(no subject)
I spent most of October in the United States because apparently, I am a masochist. I both loved and hated it equally and spent a lot of time rolling around in the fetal position weeping, because America is strange. (This is an unfair blanket statement, really. Amurrica is really large and the east and west coast are strange in very different ways, but still absolutely crazed.)
It's a long flight to America. Really long. Really really long. I get airsick rather terribly, which means like to fly drugged the gills with a facemask and earbuds and retreat into my happy place. It works for a good six to ten hours, depending, but at some point you wake up and realise the flight's barely halfway over and the despair kicks in.
I flew into San Francisco because going straight to the east coast would have involved about 25 hours of flights which was not going to happen, ever. It was surprisingly a good decision because San Francisco is a lot like Melbourne! Except with even shittier public transport, believe it or not. It's one of the liberal, multi-cultural hubs of the USA, chock-full of super pretentious hipsters and a good proportion of Asians and the occasional man wandering around in the buff.
The naked thing doesn't happen in Melbourne. It's illegal.
However, it is not actually illegal in San Francisco. No one told me this beforehand, but I met up with a friend who lived in SanFran and he took me around. We went to the Castro, the famous gay district, and there was a naked man walking around. See, the thing was, no one else reacted. For one very strange moment, I thought I was hallucinating naked people.
He took me to one of the famous parks, ostensibly for the best look at the San Francisco skyline, but all I really saw were half naked people. Everywhere.
I also did the usual tourist things, like walk part of the Golden Gate Bridge and ride the cable cars UP AND DOWN AND UP AND DOWN because that does not actually get boring. :'D One of the nice conductors took my photo for me and then took a photo with me, and then a cable car driver hit on me and asked me out to dinner.
Oh America.
The best thing, hands down, was finding an alpaca that looked and dressed like me.
There was a bar in the basement of my hostel, because I went to a super classy place, seriously. And in it, I met a lot of Australians because we're goddamned everywhere. One of them insisted that I go out with them, which means at some point, I got picked up, tossed over someone's shoulder, and bodily carried out to a taxi. There is a reason why Australians have a bad reputation overseas. IT IS ALL TRUE.
After three days, I flew out to New Jersey, because it was cheaper than flying to New York, and spent a couple of days there before joining a bus tour to tour a few more states. Bus tours are actual hell. You don't know where you are, most of the time. You get on the bus, you sit on the bus, YOU CRY A LOT BECAUSE YOU ARE ON A BUS.
I make a lot of bad choices when travelling, most of which rely on the kindness of strangers. I wanted to couch surf around America, but was warned off it because it is not exactly the easiest of things to do. However, I did find a site that hooks you up with travel buddies for those minimum occupancy tours, so I travelled with a nice Swedish guy for a few days. It's not actually awkward sharing rooms because I'm so used to hostels and we were with a large tour group so it wasn't as if I were in danger of being murdered. :D YAY.
We went to Washington DC, which is really very pretty.
After they let me off the bus, I pretty much ran shrieking around that entire lake, just because I could. FREEDOM.
Freedom fries is what Amurrica is all about.
And the next day, Niagara Falls! I actually really liked Niagara. We took the ferry and then got ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED because Niagara hates humans.
And then because I am extra stupid, I tried to climb next to the falls and got soaked to the point that my shoes were squelching with every step. ;;;;;;;;;
Don't try this. It's not actually as fun as you'd think.
An interlude here to say that the only thing American wildlife has over Australian wildlife is the OVERABUNDANCE OF SQUIRRELS. EVERYWHERE.
THEY WERE SO ADORABLE. I MADE FRIENDS. I FELT LIKE SNOW WHITE.
And then back to New York, after a stop-off at some 1000 Islands thing and a daring journey into Canadian waters. And some glass museum? I decided that, no, did not want and buggered off to a nearby town to walk around and drink some apple cider. I nursed a sugar induced headache for the rest of the day.
I didn't actually like New York that much. It reminded me of bizarro London, since New York is a very old city and the historical parts of Manhattan are very reminiscent of the heart of historical London. And the amount of complete and utter loathing I felt for the underground in New York echoed the hatred I had for the tube in London.
I did love the Statten Island ferry. Here is the obligatory photo of the Statue of Liberty.
