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and last updated August 2nd.,1998.

WELCOME TO MY DAY..

IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...

Manhatton Beach, California, USA....
Well, my last full day in Manhatton Beach for a while!
And I am having a make, mend, read and sunbake day...something I've been missing since I hired the car, since I always feel I should be USING it!
But today I feel justified in leaving it sit where I can see it, pretty thing that it is, since I want to build up a mileage credit for when the serious driving starts tomorrow!.

In between chores I am reading a SERIOUSLY good book, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which combines a story of this state in the 21st Century,(and I recognise all the geographical features, and the streetnames and the expressways), plus computer theory and practice, plus an interpretation of a lingusitic theory I studied in post-grad., plus lots of pharmaceutical stuff..

Right up my alley?
There are some seriously funny parts, too, which one reviewer calls:
.."hip, surreal, distressingly funny..."
I love it, and I have pages turned down everywhere for future reviewing...
But if I can borrow a scanner next week, I shall just HAVE to show you the memo sent to all federal employees of Next-Century Los Angeles, regarding the setting up of Bathroom Tissue Pools..
That, and some of the rules and regulations for the employees of UncleSam cut close enough to the quick to be totally believable.. to anyone who has been a government Employee, as I was for far too long!

And I am trying all my contact lenses in my right eye, one after the other..looking for one that will read street signs from a distance AND map names up close...AND let me read to update this page when I eventually GET where I am going each day!
Oh, and having been wearing out sunglasses with monotonous regularity, (I should NEVER have sent any HOME!), I finally gave in and bought two pairs of American manufacture, in the tiny catseye shape my oleder son will APPROVE, he who is such a connoisseur of what is IN and NOT IN!
And I bought them at one of the big pharmacy supermarkets here, a big SAVE-ON store, where I was subjected to the most incredibly inefficient display of photo-processing and retrieval I have EVER encountered...
Bannockburn people, if I tell you that the processing sytems here, often in stores side-by-side, which run 7 days a week and 18 hours a day, are so hit and miss that they make the system which is our pharmacy's despair look totally, benignly user-friendly!!
(Non-Bannockburn folk, it is illustrative of the point I am making, here, that last Xmas our pharmacy won a prize for the most protests issued on behalf of customers...)
In fact, the whole expedition to the big pharmacy in the mall was a real study-tour, which will take a whole Bannockburn News page for the telling....sufficient to say I was VERY glad not to have the pharmacist-husband with me....

I couldn't have stood the aghast, dusgusted silences!!
?????????????????
Along with Viagra, laser eye surgery is being heavily advertised here, and I hope I will have enough money left when I get home to look at it seriously....my friend, Zach P had an appointment for assessment the day I left for here, (July 21st, and I asked him yesterday how the examination had gone off, and he laughed and said I had REALLY been out of touch since he has been assesses, operated, and was now recuperating, MINUS his (much hated) glasses....
Hmmm,Zach, how on earth are you going to look INTELLECTUAL and ACADEMIC now, hey?

Okay, Okay, so you want to look SEXY and DEBONAIR, right?
Well, Hon...the very best of British luck to you....

Personally, I never really noticed the glasses, being one who looks at a person's MIND...
And I can tell you now the girls at the Residence Inn in Atlanta thought your glasses were no handicap at all... couldn't work out why you were so anxious to get rid of them...
So, why am I struggling with these contact lenses when I could get bifocals?...

