspaper in some cities in the US) and there was an advert for a new branch of Borders. There was to be a grand opening at 10am, and the first 100 kiddies there would get a free Nickolodeon goody bag, and there would be stories and the chance to be photographed with Curious George (I didn't know who Curious George was, but S said that the boys did know).

We drove to the mall, and arrived at 9:30, expecting to find hundreds of screaming American brats. In fact, we found no one. The security staff seemed to be having some sort of briefing in the outdoor food court area, and a couple of people were wandering about, but that was all. I walked optimistically up to the automatic doors and they stayed resolutely shut. We went to the toilet - A and D were excited by the automatic soap dispensers, and by then it was 10 to 10, so we carried on waiting. At 10, the doors opened, and the huge pile of American screaming brats that we expected comprised A and D, and a couple with a baby in a pram.

There seemed to be little fanfair when we went in, but we made our way over to the kids area (that's what they call it) and a very enthusiastic Borders person greeted us, and said that the story would start in 15 minutes. We could also go to the information desk to pick up our tickets, which we could exchange for gift bags at 11.

The stories, as promised, came. They were mostly by Mo Willems and were abotu a pigeon. They seemed to be pretty popular in America as most of the children knew them, and some knew the story ("You can help me with the big words" said the reader - I can't imagine a Borders staff member doing that in England.) A and D liked them, but the reader was a bit too enthusiastic - the shouting frightened them, and he read a bit too quickly. But he did read a lot of stories.

Then CG came, who is a monkey (well, in the books he is a monkey, in Borders he is a person in a monkey suit), and the boys dutifully lined up to have their photo taken.

Then we went for fat free frozen yogurt (ice cream? Not round here). I was offered baby size, for D, and foolishly selected "small". Which I would have called "Family sized" or similar. A wanted a smoothie, which was about a pint - he did make a valiant effort, drinking about half before eventually dropping it on the floor of the car.

I ate a salad, because ice cream places sell salad here. By the pound ($4.49 / lb). I also ended up eating a lot of frozen yogurt and smoothie.

Words I"ve Learned

You'd think we'd be saturated with enough US media output to understand them, but here's some things I've learned.

"Mono" is mononucleosis. As in glandular fever.
"Cooties" is "The Lurgy" (non-specific ailment, means you can't do something).
"Cukes" on a menu is cucumber.
Yams are what we call sweet potatoes.
Sweet potatoes look like what we call sweet potatoes, but they're white. And I don't know what they taste like, because the saucepan was full of yams.
Grounds are mince. As in Quorn grounds, soya grounds.
Americans don't know what a serviette is, you have to ask for a napkin.
Update: Oct 10th
A pram is a stroller. Even if you are on roller skates when you are pushing it.

Departure

The time has come to write about the trip. Actually, the time came a couple of days ago, but then when I was looking for a map of Heathrow airport, the computer crashed, and the stupid autosave didn't work, so I got bored. This, dear reader, is what I go through for you.

We had to get a certificate of health from the vet. This seemed to be the most feeble and unofficial looking piece of paper that I've ever seen, something I could have knocked up at home on a laser printer a few minutes (if my laser printer at home didn't put big black stripes on everything, but that's another story). The vet poked at the cat for a few minutes, I handed over 45 quid, and I got my piece of paper.

And off we went to London. I've already dealt with that, so let's jump ahead to Monday morning. The flight was at 1:30, and it was suggested we check in 4 hours early, so we set off at 8am, from Vauxhall. About an hour and a half later, (self, S, A, D, Grandma and cat) arrived at Heathrow. I drove the hire car back to the hire car place, while the others manouevred the two trolleys, piled high with stuff, into departures.

I returned, and we went to check in. You know how whenever you get on an aeroplane, you go to check in, chuck your bags on the conveyor belt, tell them you've got no bombs and are not being unwittingly employed as a drug mule, and get on your way a couple of minutes later, boarding card in hand? And while you're in the queue (I have to learn to say 'line' or Americans call me quaint) there's a family that seem to have been clogging up one of the check in desks for, like, an hour? Well, we were that family.

We had to put our 6 suitcases on, that wasn't too tricky. We had to partially dismantle the car seats and get the labels stuck on and take them to the funny shaped luggage place. Then we had to deal with the cat. We handed over our very unofficial looking piece of paper, then handed over our 70 quid. They seemed to doubt that the shoddy piece of paper really was all we needed - someone more senior was fetched, who fetched someone else more senior, and they eventually decided the piece of paper was OK.