From there, I did a short trip on the bus from New York to Philadelphia for Em's wedding. Em has been one of the longest running internet friendship's I've had and it was the first time in about five year's that I'd seen her in person, after that time in Japan where she was studying abroad and I... had been teaching English in Kyuushuu until my company shut down and thus had all the free time in the world to go visiting, ahaha.
Small town Amurrica (not even that small a town, really) is an education. It's somehow exactly what you'd expect from media portrayals which somehow makes it worse, because you think that everything is being over exaggerated and real humans are not like this but they are.
Walmart is actually one of the most terrifying places in the entire world. These items have absolutely no hint of irony to them, BUT A JOYFUL PATRIOTISM THAT REALLY SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME.
Pictured: absolute sincerity.
I could not cope. It broke something within me. I think perhaps it was my soul.
The actual wedding was pretty awesome. We spent several nights putting together the party favours and centrepieces and I have about a billion photos because it was an outdoor wedding in Autumn, in Pennsylvania, on a country club estate so everything was beautiful. There was a golf cart that drove through the back during the vows. That only made it better.
American wedding traditions are completely new to me, though. It was a non-denominational wedding, but a lot of what they did felt very traditional. There was a candle lighting ceremony (candles lit by reps of each family, bride and groom use those candles to light one single candle to represent their families coming as one) and a sand pouring ceremony (bride and groom have two different vials of sand that they pour into one vial to make pretty patterns) and a whole lot of symbolism everywhere.
I was exceptionally confused about the sand thing and especially how to transport the vial back at the end of the night - the waiter cleaning up said that the bride and groom were meant to keep it as a keepsake, and he did it at his wedding, but now he was divorced and also, he's a bit of a photographer and did I feel like doing some modelling. Oh America.
You'll notice that I don't really put photos of other people up unless they're random strangers or bucket_shot. :'D There are privacy issues and such, so I'll leave off on the wedding photos also.
I spent the entire night introducing myself as Em's imported Chinese labour because I'd only seen one other Asian the entire time I'd been there. :'D And it was at least a little bit true. ♥
The day after the wedding, Em went off on her honeymoon and I went across the country back to California to catch a concert the next day. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it with me. I got it back several days later but not before wasting hours at the help desk that night, and having pretty much nothing on me except for my handbag and a suit jacket. We woke up for the concert/convention about four hours after we got to bed.
K-con was bad. Poorly organised, poorly informed and just ill-conceived policies all over the place. I spent most of it in a daze, trying to find some shade to sit in where there were not entirely too many people, and napping when I could find the empty space. However, as a cosplayer, there is nothing that I am as used to as hellish conditions being trapped at an outdoor venue all day while not sleeping the night before and having no food or water.
The definition of closet cosplay, this was pretty much the only outfit I had from wearing it onto the plane. Except for the wig, mask and bunny ears. Airport security frowns upon masks.
I'm a spitting image, okay. I spent the entire day going "FUCK YOU, I'M A BUNNY D<" at pretty much everything /weep
The actual concert was not bad, even though we had nosebleed seats. There was a moment of annoyance when someone at a lower tier had a balloon that she let bob about that blocked the view of the stage, which meant I went down as a bunny, spoke to one of the security to let me through, hopped two rows of chairs, and asked her very nicely to put it down. Sometimes, a rabbit's gotta do what a rabbit's gotta do.
The biggest billed acts go last and have the most set time. So, Exo-M (as an SM act) was up second last and given four whole songs but they don't actually have that many. I pretty much wept laughing when they did Mama, History, Angel... and then everyone excited stage left bar two members who did What is Love. Oh Exo. You promised a December comeback and it's three weeks in. If you come back on the 31st, I WILL SET SOMETHING ON FIRE.
California's very pretty, I think. It reminds me a lot of Australia, except bizarro Australia where things are just the slightest bit not quite right. It's like one of those creepy nightmares where everything is absolutely familiar but there's a subtle, niggling wrongness to everything.
And look! Alien clouds!
I didn't stay in LA the entire two weeks because LA is misery in the city centre. It's a nice place to visit and see, but I don't think I could live there without going insane. Instead, I hopped down to San Diego for a few days (on the Greyhound bus, which is actually as mad as everyone says it is, where I struck up a conversation with a retired Marine who told me his life story and showed me pictures of his family) to go see another internet buddy and seals.
