A busy few days...

The danger with falling behind and having a lot to say is that I don't really have the time to say it in. It's taken me about 24 hours to write this, off and on, and this is just for Wednesday - it's now Saturday night! Wednesday was perhaps the biggest of the days I've had so far, and Thursday was pretty sizable, but thankfully Friday and Saturday were relatively quiet. I'll probably combine everything else into my next post - otherwise you'll be reading this one for hours!

On Tuesday night, I had my first American culinary experience. It's called In-N-Out Burger. Wow. It's like a burger bar and most places have only a couple of tables, a counter and a drive-thru. What's better is that it's cheap (burger, fries and drink for under $5) and it tastes really good. I had a cheeseburger from there and the cheese was all melted over the meat and it had onion rings and lettuce (peeled from the lettuce by hand, apparently) and a slice of tomato. If I remember correctly, the burger on its own is about $1.70. For a good burger like that, it's really good value. I'll probably have another one tonight. I see myself putting on a kilo or two...

On Wednesday, I got to see more of Orange County. Unfortunately, as it's been a good 48 hours since I travelled its roads and highways, I may not remember everything. And, unfortunately, I didn't have presence of mind to photograph everything - I'm not as quick as my mother in that regard.

Rob and I started the day in Orange, which is perhaps not the main centre of the OC - I believe Santa Ana and Anaheim contend one another for that honour - but it's still one of the big locations as it has some shopping centres and a science museum. After taking care of some business there, we drove past the former Tustin Air Station, where giant concrete dome hangars remain where they used to store blimps back in the 40's and 50's - apparently they were the largest buildings in terms of floorspace in the world at one point. However, the land is getting redeveloped and as people don't want to live near giant concrete monstrosities, they'll probably get knocked down - sad, as I think they're quite majestic. Fortunately, we went past here a few days later and you can appreciate the size of them from the photos.

We then followed Jamboree Boulevard all the way to its end in Newport Beach and hung a left to follow the coastline, past all the yacht clubs to Corona del Mar and its little nature preserve cove. We parked the car near "Inspiration Point" and walked down to the beach - here I took a good number of photos as the place is quite beautiful. I stood on the shore and Rob and I joked that here was where the water ended, and my home was that-a-way. On a clear day, you can apparently see all the way to Catalina Island from there: I only got a line on the horizon. It was really quite nice, especially if, according to Rob, we were able to park in the place an artist usually sets himself up in to paint the view.

We then drove back past the yacht clubs and hung a left to go onto Balboa Island. It's a tourist villagy kind of place, full of shops selling stuff you don't need or have any use for, but it's also retained a bit of that fishing village feel with its narrow streets. Charming would be the word some people describe it by, but as I noticed the gum trees and paperbarks lining the main street, it didn't quite have that feel for me - more like shabby chic. Yes, gum trees - I suppose they were planted because they're exotic. We stood at the edge of one side of the channel and looked across to the other side - there's even a small vehicular ferry of about three cars' worth plying it - and it reminded me somewhat of the Breakfast Creek Wharf back home, but with a ferris wheel. They love their amusements here in the States - seems like any place worth its salt has a wheel or a merry-go-round - er, sorry, carousel.

We then drove lunchwards, which was in nearby Costa Mesa at a Japanese market called Mitsuwa. After driving around for a bit to find a park in one of the extremely narrow spaces for their extremely narrow Japanese cars, we went inside and went to an eatery there where Rob's friend, John, works. We sat at its bar arrangement and kept exchanging witty banter with him and his chef co-worker. I had a cream of mushroom omelette with some sort of rice thing underneath - it was a reddy colour - while Rob had an eggplant one. Apparently he wasn't a fan of the rice, but I cleaned my plate and finished it off with a latte from the attached coffee-and-cake shop - ah! Real coffee!

Lunch finished, we drove back along the 55 towards the north of Orange so that I could do some shopping and I went to that most American of institutions, Walmart. It's a bit like the Hypermarket back home, except far, far, far more ubiquitous - though, apparently, in Southern California you're more likely to find a Target or some other store, seeing as we drove halfway back to Corona just to go to one. I bought a few things that I didn't want to take on the plane with me, and another thing that would be in short supply back home: a Rand McNally road atlas of the whole US. As I write this, I'm doing what my parents have done in the past and coloured in the freeways and roads I've been down on the big Los Angeles map it has here. Los Angeles isn't so much a city, but a megalopolis divided into its various components - it takes up the whole double page of the book and even then I don't think every place at the extremities is covered.