They also decided that the box was IATA approved (I don't know what that means, but we spent 25 pounds (notice that I'm using a keyboard without a pound sign) on a box that had a label that said "IATA approved". They fetched a lot of stickers that said "Live Animal" and "This way up", and stuck them on. It was quite hard to stick them on without covering up the airholes, and the airholes (on all 4 sides) are one of the things that make it IATA approved.

Then I had to carry the cat into the bowels of Heathrow Airport somewhere, and man with a sniffer machine sniffed around the cat box - mainly focussing on the underneath, he didn't put it inside. Maybe he was convinced it was actually a cat. The sniffer was a bit like a hand held vacuum cleaner, with a bit of filter paper in the hose. The filter paper was removed, and it was taken away to be inspected.

Given the lack of hand luggage I was wearing almost all the clothes I had, so I hoped that the trickles of sweat running down my face didn't arouse suspicion.

The cat was declared explosives free, so I took it back to check-in, offered it food and water (I had to sign a declaration that it had been offered food and water - not that it felt at all like eating). The man at the check in gave us odious warnings of what would happen when we arrived - vets would be summoned, out of hours, and we'd have to pay, and all sorts of dreadful stuff.

The cat was taken away, and we went to join the queue for security screening.

Normally the queue for security is a bit long, but this was impressive. It went all the way through departures, up some steps, across a bridge, along a long corridor, and into the car park, where it wound up and down once. We found Grandma and she went to buy supplies of sandwiches.

People were wandering up and down the queue calling particular flights and pulling people out of the queue to take them to the front - I waited for ours, but it never came.

We got to the front of the queue, after what felt like forever, but was about 1 o'clock. I took off my belt, because sometimes that sets off the alarms, but left my mobile phone in my pocket.

We got through security to see the screen saying "last call" for our flight, when someone greeted us, and asked what flight we were on. I told him, expecting him to rush us in some way to the departure gate. He started to tell me what duty free stuff we could buy, so I punched him out of the way, and saw that sign that estimated a 20 minute walk to our gate.

We picked up A & D and ran, as much as we could, and walked directly onto the plane. (First time I've ever done that).

When the stewardess saw the boys, she asked if they wanted to see the flight deck, which was something I thought only happened in stories. The boys went into the cockpit, took over the plane, and demanded milk and ... no, not really. They sat in the co-pilot's seat, and the pilot asked if we had a camera. I didn't (obviously, I didn't even have a belt on), so he took a photo with his camera, and asked for my email address, so he could email it.

Which, about a week later, he did. Which I thought was incredibly nice of him. So, FLY UNITED AIRLINES, 'COS THEY"RE REALLY NICE.

Then we sat down and the plane took off.

Petrol

Oh, the joy of trying to put petrol in the car.

I can't get the petrol to come out of the pump and into the car. So I walk into the shop bit, and he says "You paying?" and I say "No, the petrol won't come out." But he doesn't know what petrol is, so he says "Pay?", and I say "No, no petrol".

This continued for a while, until the chap behind me in the queue realised what was going on, and translated. Basically, you pay first, then put the petrol in. But as you've no idea how much space there is in the tank, you don't know how much to pay (gallons are smaller and cost a different amount - that's a calculation you can't do without advanced calculus). So 4 miles later, you've got to go through the whole procedure again.

Milk

In England, we had milk delivered, by the milkman. (It could have been a milk lady, for all I knew, I was never up early enough to see.) In America, where price trumps everything, we don't. Because you can save a small amount by using your time and petrol (oops, gas) to drive to the supermarket and buy milk on a regular basis.
Because we had it delivered, I never realised how much milk we got through. On Friday I went to the supermarket, and bought some milk. Being honorary Americans (this is like being an honorary lecturer - it means nothing) I buy milk in gallon containers (surprisingly, being American, these are smaller than proper gallons. 1 US gallon is about 1.2 UK gallons), and I bought 2 of these 1 gallon containers. This morning is Monday, and we are out of milk.

(We buy orange juice and apple juice in 1 gallon containers. Soya milk only comes in 4 pint containers. The supermarket had an offer for 10 fresh baguettes for $10. What can you do with 10 fresh baguettes?)

I thought I saw a puddy tat

I went to the convenience store in our apartment block, at about 9 o'clock at night. On the way back, I saw a cat - I thought it was strange that someone had a cat that was out - the apartments are (AFAIK) for temporary accommodation, and although pets are OK (we've got one, after all), I wouldn't have thought that anyone was here long enough to get one.

