Two weeks in America

I'm back! This is going to be an extra long post -with millions and squillions of photos so be warned.

LA:

I did not love LA. Seriously, LA is .... why would anyone want to live in LA?? The skies are not blue [even though my camera says differently]. No-one knows how to drive. The architecture is square and boxy so all the houses look like Lego clusters. The malls are boring. LAX is one of the most drab airports I've ever ever been to. There are palm trees but no grass.

And where the heck is the renowned hippy-loopiness?? This was as close as I got, to something that was vaguely hippy-loopy. Actually this store was in the middle of a bunch of suburban grocery and electronic stores. It really doesn't look like it gets much business. I was really really tempted to go in but the 14 year old teenage boy by my side was unimpressed.

This was posted all over Chinatown in all the markets. It.. doesn't... make... any.. sense... stop posting it! I love that people won't be there for you when you're angry. I want to know what kind of crappy friends the author has.

Why do I feel deja vu? I'm back in front of a Disneyworld once again.. slightly fatter, slightly older. Hair is the same colour though. Hmm.

And... all Main Streets look the same around the world I guess.

However, California Disneyland seems to have Tomorrowland which Tokyo Disney and HK Disney lacked. And Thanks the Frogging Lord for that. Tomorrowland was EXCRUCIATINGLY boring [I'm bolding and capslocking that for any poor dumb idiots who want to check it out]. Like we went in and thought we were going to see a show, or an interesting talk. It turned out to be a ten minute advertisement for Honda which we couldn't get out of. People kept trying to wander off but they couldn't. Honda wants to make innovative cars. Got it. I felt sorry for the guide who had no chance to be entertaining. No way-no how. When we finally got out of that talk, we were introduced to a virtual house with digital photo frames and changing wallpaper. There was no exit. We spent ten minutes trying to get out. Tomorrowland took twenty five minutes of my life which I will never get back. Thanks Walt and Honda.

The world's most dysfunctional family posing as a functional one. More about that later.

She looks so serene in this photo. And my stepmother is... never serene. However don't be fooled. She's actually sleeping.

The last time Kejiim, Mexicana, SB and I were at Tokyo Disney- the wait for Small World took about an hour and the hour wait made us deliriously cranky. And by the time we got in there was never any chance that we were going to be in the mood for psychadelic dolls singing the same thing over and over in eighteen different languages. This time- no lines! it was so much better- I took more time to appreciate the effort it takes to putting something like that together. I however don't think I will ever be able to convince any of those three to try and retake it [through obviously extenuating circumstances]

Yeah... Tim Burton! [More on that later too]

Outside Madam Tussauds. With Snoop Dog. Seriously I'm about as hardcore as a donut. Snoop Dog is super skinny.

How good would it be to be a guy lean out your window of that hotel and be like giant breast! Hell yeah!If you can be dead for umpteen years and still make guys that happy then more power to you sista.

Those crazy clams.. We drove past a Scientology office which was a purely based 'Celebrity Centre'. The idea was intriguing to me. What do you have to do to be considered a celebrity? Do you just have to appear on tv? can you be a z-list actor from Big Brother? or do you need a minimum of four lines featured in US magazine? How exactly is that measured?

Universal Studios:

There was almost no people in Universal Studios. It was a ghost town. Which reminds me we went through the House of Horror. Bejeebus, that was scary.

My stepmum did a crazy dance with Crash Bandicoot and Woody Woodpecker. I wish I had videotaped it. And behind them was Fievel! I screamed and ran to Fievel and babbled something like 'OMG. I grew up with you. I used to sing Somewhere Out There to myself when I got lost! Aiieee!'

Of course Fievel didn't reply and it was then I realised how small Fievel really was. Inside that suit Fievel was either a midget or a child actor. Neither with any capabilities to fend off deranged fans with rose coloured memories [I just remembered that Fievel ended up in New York where I was headed- hows that for synchronicity?]

Curious George's Rocket runs on water. Think about the implications of that!

My brother's head is stuck. Darn.

So we took the Universal Studios Tram Tour. And you know what? I was seduced. For five and a half minutes there- I was going to pack up my bags and all of my things and become an actor or a gaffer or something, anything which would let me work on the Universal Studios backlot. Of course I came back down to earth but a girl can dream.



Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart!! I doooooooooooo!

We went on the Simpsons Rollercoaster Ride and there we encountered four of the dumbest people I have ever met. I have no idea where they were from but they were... stupid. We went to wait in a room full of tv screens and we were waiting patiently, when one of the dumbasses starts getting annoyed and asks the attendant whether what we were in was the ride.

Attendant: Uhhhhhh.... no. This is the waiting room.
Dumbass: So this is not the ride?
Attendant: No.
So Dumbass shoves past him and tries to get in the room where the rollercoaster is. Which is locked naturally.

Attendant: .....
Me: .....
Attendant: Excuse me sir, it is not your turn yet. The ride is not ready. Please wait in line.
Dumbass returns to his friends and starts mumbling something thats probably not kosher for this blog.
I'm hoping he gets a Darwin Award at some point. Ergh.

Chinese cough lollies. The poor unloved sibling to a Strepsil. And it tasted like it too.

Onto Las Vegas:

Here's the thing about Las Vegas. I was expecting to love it. I mean two years ago I was contemplating on getting married there! I tried really really hard to fall in love with it but the thing is you can't make yourself fall in love with anything and ain't that the truth of it. There were bits of unexpected beauty which I managed to capture, but on the whole I was .. I guess I wouldn't return unless I had to.

Here was the other thing, I hadn't seen my Stepmum and Dad for a good two years and last year I cut off contact with them because I was starting to find that they were just not good for my mental health.

I wanted to take some of this trip and gage where our relationship was and whether it could be repaired.

What I figured in Vegas [and from studying them in LA] was this: They needed a lot of work. Whatever problems that they had with each other and with themselves needed to be fixed before I can [or could] even contemplate trying to do damage control.

Watching them was like watching a horrible play in passive-aggressiveness. She would do something annoying or silly, and then he would get angry and say something rude or mean. Something to put her down. I don't really want to give examples. She would go quiet and ten minutes later, she'd coo and try to get back on his good side.

If this happened enough, she would throw an almighty tantrum at everyone else. In a public space. Like in the middle of a shopping centre. She would cry or yell - I think at one point she blamed us for giving her cancer.

It gave me a headache. And after four days of it, I was starting to have enough. I was keeping my distance and when he started getting short with me, I backed right off.

And here came the revelation. I didn't care that much anymore. Two years ago, there would have been tears on my end and probably a weepy phone call to SB. If they were going to be kind and responsive to me then I was going to be kind and responsive back but if they were going to get nasty or backhanded then I was going to run for my everloving life. So for the first part of Vegas was very muted and unhappy for me but as soon as I set out on my own I started seeing that Vegas was kind of beautiful. I guess you can see that there are not too many pictures of me with anybody else. I spent a lot of time in Vegas trying out my own company and figuring out being alone.

We stayed at the Luxor. [I didn't take this photo so don't sue me for it!] and while it was nice on the outside, it's a tomb... so it's supposed to be dusty on the inside? I don't know? It was pretty dusty. Everything was very matchy matchy -we had hieroglyphic sheets. What was cool about the Luxor is that the lifts go diagonal instead of up and down.

See this stupid machine? I thought you could pull the lever like a normal machine. The lever does not move. I think someone on youtube has a five minute video on me trying to pull an unpullable lever. And also I didn't win. Boo.

As soon as I walked past this- I thought 'Dave has a little weenie!' and then I had to go off and giggle against a wall for ten minutes.

These were lucky elephants. Apparently the sign said two had been stolen already and could they please be returned? I think that they were kind of pressing their luck by leaving the other elephant out.It was an animatronic croc. He comes out and yawns. I mentioned to my Dad that the hat was emasculating. I think it's the only time he laughed at something I said the entire time.


Beautiful right? I asked the lady for a little cream. That's what Americans call 'a little cream'.


That guy at the back was my parent's friend and he was seriously the worst driver I've ever seen. They guy doesn't drive inside the lines. He doesn't indicate. And he admits that he doesn't have very good vision. We spent a lot of time looking for the car in casino parking lots. I give you free permission to make a joke here about Asian drivers.