Possibly they were sea lions. We couldn't tell. Nor could we figure out the difference between them. ;;
And did like, other stuff, including being dragged out by one of my hostel roommates to some sort of club where I had the most hilarious pick up lines used on me ever by an exceptionally drunk Texan. I can see now why bad pickup lines are disarming because you don't quite want to stop them since every line they say tops the previous one and the sheer amount of stupid kinda steamrolls your brain. Eventually, my roommate rescued me.
Then back to LA for a little and onto another bus tour.
The bus was very large and comfortable for being a bus but there is only so long that the desert is interesting and after the fifteenth hour, it all starts going down hill.
We went Vegas. I sort of love and hate Las Vegas at the same time.
It's such... excess. Fascinating excess of all sorts and all levels, from the super wealthy squandering thousands like it's nothing, to the tiny human dramas that play out when people who can't afford to lose money just can't stop themselves.
Also, I think that in about 2000 years, when everything is crushed and buried by time, future archeologists are going to dig up the Venetian and the Luxor and the miniature Statue of Liberty and freak out. SURELY, this was some great mecca of learning and culture!! Look at all those tables where you could sit and talk! Look at all those consoles where surely programs of learning were available! They would seriously flip their shit and it would all be so very wrong.
In a strange turn of events, I met up with some people that I met in a hostel in LA, including a Melbournian who went to my brother school. Several years below me, but my school and his school did functions and such together because I went to that sort of posh girl's school that actually did have brother schools and functions, uh. We got along ridiculously well, but I think only because we're both the disgusting sorts of people that like going to art galleries and discussing surrealism and the fact that our schools had polo teams and had slightly ridiculous arguments about who had been to more obscure countries.
I should not actually have been surprised that he wanted to sleep with me and kinda expected that I would sleep with him but no. :| JUST. NO. STOP, HUMANS. IT'S BAD.
On a happier note, we went to the Grand Canyon!
It looked strangely not real. Like, I'm not even joking, it looked like the biggest greenscreen in the world.
Our poor tour guide kept on freaking out about the possibility of people falling off the edge, so naturally, a group of like minded individuals and myself went skittering all over the place and frolicked happily where there were no railings.
No one was harmed in the making of these memories, so all good!
Meandered through Hoover Dam, lost a couple of dollars on the slot machines in exchange for free drinks, did some outlet shopping, etc, etc. I missed Halloween by a couple of days but was there for the weekend before it, so went to go frolic in Hollywood Memorial Cemetery because that's what's done during Halloween, right? Drinking amongst the graves, frolicking about dressed as skeletons, all the cultural appropriation, etc, etc.
Still cool, though;;
And thus ends my highly abbreviated adventures in Amurrica. I leave you with this national landmark and say,
God bless.
I think everything in my life can be summed up with "I went here and then this creep tried to talk to me, so I left. It was okay."
[previous recaps: japan+hk | hobbies+fandom]
It's a long flight to America. Really long. Really really long. I get airsick rather terribly, which means like to fly drugged the gills with a facemask and earbuds and retreat into my happy place. It works for a good six to ten hours, depending, but at some point you wake up and realise the flight's barely halfway over and the despair kicks in.
I flew into San Francisco because going straight to the east coast would have involved about 25 hours of flights which was not going to happen, ever. It was surprisingly a good decision because San Francisco is a lot like Melbourne! Except with even shittier public transport, believe it or not. It's one of the liberal, multi-cultural hubs of the USA, chock-full of super pretentious hipsters and a good proportion of Asians and the occasional man wandering around in the buff.
The naked thing doesn't happen in Melbourne. It's illegal.
However, it is not actually illegal in San Francisco. No one told me this beforehand, but I met up with a friend who lived in SanFran and he took me around. We went to the Castro, the famous gay district, and there was a naked man walking around. See, the thing was, no one else reacted. For one very strange moment, I thought I was hallucinating naked people.
He took me to one of the famous parks, ostensibly for the best look at the San Francisco skyline, but all I really saw were half naked people. Everywhere.
I also did the usual tourist things, like walk part of the Golden Gate Bridge and ride the cable cars UP AND DOWN AND UP AND DOWN because that does not actually get boring. :'D One of the nice conductors took my photo for me and then took a photo with me, and then a cable car driver hit on me and asked me out to dinner.