Anyway, as I got closer, I noticed it was a really big cat. With a pointy nose, and a long bushy tail. With stripes. It was a raccoon. Which I thought was kind of cute, until I read about them on Wikipedia. Seems they are a bit prone to giving people stuff like rabies.

London bound

We had moved out of our house on the 25th (our original planned departure date) and so were staying with J & K, for a week. On Saturday morning, we sold our car, and rented another car. The nice people at Enterprise came and picked us up from J & K's house. ("What's your address?" I told them our address. "So why did we pick you up from somewhere else?" Errrr...).

On Sunday, we picked up the cat, and drove to my sister's house, in London. There was an enormous traffic jam on the M1, caused by an accident involving an SUV, which had been towing a caravan. The car was lying upside down in the fast lane, and the caravan was sort of sideways on the crash barrier. I thought bad thoughts about people who (a) drove SUVs, and (b) pulled caravans. But I put them out of my mind.

When we finally arrived in London, we were greeted by (wait for it) my sister, J, partner G, children, C, B, E, N, my mother, my other sister, S, partner, G (again - I've never noticed that before), and baby L. Uncle P came shortly afterwards. An enormous saucepan of spaghetti was cooked, and eaten. Then another. Then the remaining people ate toast.

A and D slept that night in two armchairs pushed together to make a bed - one at each end. They thought that was quite exciting.

In the morning, we headed to the airport.

The Embassy Trip (part 2)

We went back to waiting. This time the wait was uncertain - although the numbers were still being on the big TV screens, the number that the screen said was the next to be called wasn't the next to be called. The numbers were still correlated - but it wasn't perfect. I thought about recording the numbers and doing a limits of agreement calculation. But even I'm not that obsessed.

The screens showed which numbers were being interviewed at which windows. S timed them "number 232 has been at window 17 for 15 minutes", she would say. After a wholesome lunch of 2 bags of salt and vinegar crisps we sat and waited. Then we walked around, to stretch our legs. Then we stood and waited, because we didn't have seats any more.

S was trying to see if there were consistent differences between the different windows. That way we would know to hope not to get window 14 (say) because they took longer (or maybe dubious types got called to Window 14). I sat and read through the blurb which Corporation of Future Employment had sent to the US Immigration Service, including the Annual Report. I've never read even half of an Annual Report in my life, but this one wasn't bad, in places. One part of it was about an analysis of invading Iraq and Afghanistan. It said "It was a really fucking stupid idea, and if anyone had thought about it for more than 5 minutes, they would have realised this". Well, OK, it didn't say exactly that, but that was the gist of it. Right wing think tank? Pah!

The numbers got closer to our number (remember we were 296, for maximum drama) - it something like 289, 290, 293, 187, 195, ... 299 [!]. But our number did come up, and we made the long walk to our window (number 17). It turned out, as we walked past the lower numbers, that some windows really were windows, and some were little rooms.

Ours was a window. We went to the window, and had to be re-fingerprinted (this time to make sure that we were the same people that went to the other window). Our forms were checked, and our grilling began.

"How old is D?" (An easy starter). "He's 4, I replied with confidence."

I was expecting trouble at this stage. D's passport has a photo taken when he was 6 months old. His visa photo is obviously of a 4 year old. This could have been any random baby.

"How old is A?" (Aha, trying to lull me into a false sense of security.) "He's 4 too." A and D, for those that don't know are monozygotic (identical - although they aren't actually identical, but they are very, very similar) twins. When I got their passports the first time, I handed over the photos at the Post Office - "That's A and that's D" I told them, purposefully. "No, wait, that's D and that's A", which I thought was very funny, but they didn't. So I didn't try that this time.

"What's your job going to be?" she asked next. I explained, including a bit about teaching, that caused some confusion "Who are you going to be teaching at Corporation of Future Employment?" I explained that, despite not being a university, CFE thinks it's a university, and so has students.

"And are you a nice statistics professor?" Aha, the killer question. "Because I didn't like statistics when I was at college".

"Ooh, yes, I'm very nice."

"Well, my professor was nice, I just didn't like statistics."

That didn't seem like a question, so I stayed quiet.

She clicked a few things on the screen, scribbled on some forms, and said "We'll send your visas in the post."

