Day 11: Last Day LA

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: June 10, 2009 (USPDT)

So my final day in Los Angeles isn't exactly an editorial to get too excited about.

Mostly it was a day of getting organised and tying up loose ends. This basically meant: getting some much-needed washing done, making sure I have everything packed, making a list of things I might need, going out and about to get a few things that couldn't wait, hitting a few favourite spots, doule-checking my travel plans to Camp Fuller, triple-checking my flight details, packing my bags in a suitably airport-friendly way... and so on and so forth...

Washing was an adventure in and of itself. I had not yet learned that guests aren't allowed to use the washing machines prior to 3pm as the cleaning staff use them. Bugger. Had to hang about and stalk from afar later in the afternoon as time was creeping up on me and a nervous first-time traveller like me obviously wants to be packed several hours too early.

When I did get around to it later in the day, I felt like I was in a movie using coin slots and the suchlike in a communal area. Heeeheeee.

As far as real events for the day go...

I went back and settled on the white hi-top Nike shoes I mentioned previously and was thrilled to get such a great buy at such a cheap price, US$59 ladies and gentleman!

I picked up bits and pieces around the place and found at least thirty t-shirts I wanted to buy, vowing they'd get another look-in on my return to LA, prior to departing for Oz later in the year.

I swung by the Grauman's-Highlands district again for lunch and general shenanigans. Truly a favourite spot on the planet for me.


One last Hollywood Tourist shot (probably not THE last, let's face it)

I ran into a close friend of Nikki's while in the area:



While waiting for my bus I decided to grab an iced mocha from the McDonald's that always tempts me behind that bus stop. I loved that even the Macca's is Hollywoodified with movie star portraits, signs, lights and other random paraphernalia:





With all that and washing done, multiple checks of my luggage completed and necessary paperwork printed and ready, I booked an airport shuttle for 8am the next morning. All set.

Tony and his buddy Tarwin arrived back from San Francisco bringing with them Tarwin's friend Miki, who's a whole can of awesome. It was settled that we'd skip the hostel party and spend the evening in Santa Monica. Woot! I hadn't yet managed a proper trip to this much-desired spot yet.

A ridiculously long car ride and several silly magnetic word games with Tony later and we were sitting on Santa Monica Beach at twilight. Toooooo nice.

Just to add some colour there was a helicopter doing low circled laps of the water a ways out, which we were left to assume was some kind of search. A rather morbid form of entertainment, for our part, if it was indeed something emergent going on... *tugs at collar*

After a visit to the parking meter, Tarwin had picked up another friend and we were all seated in a flash at a super groovy restaurant in the middle of the main street. The food was great and the ambience even better. I did Karen proud by ordering one of their fancy beers: Leffe, check! I even tried a sip of Miki's weird chocolate beer. Thanks, but no thanks.

We toured down to the stunning Santa Monica Pier from there, a little late to see any of the really good stuff it offers, but it was beautiful nonetheless. I successfully made Tony like me a little less by choosing to drive while the others walked. Parking was a nightmare, Tony pretended he didn't mind.

Meandering about on Santa Monica Pier was a fairly perfect way to spend my final night in LA.

Highlights were the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company shop ("Forrest Gump" Fan For Life!), the enormous flapping fish a guy caught and let flap around on the deck a while and Miki harassing another fisherman until he offered to let her take a turn casting, only to get it caught and tangled and everything else she could possibly do wrong with a fishing rod. Hysterical.




Flappy fish! (You probably had to be there to feel any enthusiasm)

Another ridiculously long drive and some GPS navigation fun and we saw the rest of the night out at the hostel, then it was up at sparrowfart for me and off to the airport.

And y'all know what the next installment will be. Epic, you know it. Epic.

Read more...

Day 8: Pounding [Every Inch Of Hollywood] Pavement

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: June 7, 2009 (USPDT)

So I really hope Chris is a committed follower of my blog, merely because I have further guilt to heap on him in regards to this day. I don't think my complaining and stony silences at the time and my successive rants following were enough to punish him for his crimes.

LOL. No, in all seriousness it's rather the contrary. While I'll colour this post with as much criticism as I possibly can for his benefit, I couldn't be more grateful for the semi-native "show you personal" tour guiding Chris so willingly provided me.

Chris is the embodiment of your stereotypical Crazy Pom. Originally a tourist at Banana Bungalow himself, he made himself useful doing some handyman work around the place at one point and wound up landing himself a permanent live-in Jack Of All Trades job. Not exactly a real job, is it? A big part of his role is being at the many parties that take place between the West Hollwyood and Hollywood Boulevard branches. Tough, huh?