Onto New York:

"If I could make it here
I could make it anywhere
That’s what they say"

-Empire State of Mind Part II, Alicia Keys

The first glimpse of Times Square absolutely blew me away. And I knew I would love New York.

I wasn't sure if it was the same library? But that's the Ghostbusters library right? It was closed off and I wanted to go in and look at the stacks. Go find myself a little purple lady ghost.

That's so New York. I had to take it really quickly though because people were starting to walk into my vision. And I had a feeling they would have no hesitation in pushing me away.


Right. I have no photos of the Tim Burton Exhibit at MOMA because they wouldn't let us. But needless to say it was awesome and I'm still kicking myself because I should've gotten myself a copy of 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy' [yeah we definitely will never get that in Australia. Ever.] but I'm just really really happy that I was lucky enough to catch the exhibit.

Oh, they let us take photos of Monet though. Someone forgot to tell the boy that his paintings are a big ol' mess.


More Times Square.Chinatown. [Sorry, I'm starting to get typing fatigue]

I looooove this picture. They look so happy. It's one of my favourites.


And then I took them to the Museum of Natural History and Brother 2# goes absolutely bananas with the camera- he takes over 200 photos alone of different exhibits. The first camera runs outs of battery and the second camera runs out of memory. Brother 1# had to find a bench from exhaustion. I'll spare you the 200 photos but you should really go take a look yourself if you're ever in New York.


Did you know that they regularly find giant squid suction scars on sperm whales? Who even knew that they fought?? It's so bizarre.

Seriously, so pretty.St Andrew, the patron saint of... a whole bunch of countries. I really wonder if the statue is solid painted rock or if its plastic. I doubt it's gold ..

The supreme court! Makes our own courts look a bit dinky.

And the financial district which was quite dim and overbearing. It came out nice in the photo though. I walked round and round Ground Zero looking for somewhere to pay my respects but there was nothing. They're building over it at the moment.

And that's the Statue of Liberty. You know I expected it to be bigger....


And here we come to Central Park. And you know Central Park is all hyped up and.... in all honesty, I realise that there's not much green in America and New Yorkers are just appreciating what they've got.... but heck, it just looked like the parks that we have back home, but colder.I gave it a shot for half an hour but the cold drove me back out.. and also there really was not much to see. The engraved benches were cool though.

I didn't take any photoes but I took both brothers to see Avenue Q. No-one told me the muppets would start having wild raunchy sex! If I had known I would've dragged them to see Mary Poppins! On the other hand I've been constantly singing "It sucks to be you...." for over 72 hours.

Roosevelt Island: Picturesque. Much bigger than we expected.
And so most of the cousins decided to take a day off together, and we vetoed playing basketball and the haunted corn maze was closed [sighs] so I had the bright idea to take a cable car to Roosevelt Island because none of us had ever been. I think Brother 2# called it that 'stupid dumb island'. I didn't think it was so bad.

Brother 1# attempting a backflip. We hadn't seen grass this green for close to three weeks. It was fricking amazing.

The remains of the Smallpox Hospital. They're rebuilding it. It's much creepier in person.


One of the ideas that we had was to go ice skating, but Brother 2# was so adamant against it that we vetoed it. Oddly enough, he was happy to skate on the little patches of ice around Roosevelt Island.It's a little bit like a Country Road Ad.
Those crazy kids were going to try and attempt backflips. They chickened out. Ha.

The temperature was close to one degree. That pole was nutso cold.

My last night in New York. What a view.

So that's it I guess. There's nothing else to add. I went and I got some perspective. I saw as much of America as I could in two and a half weeks.
I figured out somethings can't be fixed if the other person doesn't want to fix it.
That you can't get over things until you're really ready. And it's taken me well over ten years to finally break free and to not be hurt and be personally affected by their words and their actions. I don't know if that makes me a terrible daughter but I do know that my protective coating just got a little harder and I'm thankful that it finally did.

I finally met my grandmother and she's a dear old lady. I guess I'll talk more about it some other time.
I didn't say goodbye to my Dad as I left. I guess we're not even on square one anymore- we're probably on minus squares.

When I got back to Sydney, I almost cried when I saw the sheer amount of blue and green. My mum and my stepdad were waiting for me at the gate with big smiles, hugs and lots and lots of outpourings of love. Home.