With most of my shopping done save a few items, we went to fill up Rob's car. The system is quite different from back home, where everybody pays for their fuel first, and then fills up. Apparently, the pumps shut off at the amount you've already paid for. Seeing as we've filled up at Arco both times, they also have the type of fuel you want to put in - naturally, the higher the octane, the less fuel you're going to get because you've already paid for it. I don't know how Americans can completely fill their cars, though, without doing rough calculations and all that sort of thing beforehand.

Rob received a call that his tax return had returned, and he had to go to his accountant (seems like H&R Block are multinationals) and pick it up. We drove out into nearby Tustin and went past where Rob used to live when he was a child - not exactly a well-to-do neighbourhood, but not shabby at all, and fairly old as things go in Los Angeles. I guess a fair comparison would be somewhere like the western parts of Ashgrove as it was almost up in the hills.

, we went down to the main shopping centre in Orange which is, funnily enough, called Main Place and, even more funnily, is owned by our own Westfield. It has the standard Westfield fare that all of ours seem to have: ads for gift cards, banners from the ceiling that seem to serve no other purpose than remind you you're in a Westfield shopping centre, and that so-clean-it's-empty feel. It was almost like coming home, except for the fact we were there for one particular item - my phone. It's a Nokia 1680 and it's on a prepaid deal with T-Mobile, which is a really, really good deal as I only pay $1 on the days I use it for the service, 10c a minute to call or text, and I think 5c to pick up or open messages: yes, they charge you here for the privilege of owning a mobile phone, rather than punish the caller, especially as the phones are integrated into the local area codes. T-Mobile is pronounced like the petrol company and I remarked to Rob as we're leaving and he laughed at my pronunciation that it was like the Inter-Continental Ballistic Prayer Books the country has. He then said, as a child, he was confused as to why they kept talking about these dangerous missals, but the term over here for the books now is apparently "missalette" for that very reason.

Speaking of missals, and after going to the Barnes and Noble across the street for an address book and sketchbook, we went to the nearby Crystal Cathedral, but not before taking a detour to go around the Anaheim Angels stadium (I'm sorry, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). I could see it getting closer as we snaked through the blocks towards it and, for a piece of post-modern religious space, it's quite impressive (except for the 70's office tower right beside it). The whole thing is covered in reflective glass, and its tower (the correct term of which I forget) stands off to one side with a little marble chapel underneath. The photos are in the Flickr stream and it's worth a look. The whole thing seems to be aimed at Christianity in general and is a neutral ground - which, of course, means it's would be evangelical happy-clappy "wave your hands in the air if you love Jesus" Christianity. Also, all around it are plaque-like tiles with a verse of the Bible and somebody's name on it - a benefactor, I should think - and they were getting ready for their big production, as Rob called it, "The Glory of Easter". Apparently they even go as far as having angels fly in on zipwires during it. Christianity is big business in the USA...

With the shrine to the spiritual visited, we went to the shrine of the secular: Disneyland. Despite not going into the park, I say that because Disneyland isn't just the place surrounded by the walls and you pay money to go in - of which there's two parks, and soon to be a third as a waterpark. It takes up lots of city blocks for things like the convention centre (which doubles as an airport in movies), hotels, a shopping district, a parking lot with its own offramp from the I-5, all looking very lush and presentable and so very, very neat. We did the full circuit around the central Disneyland block and I'm partly disappointed because I thought it would be somewhat bigger, and you can't see the Magic Kingdom from the road outside - you can see Matterhorn, though.

I was very surprised, as we drove back down the I-5, to find that all of the places are relatively near one another - Rob pointed them out. They've put the main touristy part of the OC fairly close together, and it is quite convenient, so long as you have a car. I was also surprised by how the whole place is so spread out, yet things seem so close and that's due to the freeways. I was soon eating my words, though, as we ended up in a traffic jam on the way back to Corona. Apparently it's the only way through the hills to the Inland Empire for miles in either direction, so everyone who works in Orange County and lives there uses it. It's so bad that they've set up toll lanes, the amount of toll changing depending on how congested it is, anywhere from around $2.75 up to $10.

I had Chinese for dinner - orange chicken on fried rice. I don't think orange is all that common around Brisbane as you're more likely to get lemon, but I think I prefer it more, now.

Stay tuned for another day...perhaps in a few days...