You'll never meet a person more full of crap than Chris, but he knows that and is a well-intentioned and generous bloke underneath all his bollocks, so after wanting to strangle him for the better part of a conversation you generally wind up feeling guilty for said desires. i.e. like driving me nuts all night Saturday talking in circles and sulking about nothing then offering to shout me lunch and tour guide me all day Sunday.

I didn't exactly let him repay his debt in the way he might have wished, setting out for the lunch he wanted to shout me, I chose Jack In The Box: Hungry Jack's/Burger King style joint. But I enjoyed it, even if it didn't meet the standards Chris had imagined. It was also a great opportunity to catch up on all the news I'd been completely ignorant of for a week as our table looked out a window that was diagonally opposite the CNN building. While I chowed down on my double burger and curly fries the digital newsreel screens updated me on plane crashes and murders and... yeeeaaah...

I mostly forgot to take photos as we plodded about seeing all of Chris' favourite spots, but it was fantastic nonetheless. Having lived and worked in and daily traversed the roads of Hollywood, Chris is a wealth of information and insight. Having quickly deduced me as a well-rounded geek, we went to dozens of places that satisfied my silly whims: a military store complete with authentic disused war gear and guns, infamous and unknown souvenir stores, several different shoe shops packed to the rafters with unique Chucks... the list goes on.







Visiting his "local" to get all the dirt on the Crazy Pom from Chris' barmaid friend was a valuable stop. It only helped me to heap on the crap.

Right in the thick of the Boulevard's "Hollywood & Vine" Tourist Central area, the bar was nostaglic in its reminders of home. A somewhat Irish and/or English style pub, it was almost eery how "familiar" such a foreign place felt.

Chris wasn't wrong in promising he'd supply me with my favourite destination: The Highlands.

While I'm not typically female in being a super big fan of shopping for the sake of shopping, this place offers more than great stores. I could have browsed the place for hours (and pretty much did) never mind the treasure trove it's surrounded by. It will probably sound ridiculous to most people given the longwinded rants of enthusiasm you've been hearing about this neighbourhood: but The Highlands is literally in the bowels of Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater!

Like, it's right there, tucked in behind with half a dozen escalators leading the way in. Kieran and I had even wondered where the walkways lead to and marvelled at the odd location of a "Build-A-Bear" Workshop being wedged right between two mega-theaters. D'uh, there's an enormous shopping plaza right there folks!

In addition to the four levels of stores and eateries, the place is dotted with little stalls and miscellaneous fun things to look at. I must have tried on twenty-odd pairs of sunglasses and almost bought six diffierent belt buckles for Lachlan. Seriously, America is the Land Of The Cool Geeky Belt Buckle.

My favourite store in The Highlands, and possibly in the world, is Hot Topic. I wanted one of everything. Most [loser] Australian people [like me] probably know of Hot Topic more as an online entertainment merchandise shop.... which is what I'd mostly thought of it as. You can imagine my delight in coming across it and finding it packed to the rafters with every variety of my favourite things. Harry Potter, Twilight, Transformers, Super Mario, music, movies, jeans and more in the shape of shirts, wallets, bags, belts and all kinds of trinkets.

I much admired Chris' patience in standing around while I looked around at every item six times and eventually [poorly] attempted to make a decision as to whether I would or wouldn't buy something and what.

It came down to a Super Mario bag, three different band shirts, a wallet, a Potter shirt and a Transformers tank. The last three being the front contenders. Chris advised that the wallet, while completely impractical, was super cool and that I'd "look hottest" in the tank top. I got the wallet and resolved to procrastinate (oxymoron much?) on the attire.

So anyhow, The Highlands is flippin' awesome.


This photo would be way better if I didn't have my eyes shut, right












My sweet wallet



Chris then lead the way through to his Big Promise: Movie Geek Central.

Chris showed me the main doorway to the Kodak Theatre and the stairs that the stars walk up to enter for the Oscars. Throughout this little tour he also have me an explicit explanation of how they set everything up along the Boulevard for the red carpet and such. Seeing the pylons with the "Best Picture" winners of each year got right into the depths of what a complete obsesso-geek I truly am.

It was all I could do not to totally spaz out (a term I've learned from my campers recently).











Back out onto the street and it was everything from randomly seeing SuperGirl and BatGirl waiting for an elevator and having a photo with Bumblebee, Batman and The [seriously freaky-alike] Joker. Huzzah!




Ali's star is actually mounted up on a wall all on its own


Awkward, these two guys didn't call each other that morning





It was down to Santa Monica Boulevard then and more favourite locals spots guided by Chris. Most importantly, yet another promise: a super cheap shoe warehouse. ($40 Chucks friends!)



