Days 5 & 6: Catching My Breath

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: June 4 -5, 2009 (USPDT)

It had pretty much been a total whirlwind since arriving in LA, so I was somewhat grateful for the down time on Thursday and Friday.

Having replied to Jaime prior to the party time telling her I was already in the States and could be contacted at my hostel, I allowed myself an unalarmed sleep trusting that I would be awoken if an incoming call came my way. Getting to bed at 4am but not to sleep until a while after due to Liz and her vodka battling it out in the bathroom, I was completely dead to the world when the bash on the door came at 10am.

Worse For Wear Liz answered the door from her top bunk but I paid little attention to what was going on as nobody seemed to be asking after me. After the conversation, Liz paid another visit to her close Party Night Friend, the Toilet, and successfully aroused me completely from sleep by tripping over eight different objects in the room on her way back to her bunk.

Looking straight ahead at her I noticed a sheet of paper taped and hanging from the end of my bed. I asked Liz what it was and how it got there and was mortified to discover it was a message from Camp Fuller. Apparently Liz had informed the enquirer that I was asleep. How kind!

I bolted downstairs, yes, in my pajamas, with my "Free 5 Minutes" phone card to return Jaime's call and made the happy discovery that the phone number was incorrect. I rushed back upstairs, grabbed my laptop, sat outside the main office, emailed Jaime explaining and waited for another incoming call.

Five minutes later Jaime replied to my email telling me the office had told her incoming calls were not accepted at the hostel, only messages. Great. It says the contrary in their welcome information pack.

After a whole heap of bollocks, I eventually got on the phone to Jaime O'Connor, Operations Director of Camp Fuller in Rhode Island. Having checked out the website after Jaime's email the night before, I knew it was a YMCA camp located on the coast of Rhode Island, in the mouth of an inlet called "Point Judith Pond".

Despite being headhunted by two other camps previously, this was the first camp I felt truly excited and completely uninhibited about. I wanted this job.

To my utter surprise, it wasn't a standard Counselor job, it was a Director role for their Leadership Development (LD) program. Jaime explained that this program is made up of 15-16 year olds (10th and 11th graders) who are attending their final year of camp with a view to become Counselors one day themselves. Fuller have two LD Directors, one male and one female, who oversee two groups of approximately 30 LDs (half girls, half boys) over two 4 week sessions.

The phone interview conducted was somewhat of a gruelling one, it really made me sweat! Being that I'd never really expected anything more than a standard Camp Counselor role and that I'd been on Guaranteed Placement with Camp America for several months, I really hadn't prepared for the in-depth, probing questions that Jaime shot at me for 45 minutes.

I was satisfied with the result though, I felt it went well.

Jaime asked me to call her back in 20 minutes once she'd had a chance to discuss with her boss and a rather verbose and selifhs British girl using the phone really tested my patience by chatting to her boyfriend back home for 40 minutes, detailing everything from the type of gates at Tom Cruise's house to how they serve burgers at fast food joints.

Jaime offered me the position.... followed by a mountain of paperwork.

By the time I'd finished with the whole phoning debacle, walked down the Boulevard to get a late lunch, showered, caught up on some emails and taken a Disco Nap, it was dinner time. Tony had arrived back for the day from the E3 Expo, decided he wanted to eat and see "Up" and off we went.

We had missed "Up" at El Capitan so we transferred to Santa Monica Boulevard's "Cinerama", realised we couldn't see any of the ones we wanted to see, settled on "Angels & Demons", ate flippin' (no pun intended) awesome pizza at a groovy spot called "Boho", went back to the cinema, hated the movie, then headed back to the hostel.

After a monster sleep in the following morning, I corresponded with Jaime and Camp America about getting across to the East Coast, then set about conquering the Mountain Of YMCA Paperwork.

It took me ALL FREAKIN' DAY.

It was West Hollywood Banana Bungalow's turn to host party night so Liz, her Canada buddies and I hit the cheap yummo Thai restaurant next door then relocated to the sister hostel in the hopes that their party night would be as good as ours had been. I wouldn't say it was, but it was still great.

The DJ appeared to be super popular (complete with groupies), some kind of minor celeb in his field.

I got to know Crazy Pom Chris that I'd met at my hostel a little better, mainly discovering that he's even crazier than I'd thought. Chris stayed at Banana Bungalow as a traveler, helped out with some handy work one day and got offered a job. He now lives and works there full time while balancing his duties as a committed member of the Barmy Army.

I met yet another Melbourner, Kieran, who is my soulmate in everything geeky, even so far as commending Hanson as a true talent. A friend for life, I think. Kieran and I appear to be at similar "what the heck do I WANT?!" crossroads in our lives and bonded over our strong feelings about crap software, i.e. SAP (that was for you Emma!). Special note: Kieran met Billy Ray Cyrus the night before!

After establishing that we both had a geeky Hollywood itch that needed to be scratched, Kieran and I made some exciting plans for the next day....

... which will get a little entry all of it's own!