Ahhhhh.......now THAT is DIFFERENT!!
It doesn't do for a WOMAN to look intellectual!!
And I guess it wouldn't be MY track record with a rented car if everything were to go RIGHT, now would it?
I mean, I thought the cars were unusually hard to start here, with these new childproof locks one has to have, so that you have to step on the brake before you can unlock the car from PARK...
Only with this Corolla, one usually had to release the handbrake as well, before the thing would go into gear...
Which seemed a bit strange..but..well..this is a land where everything else is upside down, why not the safety features also...
And the thing did BEEP at me as I climbed out, in broad daylight yesterday, having just renewed my adoption certificate for another two weeks, and then having left it parked in its home-yard while I walked to the software place, which walk, I have found, here on a divided highway, is often faster than driving around and back....
But the beeping stopped when I closed the door, so I thought no more of it..I mean, something is ALWAYS beeping at one, here!
But on Friday, en route to San Diego, (well..I was, the car had other ideas), the Corolla refused to go into any gear, or to unlock at all...it didn't FEEL like a flat battery, but Robert from Enterprise Car Rentals came quite quickly, and he thought it was that, especially since he could see that the light lever was set to ON!
Remember, to an Australian, that stalk on the left of the wheel is the windscreen wipers...or direct communication with some other planet!!!
And he was quite happy to use the jumper leads he had brought....except that I had parked beside a divider to get the shade and another white rented car was parked next to me, and he couldn't get close enough for the leads to be used..and nor could anyone else...
So we had to set about trying to find the owner of the other white car...
And in this land of people trained to be supicious of strangers since birth, this was NOT easy!!
Folks , they do not LIKE to have strange women knocking on their doors!
And I did raise my eyebrows just a LITTLE, when one knock, at one door, revealed two impeccably dressed black gentlemen lounging in front of their television set, who recognized me at once as the owner of " that car that had its headlights on last night!!"
And even though the night manager came out to help us, we couldn't PUSH the car into an accessible area because it was locked against all the naughty children who might try to start it, and it wouldn't go into Neutral or Drive...
And Robert had to go back to the office, having arranged with Tyler, the Night Manager, to do the charging up bit, but he left me the jumper leads just in case I could lassoo the car's owner before next morning,...
Which, within five minutes, I HAD...right upstairs above me, in fact, nice unattatched young man I had SEEN drive up and thought he was the Enterprise assistant...and he moved his car on his way to the Happy Hour, to which all the nonspeaking people were now making their way, since that night was a salad bar night...
You know how a crowd always collects around a nonstarting car in Australia.....
Believe ME, folks, quite the opposite here....

But then Tyler realised that my car was parked in a COMPACT space, and, since he drives a Lincoln Continental, there was no way he would be able to get his car in beside the Corolla, he decided to call Enterprise again
And, to cut a LONG story short, finally JOHN, from Enterprise came and parked HIS car in the spot now vacant except for my balcony chair,holding a NO PARKING sign, and he connected everything up and showed me the battery in his TRUNK and laughed when I called it a BOOT, but he wasn't laughing when we tried to start up the car and it wouldn't unlock...wouldn't go into gear, .....in fact, it refused to do anything at all, just like in the first place, when I had first tried it...
And when he tried to explain this to the office, they said he had to go in there and tell them, so he left, leaving me the jumper leads, asking me if I would be in later, after they had closed....
And I pointed out that I couldn't exactly GO anywhere, could I, and he thanked me for my understanding....
And I took myself to the Happy Hour, thinking that at least people would TALK to me tonight, being interested in how I had gotten on...
WRONGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I did what all the other single people do here..I took my food BACK to my room, because I realised we had taken the balcony chair away and someone might park there..
(and also that I was wasting my time trying to be FRIENDLY with THIS crowd!!)
And after a while John rang back and said they had no cars right now but if I cared to ring them at 7.30 next morning, he would see what they could set me up with...and was I planning to go anywhere in the meantime....
So I pointed out, gently, that I still couldn't GO (teeth-gritted) anywhere, could I, and wasn't it lucky I had been able to KEEP my unit longer.....and he THANKED me for my understanding...
Said most other people would be getting quite irate by this time......Hmmmm

But, next day, Paula, from Enterprise brought me another car, a mint-green metallic- ducoed Meteor, in which everything seemed to work in a non-complicated way..
And after I had shown her over my unit,she never having been in a Residence Inn before, I persuaded her to WALK the hundred yards back, something else she had never done before, and I took the car out to visit the United Airlines Office, leave some film to be developed...and check out THAT trip to San Diego....which everyone says is SO EASY ONE CAN"T GET LOST!!
Well folks, six hours later, I had seen a GREAT DEAL of Los Angeles, a lot of traffic jams, Expressways travelling at 25 MPH, and roads under repair......as well as some of the streets and boulevards we see on TV....
I've seen Sunset Boulevard and Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica and Beverly Hills and The J Paul Getty Drive and Bel Aire and Melrose Avenue...
And been caught in the bumper-to-bumper airport traffic, and waited while the Hollywood Bowl empties.....
And I know, now, why friends have advised me not to drink anything for some hours before one tries to do a drive-through tour of Los Angeles...I have NEVER needed a bathroom so badly!!
Kirsty, the other Australian here says she used to wonder why Philadephia buildings all smelled like public toilets... until she tried to find a public toilet after a special offer night where you could have all the Margueritas you could drink for $10.00!
We are convinced American motorists, considering all the CocaCola they consume, must carry little potties in their cars..
Could account for the grim expressions on their faces as they drive in this sunshine, and the way they toot at one as soon as the lights change, too!