I narrowed it down to three pairs of sneakers I felt were both snazzy and camp appropriate, but put off the final decision till another day. Chris made it infinitely clear that I was banned from buying the ones with the pink Nike tick as I'd lose my "cool chick" cred.

Yet more random sightseeing and finally, after much complaining and stinkeyeing on my part, we arrived at the Ultimate Promise: The Rockwalk. Thus, the "musical equivalent of Grauman's".

Apart from being an uber cool music store, Rockwalk has a whole heap of pavement with imprints from stars too! This time it's just hands and it's musicians. A-woooot! I was thinking of you the whoooooole time Nikki!



















[Loads more Rockwalk shots in my Flickr!]

I insisted on a 7-Eleven slurpee/"slushee" break on the way back, plus additional complaining and stinkeyeing. I also conked out in my bunk and stood Chris up for our scheduled movie night in the Screening Room. Serves him right.... double serves him right for choosing a crap movie too. I can't remember what it was, but it was terrible and worth mentioning just for a final dig.

It's new digs, Star Dedications and the peak of my enthusiasm in my next post (two letters again: W and B!)

I've taken hits for being the anti-social laptop junkie here at Fuller though, so you can lower your expectations of me even further.

As the lone Australian here, y'all could help me out by sending me some post or something so my sole comfort and contact isn't in cyberspace, y'know. LOL.

Read more...

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!

Read more...

Day 4: Pedal To The Floor

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: June 3, 2009 (USPDT)

Pedal to the floor
Thinkin' of you more
Gotta get us to the show
California here we come
Right back where we started from

So as y'all know, on my LA City Tour I made an Aussie friend, [Perth] Michael. Being that Michael and I were similarly (and childishly) excited by a lot of the same things along the tour, we found ourselves on the same page a lot of the time. Mike mentioned he was heading to The OC the next day in his rental car and invited me along for the ride.

Y'damn right I accepted.

After a decent sleep in on this Wednesday morning, we met downstairs, made ourselves a very necessary cup of tea each, then set off to take in some cliche.


I was constantly surprised by the up-market cars parked at the hostel, here's a Chrysler, which just seemed plain next to the yellow Jeep Wranglers and other flashy rental cars always around!

Mike's an odd personality to explain. While being super cool and completely uninhibited, he's also ruthlessly dorky and randomly strange. One minute he's Mr Tough McMuscles, then he's asking if it's alright if we swing by the supermarket to buy fruit and healthy snacks for the day... which we did.

The supermarket was an experience in and of itself: I LOVE American supermarkets.

They have everything from a full-scale deli/lunch area to a cafe/coffeehouse outlet. You can get everything from groceries, to greens, to fruit, all the way through to a hot cup of coffe, mix-your-own from the salad bar, freshly diced fruit at the fruit bar... you name it, it's all there in quality and quantity. I was thrilled Mike changed his mind and exchanged his bunch of bananas for a bag of apples instead.

The one thing they don't have, at that supermarket and in California in general, is decent spray-on deoderant. It's ridiculous! After having my good Mens Nivea one confiscated at the airport, I've discovered that roll-on truly is completely and utterly crap. I have never had to reapply deoderant throughout the day before, now I live in a constant state of paranoia to the point of reapplying at regular intervals.

(Rhode Island later sheds more light on this subject)

Knowing I was enthusiastic to see some studios but on a tight schedule, Mike surprised me by swinging by Paramount Pictures for a few quick snaps and to grab some tour information because our hostel doesn't offer one. He pretended to play dumb and drove up to the boomgate asking loads of ambiguous questions of the guard then eventually requesting to be let through so we could chuck a u-turn back out. We used the u-turn to take some photos, berry berry sneaky sir.







Our discussion after this revealed that we were both saving a trip to Universal to a later date when we knew our budgets and hopefully had some company, both being solo travellers. So Mike then pulled the same stunt at Universal. LOL!





















Mike was like a kid on Christmas wanting to visit Dodger Stadium. And that we did. It was a blast. A rather crappy rainy day, but we still got some great pics. There was a ticket sale that afternoon so there were stacks of fans lined up, despite there being no game on. Christmas Mike was hilarious to be with, he had me take photos of him with pretty much anything and everything.

The store was awesome. I don't doubt I'll get back there later in my travels to grab some sweet merchandise.










Downtown LA from Dodger Stadium


Christmas Mike







And then finally we were off to Orange County!

