Day 7: Scratching An Itch At Sid's

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: June 6, 2009 (USPDT)

Before I could get down to the business of fulfilling an important geeky desire, there was yet more Campbound work to do. Trying to book flights and generally organise my arrival on the East Coast was made rather difficult with both Camp America and Camp Fuller enjoying their weekend.

A sleep in and the above travel frustrations behind me, Kieran and I locked in our Scratch: Seeing a film at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

For those that live under a rock and/or those that are plain boring, Grauman's is the home of Hollywood's biggest premieres and the scene of the renowned cement "Hands & Feet" forecourt. Grauman's is directly alongside "The Highlands" plaza and the Kodak Theater, home of The Oscars, and opposite Hooters, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Disney Soda Fountain and the El Capitan cinemas.

We didn't just see any film either, it was finally time: Terminator Salvation.

We pointed and laughed at a heap of costumed characters and Kieran got his fill of Hands & Feet photos before we excitedly proceeded like 2nd Graders on Christmas to the Box Office to buy our tickets. And yes, we didn't mind looking silly and exposing our ignorance by asking exactly what entrance we were supposed to use.

It's not altogether a daft question! You have this almighty huge fancy entrance that is walked by hundreds of stars on an annual basis, it's not completely ridiculous to wonder if nobodies enter the cinema that way on a regular day. Sheesh.

The Christmas behaviour naturally didn't stop at the Box Office. We giggled and starry-eyed our way into the cinema itself and snapped more photos than was really necessary. We couldn't have the "Oh my gosh stars have sat in these seats!" conversation only once, of course, we flogged that dead horse.















I'm thoroughly stoked that Kieran isn't only your typical run-of-the-mill geek, but an all out obsesso-geek of the highest order, because watching the "Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince" trailer with any less of a geek would have just been downright disappointing. I had no shame in responding to the opening of the trailer like a small explosion because Kieran did too. We then did our best "Dude, Where's My Car?" impersonation by turning to each other giggly and wide-eyed afterwards and mirror-imaging: "Sweeeeeet!"

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the Potter phenomenon was pretty much the highlight of the actual theatrical experience. The fourth Terminator instalment was a major let down.

While Salvation was impressively made and mindblowingly epic in proportions, the story was completely without. The plot was pretty much absent and the acting underwhelming. I hate to say this of any of my Favourites, but it's basically a fact. I'm not entirely bagging it out, it was quality enough and not a total raspberry. I didn't hate it. It just disappointed my deep fandom and high expectations.

On the up side of a disappointing instalment in a favourite series that revealed absolutely nothing and added no value to a brilliant story: the casting of Kyle Reese was genius, Christian Bale was perfectly suited (despite being a far cry from Nick Stahl's John Connor), Sam Worthington made me a proud Aussie and was surprisingly attractive and the special effects were gobsmacking.

Lucky Kieran and I are such a pair of obsesso-geeks and held high on Harry, it was the only thing that got us through the 4 false alarm endings.

With designs on showers and disco naps, we parted ways temporarily and returned to our respective sister hostels before Band Night fired up at my Banana Bungalow later.












Self Portrait of a Doofus: Waiting for the bus coz I'm too lazy to walk the 15 minute walk when it costs $1.25 to bus it

I watched Kieran get flogged at a fierce game of Beer Pong before realising I was famished and heading over to a Chris-recommended American version of a Kebab Shop where I had the most awesome wrap-kebab-thing I've ever eaten. Not bad for a little hole in the wall.

It should be mentioned that this was the first time I was hungry enough to lay down my pride and ask the difference between "sandwiches" and "burgers" and the suchlike. This aspect of America is all messed up. A sandwich is never deli-like contents contained by two pieces of average loaf-bread. It's really more of a wrap-kebab-thingy.

Got it? Don't worry, I'm still workin' on it too. I won't even get started on "kebabs".

The band were A.M. Obscene (check the play on words). I had been quite chuffed with my choice of describing them as "Lenny Kravitz meets Motley Crue" when I decided to create the preceding link and found that this comparison had already been stolen by some obnoxious review they've posted on their MySpace blog. Criminal! I've missed my calling.

The lead singer was super cool and stuck around to chat and chill afterwards. Kieran got a CD, thanks goodness, coz I woulda been stumped for the name of the band at this point had I not been able to hit him up on Facebook.

The following day, Sunday, has a little more excitement to share. Again, maybe it'll just be Nikki and I that get excited about my geek-out musical equivalent of Grauman's....

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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!

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Yankeeland Part 1: Dear Departed

THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE: May 31, 2009 (AEST)

Due to my fighting spirit, I didn’t go to bed the night before my departure day until well after midnight. I persisted [we now know unnecessarily] with the faulty blog script until I spiralled into a puddle of self-doubt and self-pity and eventually very unhappily gave up on having a blog pre-flight.

All went smoothly on the morning of Sunday May 31st 2009. My inexperienced traveller nerves insisted on Jenny and Luke driving me to the airport [we now know unnecessarily] rather early. Leaving just before 9am we arrived just prior to 10am, an hour early for check-in!