But I haven't seen San Diego yet...it is as though there is some kind of invisible net that someone pulls tight every time I set out to go THERE...
I'm beginning to think I should just go with the flow!!
And at least I made it back in time for the Happy Hour Meatballs and Mashed Potatoes with Gravy!
It was touch-and-go there, for a while!

The Happy hour here is well-intentioned and better than most..runs five nights instead of four and actually serves enough food that one doesn't need another evening meal...I have tried it a few times but only once met someone interested in meeting ME....another Australian woman, four days here after Washington, who seized on me as soon as she heard my accent...that is the Kirsty I have mentioned..
And we compared notes about strange American ways, particularly strange Male American ways, and I told her about my first night at the Manager's poolside barbecue, when there was one spare table-seat, with the only other unaccompanied person..a man, who stayed in the spa as long as he could to avoid having to talk to me, then finally had to get out before he faded to a shade of his formidable size, but sat sideon to me and wouldn't look at me or speak..finally when he had dried off enough he took his extra doggybag hamburger, and his cigarettes and waddled off, still without looking or speaking, even to say goodnight..
And how I had seen him later, with a white-haired woman..wife or mother, hard to say..but obviously one he had not wanted to offend by being seen in conversation with a female not of HER aquaintance!
And we agreed that here, as in Vermont and Washington, the most SUSPICIOUS character of all is the unaccompanied female!!

I have a female in the next unit who DESERVES to be unaccompanied!!
A true illustration of my thesis that American women do not, in general, treat their men very well!
And that they do not know how lucky they are!
This flaxen-haired beauty LOOKS as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, as it were, but I kid you not, she could make toast in that same place!!
She is sharing the unit with her fiance, a well-groomed, well-dressed, softly-spoken and rather handsome black guy, and between them they have a big black Chevrolet Four-wheel drive and a BMW!...
And she has the loudest , most raucous voice I have heard in any female outside the raven genus, and a vocabulary whose obscenity I have NEVER heard equalled anywhere, albeit somewhat limited.....
And she has the longwinded energy of an angry Dutchwoman!
And she rants and raves and he tries not to answer or argue until she starts throwing things and then she starts hitting him, and then she orders him out..and out...and out..(this is HIS unit!!)
And the second night, by which time I was used to the pattern, I was sitting out on my little patio when she hurled him out,, and neither of us could pretend to be invisible..so I offered him the use of my place to compose himself a little, and a coffee if he wanted...
But he didn't think he had better be seen talking to me..said if she saw us or found out, she would say he had been looking for friends and that would be another unforgiveable sin for which he would need to attone over and over...
But in the meantime she had dressed, too, and left in his car, and he went to bed,with a bit off his chest, at least, and I thought he might get some sleep at last...
But around 2am she came back and it all started over again until she had him in tears...and I guess in America a black man NEVER hits a white woman, no matter how much she is thumping HIM, though I'd say she is pushing her luck!!...
And they stay indoors all day, and never open the curtains...and most days it starts up again...her Scandinavian accent accusing.. his soft Southern protesting quite overwhelmed...
And there are are 176 units here, quite scattered, so I am wondering how I managed to get THIS one...sharing a wall and a little entranceway, with THEM...
I could make a fuss, of course, but that would probably punish HIM more than it does her, and I think he has ENOUGH troubles, already!
But I guess I got my own back some nights later when I had friends in, and we shared some Fosters, and some red and white wine, and laughed a LOT, and LATE............and next morning I found that my patio door had never been closed...
And I knew that even if we hadn't kept THEM awake all night, lots of other people would have been disturbed, and they would all have blamed my neighbours...certainly not the lawabiding old Grannie in MY unit!!