We walked out, triumphant, but not yet complete. We had to deal with the couriers who actually do the business of sending your visa out. This cost £14.50. I had a slight concern that they would require cash, and another that it would cost that per visa - there being 4 of us, that mean we had to be sure of having enough cash. But they didn't, and it wasn't. They were very efficient - they sent a text message, as promised, the day before the visas were delivered, so that we were warned and could make appropriate arrangements, and they came on Thursday. (We went to the embassy on the Friday, and Monday was a bank holiday, so that was a reasonably impressive turnaround.)

And here, in all its glory, it is:

US Embassy Trip (part 1)

We did our trip to the US Embassy on Friday, to get our visa. We had a 10am appointment, so we arrived nice and promptly at 9:15, to see two large queues. A friendly policeman with a big gun told us that one queue was the 9:00 quese and one was the 9:30 queue, so we should come back at 9:45. We went for coffee, and came back, to find two queues that seemed to have no order or reason to them. We joined a queue.

I thought that there might be a sort of "spirit of the blitz" people sharing jokes and biscuits and all mucking in together. But there wasn't. I had a brief conversation with a red haired chap. He said "Our appointment's at 10:15" I said "Our appointment's at 10:00". H said "I'm getting an E visa. Are you?" I said "No, I'm getting an H visa". (An H1b, if you want the details. I looked up an E visa, it turns out to be a treaty trader and investor visa. I don't know what that means. An H is a temporary work visa, which sounds much less glamorous, but at least you can guess what it means without looking it up.)

We stood in our queue, which moved very slowly. The red haired chap suddenly moved to the other queue, which moved more quickly, and he got in before us. Someone moved up the queue checking our appointment times, if you had the audacity to be near the front of the queue with an 11:00 appointment at 11:00 you were moved to the back. We were given clear plastic bags to place our belongings into.

At about 11:00 we got into the embassy. When we got in, we were given a ticket, so that we could wait our turn. The queuing system inside the embassy was quite specific - there were large TV screens which showed the people who were being served at which windows, and what numbers were about to be called. At the back of the room was a little snack shop, selling sandwiches which I'd guess were overpriced, had they not run out at 11:45, before I could check their prices, and crisps which were overpriced. 75p for a bag of salt and vinegar (and not one of those grab bags that they sell you nearly everywhere now. Hey! I know! Let's reduce the amount of fat in our crisps by 25% and make them healthier. And then let's put them into bags that are twice as big, so everyone eats 50% more fat than if we'd stuck with the unhealthy crisps.)

At 12:00 our number (296) came up, and we went to the first window. We handed over our forms, and were fingerprinted. S had a lot of trouble with the fingerprinting, because of hand lotion or something similar, and had to use a special alcohol wipe to get her fingers clean. It turned out that I didn't have one form, I'd filled it in and sent it off to the US immigration people, when I should have kept it. I was asked to fill it out again, which I did. It was the one that asked which countries you had visited in the last 10 years, and when. Given that I was feeling a little nervous (hey! it's only the rest of your life at stake) and that I was in a hurry, it ended up being a bit random, but we got away with it.

That's the end of part 1. Part 2 will follow after this announcement. (Maybe look at the ads on the side, and pretend it's a commercial break. For a few days.)

United (we are not)

It turns out that the cat can go on the plane with our luggage for about £70 - bargainacious, compared with the previous quotes.

Ah, the joy of United Airlines call centres. I was told that the cat had been booked on the flight, and given the dimensions of the container that it had to be in. It seems that the cat was to carry on baggage – which sounds like an awful lot of effort. And it also had to be in a container that would fit under a seat – which sounds like something of a squish.

So I rang United Airlines, and got through to their (Indian sounding) call centre. The first person I spoke to was very friendly, but didn’t seem to have the faintest idea what they were talking about. I asked to check the dimensions, and they said “Small is …., medium is …, large is …”. None of these sizes sounded like they fitted under a seat, so I thought I’d try again.

The second person I spoke to at United Airlines also seemed very friendly and nice. And what they said didn’t relate to what the first person said. I was given a new set of dimensions – 9 inches high, which sounds like it will fit under a seat, but doesn’t sound much fun for a cat for 12 hours or so. They also said that I had to know the size and weight of the container (with the cat in it) before I could confirm the cat on the flight. However, the first person I spoke to had already confirmed the cat on the flight – which I told them. The fact that what they had just told me was blatant nonsense, and that, therefore, I didn’t trust anything else they said.

The airline might be united, but their staff are not. (Hahaha.)

Boxes and Bubble Wrap

We've been packing and wrapping and shoving stuff in the loft. Pickfords does the best (and cheapest) boxes that I've found, but I think that Staples does better bubble wrap.