The drive was fairly long, relatively. I'd compare it almost to driving from the Sydney CBD to Penrith, really. LA traffic is as bad as it's notorious reputation and, let's face it, so is Sydney's. I learned all about Mike's career history, how he went from Army to Uni to Accountancy to Oil Rigs! Mike works in blocks of 3 weeks, earns wicked money, then funds his travels. Very cool. He's been everywhere and seen everything. I've been ordered to travel to more places than I can count on my two hands.

As we were being navigated by an electronic device, we had to input "Orange" as our destination being that "Orange County" is like inputting "North Sydney" into a GPS: not specific enough. The City Of Orange is a rather little and quaint town, pardon the repetitive cliche, but: like something out of a movie! Or a TV show... you might say (haha)... I felt almost like I was in Stars Hollow, it was so picturesque and perfect.

We parked behind their Civic Center in the hopes of getting our bearings on the sites to see and also finding a loo for Mike who had, by his own admission, begun to "walk a bit strange".

The place was dripping with money. Whether you were looking at the library, the council buldings or the streetsigns, everything screamed wealth in spite of the parvitude of the place. Just when you begin to feel like you're in this cute, sweet little town a Mustang drives by.

We had lunch at a Cuban cafe restaurant. Seriously great. It cost us $8 (plus tip!) each to have a dinner plate size worth of food, even Mike was so full he couldn't finish. I should mention though, he did "help" me put away some of mine. I can't really describe what I ate because I'm not even entirely sure what it was. I'd probably compare it to a beef casserole, stroganoff or goulash perhaps, with all kinds of beans and other random stuff too. The beef was so tasty and tender it literally melted and fell apart in my mouth.

Yum.

Funny story: We were sitting outside and during our meal a sales rep came up and started selling his random goods amongst the customers! While Mike turned him away from our table without pause, we did have to spend the rest of our lunch listening to this guy spruke his wares in both English and Spanish and demonstrating his tennis-racket-like fly swatter. Zap, zap, zap.

Which brings me to another point: Spanish! Spanish, Spanish everywhere! Both people but more pointedly the language. On most of the buses I was on, there were more Spanish advertisements than English! You go to the ATM and it asks you if you want Spanish or English.

Spinout.

It wasn't until Mike and I departed our lunch spot and headed for the centre of the Town Square that we realised the Starbucks next to our Cuban spot wasn't the only one, there was a second Starbucks across the Square! Now, this is worse than the craziness of having two Three Mobile shops at opposite ends of Penrith Plaza.... sure, Starbucks is a staple in The States, but this Town Square would be lucky to be the size of a basketball court!

Nutso.












Our waiter clearing our table at "Felix's" Cuban restaurant


The Town Square from "Felix's"


"Nicole Was Here 2009"








Icecream Truck! LOL.










Every street is just super pretty


I love that everywhere you go there are US flags galore

Photos really shed no light of justice on Orange, it was constant nose-sigh stunning.

We were hugely grateful to some kindly Orange locals who happily spent 20 minutes chatting to Mike and I about their home County and giving us explicit directions on what to see and exactly where. My reaction of delight when they mentioned Laguna was enough to convince Mike that was our next stop. So Laguna Beach it was!

This photo on the freeway through The OC definitely does no justice to beauty of The Valley:



The overcast and occasionally drizzly day did nothing to take away from our sightseeing. Even the car ride was stellar.

Laguna was no different to Orange, even the most basic of things was of the utmost quality and beauty. Laguna Beach too is quite a small and quaint place. You expect to see dozens of tarty clones of the bimbos on the reality show of the same name, but if anything it was one of the most family oriented towns I've ever seen. I couldn't help but take photos of the kids running and playing, they made my heart sing, just too cute.


Carpark: Fancy schmancy houses


Carpark: More fancy schmancy houses












Yet more fancy schmany houses


"Nicole Was Here 2009"














The icecreamery where Mike shouted me the Bubblegum Disaster Of 2009


Just your average fire station


Just your average city hall

Note: One sucky thing about America, they actually think putting tiny gumballs in their Bubblegum icecream is a good idea. Not at all. This used to be one of my favourite icecream flavours, now I think it was be permanently marred by the memory of the unenjoyable chewing and unncessary effort applied to attempting to eat around them eventuating in the cone breaking and the icecream soiling the spotless sidewalks of Laguna Beach.

Not happy, Jan.

Apologies if this tourist commentary hasn't been the most exciting and eventful yet. Unfortunately for you guys, most of the enjoyment of the day was in just walking and seeing and experiencing. We basically just meandered and took photos, chillaxed with drinks and sat in nice spots. It was totally lovely and peaceful for me.

Sorry folks.