I have this friend north of San Francisco, a refugee from an IRS swoop, who really wants to visit or be visited,and who has done a lot of hard work looking up and forwarding accomodation details...
So I figured he has had a rough time,has worked hard on my behalf.. deserves to be part of my American experience, and I rearrranged my schedule accordingly..
And I set up an online booking for one of the places he sent me details about, a place called Paradise, would you believe?
Pity they only have three nights vacant before the weekend, but I figure I can look around for something else once I get settled..
And who knows...they might have quiet country roads on which it is posible to drive and LOOK at the same time!
BUT,( and why are there always BUTS in my stories?), next thing my friend was having second thoughts because he feels his lack of financial superiority will prevent him from being the kind of host he had planned...
And he has been thinking about income opportunities lost, and so on, while he would be showing me around..
So I have a feeling this could be Paradise Lost not Paradise Regained.., because he feels his own small town is TOO small to entertain me whereas I pride myself that I can make a home anywhere that has a phone line I can tap into, and I am wanting to study all aspects of American life, smalltown and largetown, rich and poor...and there is always the possibility that in a SMALL town people will TALK TO ME!!

And from what I have seen of his town's webpages, which are done mostly by a husband- and- wife team in the next town, they NEED me there, a dire dearth of correct syntax and color coordination being immediately apparent to the experienced eye....I mean this guy makes his living that way... as the OPPOSITION ....wonder if it has occurred to him to let me work in the business for a day or two? I mean, I can tick any expenses off against 'Overseas Training'...

And it would look good on my C.V., right?

And there is something on here in LA I would kill to attend...

Tonight, for just one night, a tenor/baritone concert at the Hollywood Bowl, with all the cliched arias, including "In The Depths Of The Temple", and you just dial for tickets..none of this BASS booking and queuing stuff..
and every night things on in the open air..the Americans really making the most of their summer!
And it occurs to me that if were not to regain Paradise, then perhaps I could do worse than move to the Beverley Hills or Downtown version of this Residence Inn..and just front up to all these things, now that I have had my fill of the seaside..become a townie!!
Because the funny thing is..the inner city here, thanks to the Expressways, is not a problem to drive..it is like a small country town....only more civilized...manages to make Sydney look relatively like some of the more gruesome scenes from Dante' s Inferno!
(and speaking of that, how ARE you, Sylvia Silver? Have to tell you that leather is OUT here, but shall I give San Francisco your VERY bi-best??? )

i find I am drinking a bit of beer here, myself..
Don't know whether it is a reaction to the incredible sweetness of most foods or the omnipresent sugary soft drinks...or the lack of a kettle or electric jug in the units so that one can'e ever make proper tea...
But they have a light beer on tap here for the Happy Hour, and I have been enjoying that in the evenings.. it seems to go with the spices and the sauces and the sunshine!
And I suppose I will need to finish off the Fosters in the 'frig before I move on.... It's a tough job, but...guess someone has to do it...

And to those of you still asking, 'Are you still coming home early?', the answer is "er....NO!!".
There is a United Airlines Office within walking distance, too, and I have had a reservation request in for an aisle seat on a flight that gets into Melbourne at a time my husband can collect me easily...
And they rang me today to say they had one..in fact, I had a choice of an aisle with three others or an aisle with two others, and she advised the Row Of Four, for a long flight....
But I doubt I will have a NATO Lt. Colonel, as company, this time across the ocean, but incurable optimist, MOI!!
Might meet a really nice American man whose wife doesn't mind him talking to an Australian woman, hey??

And the San Diego guy I came to see DID say he MIGHT be able to make some time available after Monday, but he didn't say where I would need to be to take advantage of that munificent offer...
But I wouldn't want you to think he doesn't contact me.....he just seems to specialise in once a month around 6.15pm., the time everyone is finishing up at work and calling me, right?
So he always catches me talking to someone else, and has to leave a voicemail, right?
It's just that all the other folk this happens to can call me later, from HOME, right???
And he said he was going to get his computer back online too, so he could talk to me from home that way once more.....
Yeah...right,Gravel-Voice, RIGHT!!!

But I am getting a suntan here, at last, since it is not too hot to go outdoors, and I have everything I need nearby,...and then some!!...and though my cheque-account-balance, when I asked for it, showed how deep a crevasse the exchange rate is scything through my savings, I would like to stay a bit longer, I think, and probably could move about a bit, now, and SHOULD move about a bit....

But I'll keep you posted!

Love to everyone over 50,and everyone on our side! -from
..Robink in U.S.A.

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�Robin Knight, 1998.