Alright! Two days on the ground, and we're sufficiently awake to update the blog:
Table of Contents
1. Airline Travel
2. Cars
3. Food
4. Snow
5. Sign Wavers
6. Walmart
1. Airline Travel
Firstly, if you can, avoid it at all costs. Don't get us wrong, the Air New Zealand flight to Sydney was exciting and new. There were hundreds of music albums and 40-odd movies and television programmes to choose from on the personal touch screens in our seats. Of course, Air NZ had updated their software the previous night, so none of these entertainment options worked.
The novelty of long-haul travel had without question begun to wear off by the end of our five-hour stopover at Sydney International. This loss of excitement was expedited by the "random" bag checks to which we were subjected (we are pleased to report that we tested negative for traces of explosives). The second flight was discomfort like we've never had the privilege to experience.
Nancy: When I was younger, after a long flight and another rousing chorus of complaint about the lack of legroom from my adult counterparts, I would ask myself, puzzled, "What are they whingeing about? I slept fine." Ah, youth. As we discovered, the grown-ups were complaining about stiff necks, and knees contorted in odd directions, being fatigued to the brink of breakdown, but being unable to sleep, because your neighbours decided to go on a midnight wander to your seat and commence a loud conversation about their own inability to sleep. That's what.
That said, we arrived intact, albeit exhausted, slept a meagre forteen hours, and were ready for the new day. And nary a negative word from border patrol on the way in, besides "keep outta trouble, kid".
2. Cars
In Palmdale, people don't drive cars. They ride on the back of Optimus Prime! We're talking pickups you'd need a ladder to get into. SUVs that can barely squeeze into two parking lots. Sedans that could eat Nancy's Corolla and fit Grandma's Daihatsu into their trunk. TITANS of the road!
We're surprised we didn't witness a clash of these titans while driving on the freeway out of LA, because it was bedlam.
Steff: Near the cities, the merging style is less "merge like a zip", and more of a bumper car race. We saw a man drive for fifteen minutes at 60mph (that's 100kmph for you metricheads) on a flat tyre. Probably because nobody would let him pull over.
There is an elitism to driving here-- as we were informed by one of our American correspondents, a car is a marker of identity. That's not to say that this doesn't happen in New Zealand, but rather, while a Kiwi might take pride in keeping a good car on the road, a Californian might focus more on the newness of his or her car. You have your eco-friendly Prius driver (of which there is an abundance), and your conservative F-150 farmers. And these cars are all toddlers at most; we've not seen a car older than a 2008, and a large portion of cars don't yet have plates.
Nancy: My Corolla is a year younger than I am, and although she stalls sporadically, she's been a trusty little jalopy. I wonder what my car says about me?
3. Food
What is high-fructose corn syrup? It appears to be a staple--it is in everything. Cereal, bread, syrups, soda, chips (that's crisps, for you British descendants), junk food, health food, you name it!
American food is synonymous with abundance. There is so much of anything you could ever imagine consuming (see more about consumption in section 6: Walmart). We saw two supermarket aisles of cereal. It's a good thing, though. You want Thai food? It's available. You want Italian? Every third block. Eritrean? There's a house of Eritrean cuisine around the corner. And with all of this anything-we-want, everywhere-we-go, what do we want? Diner food, of course!
4. Snow
Americans have invented this delightful cold substance called "snow". We don't have it in Auckland yet. Here's a photo of us with this miraculous "snow".
We are freezing our butts off in this photo.
5. Sign Wavers
California's answer to the unemployment crisis is to make a legitimate job out of doing little to nothing all day. They're paying citizens to be human billboards! People (usually young people) hold signs for a living; some have perfected it to an art form, flipping the signs and twirling the signs and occasionally dropping the signs. Mum, Dad, I've figured out what I want to do with my life.
6. Walmart
How do we even open a subject of such import? This was a regular Walmart that we visited, and it was thrice the size of the Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain, where everyone gets a bargain, where everyone gets a bargain). We were so overwhelmed by the sheer size and quantity of product in this haven of evil that it took us two hours to buy seven toiletry items.
Special thanks to our ever-so-patient hosts. We are reduced here to anecdotal evidence of the place:
A young mother and her primary-school-aged daughter are scrutinising the travel-size section (which is within the toiletries section) of Walmart. The child announces that she wants deodorant. Mom tries to reason with her, stating quite logically that the girl has no need for deodorant, as she is only 6. Child persists, mother relents, giving me a "Kids--what're you gonna do?" smile.
What are you going to do? You're going to wait until her sweat glands develop, and not spend what little money you have on useless crap in the meantime, that's what!
Anecdote 2: We saw a towel. Ordinarily, this would be a boring anecdote. But this was an extraordinary towel! As its label boasted, this was an "Energy-Saving Performance Bath Towel". Our spirits sank when we saw this. previously, we had been relatively satisfied with our lives, but realistically, what is life without an Energy-Saving Performance Bath Towel?
And this is where we leave you, to shower (with our pathetic, normal towels), then to collect more experiences to report to you, our faithful readers.
-Nancy and Steff
We found Bin Laden. In a Goodwill store.
The Quest Quotient by Nancy Howie and Steff Werman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at thequestquotient2011.blogspot.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment