Au revoir 2012 - End of an amazing year

So tomorrow night at midnight we will all turn into pumpkins. Well hopefully not, but it is a possibility. Probably about as likely as the Mayans prediction of the world ending...

Anyway NYE is always a great chance for us to blow out the cobwebs, reflect back on the year, and vow not to make the same mistakes this year.

2012 was an amazing year for me for so many reasons:

July I gave up my job. I had a great 4 years being a web and digital marketing manager, but it felt like the right time for me to leave and search for new challenges. I felt I achieved a fair bit in my time there, but as ever with digital there is always more to be done!

To be part of the Olympic Opening Ceremony was an incredible thing. Obviously I was disappointed not to be on the TV at all, but it was still a great experience and one I will remember till the end of time. I now have to get the 5 DVD box set to see if there is a nanosecond of me on that. 

Then to be a volunteer at the Olympics and Paralympics. The experience was super. It was so much fun to go back to doing the kind of work I did about 8 years ago and write Tweets rather than strategies!!! The work we did on the websites and through social media was so important, with literally billions of people looking at it. But I have to confess I was slightly envious of the other games makers in the stadium or velodrome showing people to their seats etc. Particularly the ones with the big foamy hands.
I think most of you managed to get to see something, and so know how incredible the atmosphere was in the Park. I was fortunate enough to get tickets to events at both games and have so many special memories from the volunteering and from being a spectator. London really delivered and I was so proud of the city where I live.

Then September I left the UK to come and live in the States as you will know having read this blog! It has been an amazing experience. I can hand on heart say that I haven't missed working at all, and have managed to fill every day of my time out here. I absolutely love it out here and 3.5 months in, am not bored of it at all.

Obviously the hardest thing has been being so far away from family and close friends, but many have kept in touch on Skype and through emails, and I have made some new friends here. I haven't felt lonely at all, which is great. Hanging out with one of my oldest friends so much has also been lovely - along with other old friends who have come out to visit.(old because I have known them so long, not old/ancient!) My parents and my sister are all coming out in January which will be great. I would certainly never be short of visitors if I ended up living here!

So here is to an amazing year. I hope it was as fulfilling and awesome for you all.

 2012 will be incredibly difficult to top, but if anyone can do it, 2013 can....

Malibu Barbie

After a quiet Christmas recovering from my annual crappy cold, I took full advantage of the blue skies and warm weather and hopped in the motor to cruise up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Malibu.

As you know from earlier posts I love the PCH down in Orange County, but this PCH was a whole different ball game. Not for one minute am I suggesting it was as impressive as the PCH up near Monterey and Big Sur, but the hills meet the ocean in pretty lovely fashion, as demonstrated here: 

I drove up the ocean road for about an hour north of Santa Monica, taking in the backs of multi-million dollar houses that drop down into the ocean whilst trying to grasp peek a boo views of the ocean, before huge gaps in houses showed off the vast expanse of my favourite ocean. 

The road was pretty quiet considering how lovely the day was.  It was fun burning off Bentleys and BMWs at the lights, but I cannot deny that being in a soft top Mercedes would have been pretty fabulous (not that my friend's Ford Focus is without its charms...) The only downside was there seemed to be no radio signal for most of the journey. So it meant listening to Florence and the Machine the whole way. After the 4th play of the album, I was a little tired of it, but hey if that is the worst thing about the day I can live with that!!! 

I smiled the whole time I was driving out to the Ventura County line.

There is a big naval base there where they test out missiles in a 36,000 square mile area of sea. There were two radar planes flying around, with big circular domes on top of them. They looked more like the USS Enterprise than planes. 

I stopped off and took some photos of the missiles (which were massive) and a couple of planes (which were even bigger) The Tomcat was particularly cool!

The drive back to Malibu going south was even more dramatic than driving north. I popped into a place called Paradise Cove where there is a cutesy little beach and a touristy cafe. It has been used in a number of TV shows, commercials and movies - including Baywatch and an old favourite of mine from when I was a kid, The Rockford Files. 

I stopped off to have a beer and only then realised that it was $3 for parking if your bill was $25. Fortunately the bar tender took pity on me, and validated me anyway (I had only been there 30 minutes!)

Every day in California makes me smile, but days like today literally make my heart sing...If you haven't been to California, I would suggest you go in 2013, or at least plan in 2013 to go there in 2014. You won't regret it I promise...

Xmas Day

So first Christmas day away from Watford/London.

I woke up bright and early to be greeted by a bit of a grey sky - boo!

Dulce (the cat) and I got onto the couch ready for some Skype action with friends in Vietnam and the Swiss family Harrison...This was lots of fun!!!

Of course the 2nd most important thing on Christmas day was to use the industrial/restaurant style waffle maker to make myself some waffles - again lots of fun. Waffles with banana, banana and vanilla yoghurt, and sea salted caramel sauce - Delish! I can't wait for a waffle party with a friend on Saturday.

new song by LMFAO - "Everyday I'm waffling..."

A face pack, some netflix action and then off to the cinema (yes they are all open on Christmas Day!) and I watched Les Miserables. Alas I was in the front row, which was pretty intense and way too close to the screen. I would like to see it again a normal distance away, not 6 foot away. I think it is a good musical with some great songs - I have seen it in the west end 3 times, but a little long, and I think the same applies to the movie. This may have been because I hadn't eaten any lunch.

I thought the movie would be on a grander scale somehow - more in the mould of Oliver with big choruses and bigger sets. However I really enjoyed it. Anne Hathaway was superb, as was Eddie Redmayne as Marius. I found my right eye seemed to be particularly irritated throughout their numbers and water was incessantly coming out of it...;-) They used Greenwich Naval College for a number of scenes, which was a little strange. I thought they would have filmed exterior shots in Paris.

If you like musicals you will love it, and if you love Les Mis, you will really love it. Russell Crowe was probably the weakest link. I think he is generally a pretty good actor, but he seemed to be focusing so much on his singing that he kind of forgot to move his face...

I came out of the cinema to a lovely pinkish setting sky and headed downtown to join a friend and her family and another couple of chums for dinner. The snow has fallen on the tallest mountains that surround the city, and they looked fabulous as I headed East along the 10, with glimpses of the Hollywood sign, and Griffith Observatory out my window. I cranked up the radio and smiled widely to myself.

My friend's flat is lovely, in a really nice block just near the Disney Concert Hall. We sat down and ate cooked meats and veg and chatted and giggled for hours, with me being very aware I had to drive home and so couldn't enjoy the wine too much...!

It was a lovely evening, and the most sober Christmas I think I have had in many a year. I missed my family, and the plethora of texts I normally get from friends, but it was a lovely day all the same.

 I hope you guys had a super Christmas! Feliz Navidad. Tomorrow I am meeting some Brits for Boxing day drinks, but guess what...I will be driving again!!! Boo..................................

Xmas Eve

So it's Christmas Eve, and this is the first Christmas I have ever spent away from my family and friends.

I have missed the copious amounts of Xmas piss ups we have in London (although my liver and my waistline truly haven't) and missed catching up with all my friends around this holiday time.

Genuinely even with a bit of rain today, the weather here is so mild it is really hard to think of it as Christmas. We are so used to Christmas being cold, and being wrapped up in scarves and gloves etc, that mooching out with a t-shirt and cardigan seems bonkers.

3 months in I am still loving this experience and city loads. I have made some lovely new friends and met some interesting people.

But I can't deny that on this night of all nights, when I am normally at home with my folks, going up the pub with my dad and looking forward to smoked salmon, scrambled egg, toast and champagne at 8am tomorrow morning that for the first time I am a teensy bit home sick.

I have been listening and watching Last Christmas for glimpses of my sister, and listening to a tragic Christmas playlist on Spotify. God knows what the neighbours think...FYI my sister is the one in the white and blue tartan coat with red moon boots There is also a good close up of her at the dinner table. She smiles with a glass of wine in her hand:

Anyway I am slowly getting sozzled on Sauvignon Blanc, have had some turkey and mash this evening and am looking forward to tomorrow. It will be a whole 10 days before I get any presents when my parents come out. I am really looking forward to seeing them. Despite weekly skype sessions, there is nothing quite as lovely as seeing your folks in the flesh! My sister is also coming out the day they leave, so January is going to be Harrison-tastic for me :-)

Best wishes to all of you and your families at this special time of year. I hope you have/had a super Christmas and Boxing Day. See you on the flip side

Skid Row

So on Thursday evening I drove out to Pasadena. Pasadena is a really nice suburb of LA, although a town/city in it's own right.

It is not far from downtown LA, but is miles away in terms of the green trees and detached houses, and cutesy streets with little shops straight out of 50s America.

Anyway I went there to help with the Burrito Project. This is a charity that gets together once a month to volunteer to make up hundreds of burritos and then drive them to Downtown LA and hand them out to the people who live on the streets there in an area called Skid Row.

It being Christmas, many people had the same idea as my friends and I, and there were about 4 times the amount of people there are normally there. It was fun chatting to people and making burritos.

There was an assembly line and I was on the salsa. An unusual choice for me as I don't particularly like it. However I spooned it with the love and attention it needed. I was sandwiched between two very nice men. One of them was a mere 18 years old and was blown away by the fact I was English. He had joined the Marines 4 months earlier, and said he always though the first English accent he would hear would be someone in SAS. 
Of course he didn't say S-A-S, but 'Sass' so I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. When he said it again later and explained it to me, I explained we didn't pronounce it quite like that!!! Bless him. First generation American born from Cuban parents, so I told him all about my grandma living in Cuba till she was 16. He was an absolute sweetheart and I hope he doesn't get deployed to any war torn countries any time soon...but I digress. 

So we made the burritos, bundled up scarves, t shirts and socks that people had bought along and headed out to Skid Row - which takes up approx 50 blocks of Downtown LA. 

I really found out about Skid Row through the movie The Soloist a few years ago. It didn't do much as a movie, despite two solid performance from Robert Downey Jr, and Jamie Foxx, but it piqued my interest enough to find out more about the homeless of LA. Based on a true story, Downey Jr plays a writer on the LA Times who stumbles across Foxx, a gifted but down and out celloist who went to Juillard before suffering from mental illness.

LA is considered the homeless capital of the USA. I can understand why people come here - if you have no home wouldn't you prefer to be homeless in a mild sunny climate, rather than somewhere where it rains and snows? A quarter of a million people will experience homelessness in LA County (so much bigger than just Downtown) in any given year, and approx 51,000 people are homeless on any night. Over half of the homeless population is African American, despite them being only 9% of the make up of LA County. 20% of homeless people are War Veterans. 

So the 60 of us handed out all our booty to the homeless people who made up just a tiny part of  Skid Row. I had no idea that there would be so many tents on the streets. I also had no idea just how large Skid Row was.

What really struck me was the manners of everyone. I wondered if we might get a few snarls or grunts from people as thank yous, but genuinely everyone we spoke to was really polite and friendly. It knocked me for 6. I don't know if my manners would still be in tact if I were living on the streets in a tent. I think I would probably be feeling pretty bloody sorry for myself and rather annoyed with the hand that life had dealt me. If this is how people felt they didn't show it.

Of course we only touched the surface of the problem, but it felt really good to actually go out and do something and in a tiny way for one night make a difference with socks, burritos, water, scarves, t-shirts and fruit. There are many organisations that do stuff like this, along with the various missions that are permanently open, but it still isn't enough, and they always need more donations, resources and volunteers.

Of course I knew Skid Row was down here, but as we walked along I saw Coles, a joint I had been to for cocktails a few weeks ago. It was on the opposite side of the road, and I had come in and gone out a different way. But if I had just turned my head in the opposite direction to which I was travelling I would have seen rows of tents. Literally I was drinking on the boundary of Skid Row and didn't have a clue. 

The differences between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' seem more stark out here. I can't think of an area of London where it would be understood and accepted that every night people would sleep on the pavements and in tents within 50 blocks of the Downtown Area, because they had nowhere else to go.

I have suggestions, but no real answers on how to solve the problem of homelessness.

The night really made me think genuinely how lucky I am, and how lucky all of my friends are. I think it is very easy for all of us to get bogged down in issues that are actually very trivial, and get stressed out by things in our lives that are incidental. Seeing how tough their life is on the streets, re-enforced to me how privileged, fortunate and lucky I am to be loved by my family and many many friends, and have a lovely flat to go home to in London.

This time of year, more than any is a good time to reflect on what fabulous lives we all lead and spare a thought (and some change if you have it!) for people who are less fortunate than all of us.

As for me, I have volunteered to do some homelessness counts on a couple of nights in January, so the authorities have a really clear idea of the numbers of people we are talking about. 

Hopefully it will help them plan strategies for supporting and housing some of these people in the future...

Hollywood (exclamation mark)

So my lovely friend and I spent the day together before she went back to Blighty for a couple of weeks to hang out with her famille.

It had been raining heavily the night before, and despite drinking a fair bit in a happy hour cocktail crawl (that lasted for 6 hours) I managed to drag my sorry arse out of bed and meet her at the airport (not before I had partaken in a rather fabulous Denny's Hobbit breakfast)

I dropped off my hire car, and we took to the road in her stick Ford Focus that I have fondly nicknamed Herbie. (Although since he had some work done, he is far better behaved!)

We went up to the Griffith Observatory, one of the best views in town of the entire town! It was cloudy but clear, and we could see the Pacific Ocean perfectly (it's about 16 miles as the crow flies) Long Beach (about 30 miles) and Downtown (about 6 miles). My friend had never been and was pretty impressed - as was I! I had never seen so much of the city from up here. It was immense. Like the time you go on the London Eye and can see the Dartford Crossing...

Foliage a go go (Downtown in the background)

Less foliage a go go

I see the sea and the sea sees me

Dramatic sky over Downtown

As much of LA as I can fit in one lens...

Of course The Observatory itself is a bit of a star and has been in countless movies partly because it is way cool, and it has this amazing view. We had a mooch around inside and looked at things that blew our tiny minds!

Griffith observatory

I knew there was something else up here...

Closest I have been to it in 3.5 months...

New digs

I am now in new digs in Santa Monica. I am cat sitting for a friend of a friend in a nice open plan one bedroom apartment about 2 miles from the Ocean.

A couple of you have asked what was so awful about my other place. So to summarise very briefly:

• I was in the owner's room, not a spare room, so there was nowhere to put any of my stuff or unpack. That meant he slept on the couch. There were often tell tale signs that he had been in the room when I was out.
• Often there were 4 of us in the 3 bedroom house. Noisy front door and other (female) guests that would give my dad a run for his money on the snoring front.
• The blankets etc were old, worn and not clean, and I wasn't given a change of bed clothes in 2 weeks. The towel I was given also smelt really damp so I didn't use it.
• The carpets were beige and really badly stained across the whole house.
• There were cobwebs
• The house felt damp, there were spots of mould in the kitchen and bathroom. 
• When the heating was on, it was so loud and would come on with such force that it would make by bedroom door rattle all hours of the night. 

All for the bargain price of $70 per night!!! There are many other little bits that made it an unpleasant experience, but I would say these were the biggest issues. I didn't feel comfortable at all. I was really disappointed and can only pray that my other rental accommodations are much better. They bloody better be as I have hired them for me and my parents!!!

Anyway this place is much nicer! and my new cat Dulce Biscuit Hands Babycat is a handsome lovely boy who has a touch of the Marus about him when flying through his play tube.

I am here till my folks arrive on 2 January...

Things I have learnt in LA/Socal - Part three

Things I have learnt in the past few weeks:

• Much debris can be found on the freeway. Roadkill is obvious, but I have swerved to avoid a green wheelie bin. Today I was so fascinated by watching a women drive over a cone and it get stuck under her car, that I inadvertently took an exit on the freeway about 4 miles south of where I should have done...
• I have not met a radiator yet. Heat is piped through air vents high up on the walls. Strange place to put them - I always though heat rose...
• It can get chillier here than I thought. I have had to buy a hoodie (the shame)
• It rains here on occasion, but the upside is it clears all the smog and pollution out of the air, so it is clear and beautiful the next day.
• They have no way to differentiate between petrol 'gas' and cooking 'gas'.
• Cable/wireless and phone bundles are really expensive here - much more so than the UK.
• Most of the time the gnarly side of the freeway is the side I am not travelling on (of course by admitting this to you all I have jinxed it and will be in traffic jams from this point onwards).
• There are a plethora of small airports right in the heart of LA that serve wee planes, helicopters, and of course the odd Lear Jet.
• PF Changs has a wicked happy hour for food and cocktails and is all over California.
• Trader Joes is the most awesome supermarket in the world, and should be taken to the UK immediately.
• They have dine in cinemas, where you sit in an individual leather recliner, and order your food before or during your movie, and get it delivered to your table, with as much booze as you want. Tickets same price as normal, and over 21s only. Best Cinema experience EVER!!!
• Giving up on a movie is acceptable when Lars Von Trier directs it. 
• The 2nd season of Downtown Abbey was better than the 1st.
• All the signage here particularly for shops etc is really old fashioned, looks like it was created in the 60s, and probably all by the same firm, as vast swathes of it are in red.
• I am still capable of polishing off the best part of a bottle of gin at a Christmas Soiree...

Back in the big smoke

So I moved back to LA last week. I have rented a room in a house through AirBNB in Mar Vista, just above Santa Monica and Venice, and I think it is fair to say it is not what I was expecting at all. I won't bore you with the details, but I will ensure that I ask a lot more questions the next time I do something like this and also visit the property if I possibly can.

So me not liking my digs has meant a lot of time out of the house!

This week I have seen 4 movies: Twilight Breaking Dawn part 2 (worth seeing if you have seen the others) Silver Linings Playbook (enjoyable exploration about mental health and some solid performances from De Niro and Cooper) Killing Them Softly (Not sure whether to laugh or not at this - very dark in the vein of 7 psychopaths...) and Flight (Denzel Washington superb as ever as an alcoholic Flight Captain).

I went to the Annenberg Space for Photography where this is a great exhibition on about indigenous populations, taken by a number of international photographers. A lot of the photos they had taken over the past 30 years showed ways of life that have died out since they took the photos which was a pretty sobering thought. The people from Mongolia were the most fascinating for me, hunting with eagles, riding reindeer and playing with bears.

We went to a lovely little college town on Saturday, Claremont, to celebrate my friend's birthday. It was all cutesy shops like something out of St Elmo's Fire. Jazz and fondue were the options for the evening, both of which I enjoyed. I bought the singer's CD to accompany my Neil Sedaka CD for the car (I can't wait for my parents to bring some new CDs over).

I have been to the gym almost every day this week, and I can confirm that Santa Monica Super Sport gym has the hottest men I have seen to date in a 24 hour Fitness. I, of course, look an utter state, sweating, breathing heavily and no make up on with scraped back hair. How people pull at the gym, I will never know!!!

I also went to the famous Chinese Theatre in Hollywood with a couple I met in Palm Springs, and we caught 'It's a Wonderful Life'. 

Like a scene out of the Muppets/Gremlins

Enormous Screen

I had only been outside the cinema to admire the hand prints of stars, so it was wonderful to go inside!

The auditorium was pretty dramatic, and the audience joined in the movie with gusto! Waaaaay more vocal than us Brits at the cinema. It is a great way to get into the Christmas spirit, and if you haven't seen this movie already, you MUST see it this Christmas...

Sings tunefully "And dance by the light of the moon..."

Boats N'Lights

So there is a tradition (50 years no less!) of the people of Southern California decorating their boats in Christmas lights and parading/sailing them through the harbours of the local community! Lovely!

We spent Sunday evening at Huntington Harbour watching the spectacle. A very pleasant way to spend a winter's evening huddled round a firepit. Photos didn't do the boats justice, so I thought it best to take small pieces of video to show you how lovely the boats looked. People really made an effort and there was music on board most of the boats, along with people wishing us all a Merry Christmas on mics.

Forgive my narration - I get a little excited by boats and lights!!!

CRAZY Christmas lights

So despite it still being mid 60s temperature wise, and the fact they don't even have Boxing Day here, the Americans really like their Christmas stuff, and lights in particular!

So my friend's partner drove us around their neighbourhood in The OC, in search of cool houses and cul de sacs who had made the yuletide effort.

Unfortunately we struck gold really early with an amazing house - which made the rest of the trip a little lame in comparison...They put a sign outside saying what radio frequency you should tune into and you tune in your car radio, sit there and enjoy!

Anyway here is the fruit of our labours in video and pictorial format. It is definitely worth checking out at least one of the videos.

Best house lights ever!!!

Other houses that were cool, but not as cool as best house ever...

Thanksgiving and on to Xmas

So Thanksgiving was spent at my friend's partner's family's house in Mission Viejo, which is inland in Southern California.

I haven't had a Thanksgiving here before so it was a very interesting event. I didn't realise that Thanksgiving has it's roots in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation, blended with Harvest Festival.

The traffic going up the freeway was horrific. It took me 3 hours to get somewhere that should have taken me just over an hour and a half. I guess the rest of SoCal was trying to get somewhere for lunch as well.

The fare was nice. Turkey, mash, stuffing, roasted vegetables, sweetcorn and gravy. I took an apple pie for dessert and a very tasteful pumpkin cake iced to look like a turkey.

I thought this was the highlight of Thanksgiving.

There was also pumpkin pie.

I missed the roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding I normally have at Christmas dinner, but as I wasn't drinking it meant that I didn't have the normal stuffed to burst feeling I have after Christmas dinner at home. 

I was thankful for a pleasant afternoon!

As soon as Thanksgiving was over, the green light was on for Christmas. If you think we start early in the UK, I can confirm that Charlie Brown's Christmas and the Christmas Concert from the Rockerfeller were both on the TV before December even started...It's a Wonderful Life (which I love) was on December 1st...So I guess now is the big countdown... 

Red cups seem to start earlier in the Starbucks here than at home, and Christmas music has been everywhere for the past few weeks!!!

It feels very strange walking round in a T-shirt with Christmas a few weeks away...

As So in SoCal as you can get...

So from the bright lights of Vegas through wine country down to San Diego.

San Diego is a lovely little city. It has a population of just over 1.3 million people and is a hop skip and a  jump away from the Mexican border.

It is split up into many distinctive neighbourhoods and I was staying in a really accessible area in Talmadge. Pretty near a number of freeways, and a couple of good shopping malls!

We went to La Jolla on the first day. This is a really lovely part of San Diego, north of the main town, and has a really villagey feel about it. My friend used to live here and I stayed in La Jolla a couple of times about 8 years ago.

There was a small children's beach near the coves that had been taken over by seals. I had watched on the news over the past few years how there were different factions arguing about whether to move the seals or not. So when we rocked up it was nice to see that the beach had been returned to the children, but that the seals were still there sunbathing on the rocks. But they had grown in number - there were around 6 times as many as the last time I was here. It was lovely to see them, but boy - the stink!!!

It absolutely reeked there - eye watering! The stench of the seals mixed with pelicans and cormorants was a bit too much to take.

I am sure if I had spent a few million pounds on a sea view home on the La Jolla cliffs I would not be best pleased at the smell...

I got used to it after about 10 minutes and didn't have to hold my nose anymore.

Other than that my time here has been very relaxing after a couple of pretty busy weeks hooning around with friends.

It was a bit too chilly to hang out at the beach working on my tan, so I spent a lot of time at the gym and also at the Blockbuster video store. Having been a Love Film member for 5 years I had genuinely forgotten how nice it is to go into a store, chose a DVD and then take it straight home to watch it. 

I am now completely up to date on everything I had wanted to watch filmwise on DVD and Blu Ray: 

• Your Sister's Sister, 
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - remake, 
• The Hunger Games, 
• Five Year Engagement,
• The Iron Lady,
• Biutiful, 
• Spiderman, 
• Expendables 2, 
• The Way, 
• Moonrise Kingdom, 
• Sherlock Holmes (2),
• The Whistle Blower,
• Margin Call,
• Albert Nobbs,
• Rock of Ages, 

Along with Season 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead (very watchable but very gory) and Season 2 of Boardwalk Empire.

I also relaxed, read, petted one of the cats I have been looking after (the other one only sat on my lap the once!) 

Refreshed and rejuvenated I will leave on Monday to go back up to LA for the rest of my time in California...