Oh America.
The best thing, hands down, was finding an alpaca that looked and dressed like me.
There was a bar in the basement of my hostel, because I went to a super classy place, seriously. And in it, I met a lot of Australians because we're goddamned everywhere. One of them insisted that I go out with them, which means at some point, I got picked up, tossed over someone's shoulder, and bodily carried out to a taxi. There is a reason why Australians have a bad reputation overseas. IT IS ALL TRUE.
After three days, I flew out to New Jersey, because it was cheaper than flying to New York, and spent a couple of days there before joining a bus tour to tour a few more states. Bus tours are actual hell. You don't know where you are, most of the time. You get on the bus, you sit on the bus, YOU CRY A LOT BECAUSE YOU ARE ON A BUS.
I make a lot of bad choices when travelling, most of which rely on the kindness of strangers. I wanted to couch surf around America, but was warned off it because it is not exactly the easiest of things to do. However, I did find a site that hooks you up with travel buddies for those minimum occupancy tours, so I travelled with a nice Swedish guy for a few days. It's not actually awkward sharing rooms because I'm so used to hostels and we were with a large tour group so it wasn't as if I were in danger of being murdered. :D YAY.
We went to Washington DC, which is really very pretty.
After they let me off the bus, I pretty much ran shrieking around that entire lake, just because I could. FREEDOM.
Freedom fries is what Amurrica is all about.
And the next day, Niagara Falls! I actually really liked Niagara. We took the ferry and then got ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED because Niagara hates humans.
And then because I am extra stupid, I tried to climb next to the falls and got soaked to the point that my shoes were squelching with every step. ;;;;;;;;;
Don't try this. It's not actually as fun as you'd think.
An interlude here to say that the only thing American wildlife has over Australian wildlife is the OVERABUNDANCE OF SQUIRRELS. EVERYWHERE.
THEY WERE SO ADORABLE. I MADE FRIENDS. I FELT LIKE SNOW WHITE.
And then back to New York, after a stop-off at some 1000 Islands thing and a daring journey into Canadian waters. And some glass museum? I decided that, no, did not want and buggered off to a nearby town to walk around and drink some apple cider. I nursed a sugar induced headache for the rest of the day.
I didn't actually like New York that much. It reminded me of bizarro London, since New York is a very old city and the historical parts of Manhattan are very reminiscent of the heart of historical London. And the amount of complete and utter loathing I felt for the underground in New York echoed the hatred I had for the tube in London.
I did love the Statten Island ferry. Here is the obligatory photo of the Statue of Liberty.
From there, I did a short trip on the bus from New York to Philadelphia for Em's wedding. Em has been one of the longest running internet friendship's I've had and it was the first time in about five year's that I'd seen her in person, after that time in Japan where she was studying abroad and I... had been teaching English in Kyuushuu until my company shut down and thus had all the free time in the world to go visiting, ahaha.
Small town Amurrica (not even that small a town, really) is an education. It's somehow exactly what you'd expect from media portrayals which somehow makes it worse, because you think that everything is being over exaggerated and real humans are not like this but they are.
Walmart is actually one of the most terrifying places in the entire world. These items have absolutely no hint of irony to them, BUT A JOYFUL PATRIOTISM THAT REALLY SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME.
Pictured: absolute sincerity.
I could not cope. It broke something within me. I think perhaps it was my soul.
The actual wedding was pretty awesome. We spent several nights putting together the party favours and centrepieces and I have about a billion photos because it was an outdoor wedding in Autumn, in Pennsylvania, on a country club estate so everything was beautiful. There was a golf cart that drove through the back during the vows. That only made it better.
American wedding traditions are completely new to me, though. It was a non-denominational wedding, but a lot of what they did felt very traditional. There was a candle lighting ceremony (candles lit by reps of each family, bride and groom use those candles to light one single candle to represent their families coming as one) and a sand pouring ceremony (bride and groom have two different vials of sand that they pour into one vial to make pretty patterns) and a whole lot of symbolism everywhere.
I was exceptionally confused about the sand thing and especially how to transport the vial back at the end of the night - the waiter cleaning up said that the bride and groom were meant to keep it as a keepsake, and he did it at his wedding, but now he was divorced and also, he's a bit of a photographer and did I feel like doing some modelling. Oh America.