I have to include this one lone pic I snapped of a Lakers supporter's car. It doesn't exactly reflect the enormity of the Lakers support in their home city, but man, it was great. Everywhere you went there was paraphernalia of some description. I've always heard people say that Australia is prevalent in passion for their sports, but frankly, I don't think we could hold a candle to the US.



For those that care: The Dream Center!



But no, I didn't visit yet. I wasn't really in full tourist mode during this time in LA as I was solo and new to the travel thang. By the time I get back there I'll be much more in swing with rental cars and getting about in general, etc.

The traffic on the way back into Hollywood was FUBAR. Mike had been trying to convince me to take a nana nap all day during the driving as I'd had a lack of sleep the night before with my [bloody rude selfish insensitive] Danish roomies coming in and out and making noise. I had resisted out of pride until the 5pm LA-inbound traffic. I nodded right off after that Dream Center pic!

One of the roomies I'd hardly seen was present when I got back to my room with Mike and gave him my laptop to borrow. Liz, 27 from Campbelltown, had a few of her fellow Canadian skifields workbuddies hanging with her and the ice was quickly broken when Liz overheard me watching the "New Moon" trailer.

Twi-Hards Unite!

After typical Team Edward bonding it didn't take her long to blurt out "So who's that guy you've been hanging out with?! He's hot!". Introductions were then necessary when Mike returned with my lappie and we officially had a little posse all set for Banana Bungalow's Karaoke Party Night. Shame I fartarsed around too long in the end and the girls went off to get the party started without me! LOL.

Free hamburgers and beer in the Tiki Garden when I eventually joined my crew in the [ridiculously long] queue. The burgers were so good I regretted not being piggy enough to get a second one the first time around. There was no getting any of us back in that line as the party is combined with residents of the other Banana Bungalow hostel in West Hollywood. We added a British couple to our posse during dinner time and we made for a pretty dynamic group by the time the party shifted to the lounge for music and karaoke.


Outside the party lounge during Karaoke Night

As most of you know, I'm no major party girl. I always have fun when I do drag my butt out, but half the time I opt for something a bit more lax and cozy. So I hadn't necessarily even planned to go to or stay at the party originally, probably thinking it would suck, but it really didn't. I had an absolute blast.

Now, at this point I will finally divulge the information you're all waiting for. The question you're all asking is "Umm, Michael?", right? OK, well, I'm not one to share personal details about my love life, let alone on the internet, but this can be explained:

Michael is just Michael. Nothing more, just a mate I made.

HOWEVER.

I can say that I was completely and utterly certain that our relationship was asexual. We had a really good time but I didn't really feel there was much interest in anything more on either end. Honestly, that's dead true. Sure, once a party gets going things can change and we were having a really great time with our posse as the night carried on...

... but he made no moves to change anything, at least not prior to my attention being "diverted elsewhere" *grin*

And that's probably as far as the details will go. Not only because I have no interest in commentating any information of this description online, ever, but also because I don't know who might be reading! *wink*

I'll say I met a few other guys and eventually spent the better part of the night talking to Melbourne video game designer extraordinaire Tony.


Tony and I: After several failed attempts (see Flickr for a few), a barely decent photo, with me looking awful at god knows what hour of the morning (I officially procalim my flash faulty!)

It was at this point that I began to majorly question my previously good judgment in that Mike started to behave like an alien. Other than giving me the stinkeye for a good long time, he eventually cozied up to at least three girls throughout the night and I'm fairly sure he left with one.

Shock and horror.

I can't explain my surprise in this medium, all I can say is that he had seemed like completely the opposite type of guy for the 48 hours I'd known him prior. The perfect gentleman must be bi-polar, I dunno.... and I don't really care either.

But hey, if you're interested then show it. Don't play it cool or play games and then turn into a wanker when things don't fly the way you want. So much for thinking you can have a simple and fun friendship with a member of the opposite sex.

Men!

LOL. Kidding. I'm not that stereotypical.

He had to leave bright and early the next morning, so after this cranky-wank behaviour I didn't get to speak to him again, say thanks or say goodbye. Weird. You spend 2 solid days with a person and have absolutely no way of ever contacting them again. Not my usual style, I feel like a bit of a bitch.

I hope that answers your (multitude!!!) of questions. If not, tough, I won't say anymore.

One of the reasons I fartarsed around too long before the Tiki Garden is because I had an email from Jaime O'Connor at Camp Fuller in Rhode Island expressing interest in offering me a position and requesting a phone interview the following day.

As a result of this and the fact that I didn't get to bed until 4am, I had no major plans the following day then loads to organise the day after that...

... so my next post will have an unusual quality: brevity!

Read more...