Surprisingly enough my flight was queued for check-in, so we marched straight to the line, checked in quickly and efficiently and bid sayonara to my stupidly heavy luggage. For those that are interested: 1x chockfull 65L travel pack with 1x bursting at the seams detachable daypack plus 1x carry-on mini wheeled suitcase with the addition of my good old Billy Elliot canvas satchel.

Jenny was so concerned about the exploding checked luggage being over the 23kgs per piece that we decided I’d separate the detachable daypack and check it in as my second allowed piece. Well ner-ner Jen, both pieces were under 20kgs!

Such was my relief at ditching the crazy-heavy luggage and not having to remove anything to send back home with sister, that I was oblivious to the fact that I forgot to attach my padlocks. I realised this when attempting to find a comfortable sleeping position on the plane, only to crankily wonder what the uncomfortably hard bulge in my right cargo-pocket was.

Oops.

Nothing missing!

Luke, Jenny and I sat ourselves down at Starbucks for some Hocho (I’ve been waiting several long Gilmore Girls Fan Years to use that word). Funnily enough, I got a call about my car at that time!



Mama Deb joined us at 11am and we somehow wound up discussing some of my sister’s less-pleasant travel experiences, digressing to some of my sister’s less-pleasant life memories. I won’t say any more than that Jen, don’t panic. You should have Deb will be as kind in the Comments.

As I bid my three companions goodbye and walked off into The Sliding Doors Jenny decided we should take some “walking away” shots. I handed my camera across the threshold and the doors snapped shut seconds later.

Laughter all round.

This happened twice more as Jen attempted the shot.







Doofus hadn’t filled out her Little Green Form in all the excitement of Hocho and Sliding Doors. Got sent away to fill it in, much to my embarrassment.

Oh! The rigmarole of boarding a frickin’ plane. My goodness. While thoroughly aware of the 100ml carry-on limits, some last minute toiletries bags shifting resulted in my attempting to carry on my Deoderant, Face Cleanser and Face Toner bottles. Dangit. Gooooorrrr-oooorrrrne!

Needless to say, I was a stinking, leather-faced mess by the time I got around to replacing the items.

Anyhow, after opening and closing, removing and replacing, here a feel, there a grope and out the other end of the gauntlet of security, I finally arrived at my Gate.

I wondered why I was the only chum lining up at Gate 9 for Qantas Flight QF11, as if I’m not aware enough of my complete travel ignorance, something like this has to happen to me. Of course. So after sitting on my case in the Economy queue for several minutes, I felt pretty damned stupid when an “update on the delay of QF11” came over the loudspeaker.

Chum, indeed. No doubt everyone in the place thought so. Yeah, go on, have a good laugh at the image of me sitting all alone in empty queue aisles while hundreds of other people sit around comfortably in the lounge areas.

Hysterical, yes. And, yes again, I realise I’ll probably find it hilarious myself eventually.

So, alas, my flight was delayed. There were continuous collective groans whenever they updated on the delay further. Personally, it wasn’t really a big deal to me. I started on Wuthering Heights and tried to muster some sympathy for my fellow travellers with connecting flights (it never came).

While all advice cried out for a window seat, I have to declare myself thrilled with my aisle seat. Maybe it’s because I was blessed with a skinny-weight, odourless, silent neighbour, but either way, I confess myself disappointed to find no Facebook “Aisle Seats” to ‘Become A Fan’ of.

I was two rows from the back of the plane on the right side, just steps away from the back compartment where the toilets and snackbars are located. One happy camper.

Despite getting little to no real sleep as a result of my crappy Lupus-diseased joints, I didn’t mind the flight at all. I was completely stoked to watch some much-desired entertainment and enjoyed the food, drink and snacks immensely.

I was the happy viewer of “The Reader”, “Frost/Nixon”, “The Heath Ledger Story” documentary and another recently released movie that currently deserts me.

I was the satisfied consumer of Chicken Cacciatore, garden salad, fresh OJ, hot tea, chocolate chip cookies, apples, Cadbury hocho, Splice icecream, bacon and egg breakfast, fresh fruit, fresh coffee and Coca-Cola.

My only complaints are:

1) The girl sitting behind me seemed to misinterpret the “Touch Screen” as a “Jab Screen”, I felt like someone was sending me Morse Code every time she finished, started or paused her choice of entertainment.

2) The guy diagonally back across the aisle from me seemed to lack awareness of the size of his own bottom and/or the normal way to exit a seat, consequentially leaving my nose inches from his bumhole every time he got up or down (which was frequently).

Apologies if this wasn’t the most eventful blog post. I know many of you want every detail, but please don’t think that means I’m oblivious to the fact that most of you don’t.

Fear not, the interesting stuff kicks off in my Part 2 post: Arriving.

Plus, eventually I actually hope to catch up and key in my posts at the end of each day. That way I won’t forget all my hilarious jokes and fabulous anecdotes that so colour the inside world of my mind.

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