Inline skates

I bought some roller blades inline skates at the weekend. JJB are having a closing down sale, and they had some for £12.50, which fitted me. I haven't dared try to do anything with them, partly 'cos I've been a bit weary after the weekend of much jolliness, but mostly because I'm not sure where I could try where the entertainment value to the local teenaged population would be minimised.

I looked them up on wikipedia where, of course, I found out more than one could ever want to know. Including the fact that the word Rollerblade is a trademark name for one make, and therefore it shouldn't be used as a description - like Hoover or Aspirin or(or Heroin) or like Google is getting upset about ("So, I googled for it on Yahoo").

I read a bit of the inline skating FAQ - the gist of this is "learn to slow down, and stop". Once you can stop, you can try anything. Last time I tried, I had trouble starting though.

P.S. See Jo, I've not told you about any of this!

Dull

Gosh, this blog is dull, isn't it?

More on CDs

Up to R, and have recorded 2818 tracks.

First project!

I had some contact with someone (L) from Corporation of Future Employment asking if I wanted to get involved with a project. The deadline is October 1st, so we needed to talk about it beforehand. I said "Yes", 'cos I'm a bit prone to saying yes without thinking too much.

L sent me a proposal for a previous project, which turns out to be a whole lot heftier than anything I'm used to. Apparently section D is going to be my responsibility. It's 12,000 words long - which looks more like an MSc thesis than a proposal (or even a section of a proposal) to me.

One of the things one has to do at CfE is to justify one's existence by saying how long you have worked on different projects. I will, at some point, need to estimate how long it will take me to do this section D.

I spoke with K about this on Saturday, and she said it was normal that proposals are much more long and detailed - US reviewers have to be told that UK proposals aren't crap, they are just normal.

Recording CDs

I've decided it's more sensible to record all my PCs onto a hard disk, and then stick them in a box up the loft. So I've spent every spare second (well, it feels like it) removing and replacing CDs from the PC. (Which is what I'm doing now. Hence I'm sat at the computer doing nothing, hence I'm typing this blog for the first time in a while.)

I've been doing this since Wednesday (it's Sunday now) and I'm up to G. Which is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and so is almost 1/3 of the way through. However, it's better than that. If you look where G comes in the phone book, it's more than 1/3 of the way through.

Except it's worse than that, because I have a large number of Neil Young CDs, and have bought a lot of Frank Zappa CDs in my time. (And Frank Zappa made a lot of records. And a lot were doubles, and triples. I'm regretting "Guitar" (double CD) and "Shut up 'n play yer guitar" (triple CD) now.

Just changed the CD, and found I was only up to F (Foo Fighters). I've got 1368 tracks recorded, so far.

Embassy and visas

So we got a moving and packing date. All we need is a visa.

To get a visa, you need to send off a bunch of forms, to Corporation of Future Employment, who give them to their lawyer, who gives them to the INS. They sit on them for X weeks (where X is an unknown value) and then give them back to your lawyer, with an additional magic form, who sends them to you.

When you have the forms you can go to the US embassy in London, have an interview (what are they going to ask? I've no idea) and then they post you a visa. Which all sounds, in principle, relatively straightforward. However, there's a 6 week wait for an appointment at the embassy. So you make an appointment, making some assumptions about the value of X.

If you wait until the date of the appointment, and then find you don't have your magic form back from the INS, you have to wait 6 weeks for a new appointment. So you estimate, and then (in my experience) you get it wrong.

Getting it wrong means you need to make a new appointment (which involves a £1.30 / minute phone call - "Thank you for calling the US embassy appointment line. For training purposes, your call may be recorded. If you would like to ..." AAAGGGGHHHH!!!

However, then the earliest appointment you can get is (again, in my experience) after all your stuff has been packed, and people are moving into your house. Which is slightly inconvenient. So we are moving out of the house on the 25th August, but not leaving until at least the 4th of September.

Comment on Slashdot

I just saw the following on Slashdot, which made me feel (slightly) better about the ridiculous amount of rent we are going to pay:

And, finally, there's a reason rent and property are so expensive in some areas. Go to California and look out of the window. Rumor has it that other parts of the world have a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Land is expensive in California because you never shovel snow, you rarely deal with crazy humidity, you rarely have the insane heat of Arizona, you rarely get mosquitoes the size of Volkswagens and you can sit on the beach on New Year's Day. In short, supply and demand means that when there's a crazy price, there's generally a great reason for it.