You'll notice that I don't really put photos of other people up unless they're random strangers or bucket_shot. :'D There are privacy issues and such, so I'll leave off on the wedding photos also.
I spent the entire night introducing myself as Em's imported Chinese labour because I'd only seen one other Asian the entire time I'd been there. :'D And it was at least a little bit true. ♥
The day after the wedding, Em went off on her honeymoon and I went across the country back to California to catch a concert the next day. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it with me. I got it back several days later but not before wasting hours at the help desk that night, and having pretty much nothing on me except for my handbag and a suit jacket. We woke up for the concert/convention about four hours after we got to bed.
K-con was bad. Poorly organised, poorly informed and just ill-conceived policies all over the place. I spent most of it in a daze, trying to find some shade to sit in where there were not entirely too many people, and napping when I could find the empty space. However, as a cosplayer, there is nothing that I am as used to as hellish conditions being trapped at an outdoor venue all day while not sleeping the night before and having no food or water.
The definition of closet cosplay, this was pretty much the only outfit I had from wearing it onto the plane. Except for the wig, mask and bunny ears. Airport security frowns upon masks.
I'm a spitting image, okay. I spent the entire day going "FUCK YOU, I'M A BUNNY D<" at pretty much everything /weep
The actual concert was not bad, even though we had nosebleed seats. There was a moment of annoyance when someone at a lower tier had a balloon that she let bob about that blocked the view of the stage, which meant I went down as a bunny, spoke to one of the security to let me through, hopped two rows of chairs, and asked her very nicely to put it down. Sometimes, a rabbit's gotta do what a rabbit's gotta do.
The biggest billed acts go last and have the most set time. So, Exo-M (as an SM act) was up second last and given four whole songs but they don't actually have that many. I pretty much wept laughing when they did Mama, History, Angel... and then everyone excited stage left bar two members who did What is Love. Oh Exo. You promised a December comeback and it's three weeks in. If you come back on the 31st, I WILL SET SOMETHING ON FIRE.
California's very pretty, I think. It reminds me a lot of Australia, except bizarro Australia where things are just the slightest bit not quite right. It's like one of those creepy nightmares where everything is absolutely familiar but there's a subtle, niggling wrongness to everything.
And look! Alien clouds!
I didn't stay in LA the entire two weeks because LA is misery in the city centre. It's a nice place to visit and see, but I don't think I could live there without going insane. Instead, I hopped down to San Diego for a few days (on the Greyhound bus, which is actually as mad as everyone says it is, where I struck up a conversation with a retired Marine who told me his life story and showed me pictures of his family) to go see another internet buddy and seals.
Possibly they were sea lions. We couldn't tell. Nor could we figure out the difference between them. ;;
And did like, other stuff, including being dragged out by one of my hostel roommates to some sort of club where I had the most hilarious pick up lines used on me ever by an exceptionally drunk Texan. I can see now why bad pickup lines are disarming because you don't quite want to stop them since every line they say tops the previous one and the sheer amount of stupid kinda steamrolls your brain. Eventually, my roommate rescued me.
Then back to LA for a little and onto another bus tour.
The bus was very large and comfortable for being a bus but there is only so long that the desert is interesting and after the fifteenth hour, it all starts going down hill.
We went Vegas. I sort of love and hate Las Vegas at the same time.
It's such... excess. Fascinating excess of all sorts and all levels, from the super wealthy squandering thousands like it's nothing, to the tiny human dramas that play out when people who can't afford to lose money just can't stop themselves.
Also, I think that in about 2000 years, when everything is crushed and buried by time, future archeologists are going to dig up the Venetian and the Luxor and the miniature Statue of Liberty and freak out. SURELY, this was some great mecca of learning and culture!! Look at all those tables where you could sit and talk! Look at all those consoles where surely programs of learning were available! They would seriously flip their shit and it would all be so very wrong.
In a strange turn of events, I met up with some people that I met in a hostel in LA, including a Melbournian who went to my brother school. Several years below me, but my school and his school did functions and such together because I went to that sort of posh girl's school that actually did have brother schools and functions, uh. We got along ridiculously well, but I think only because we're both the disgusting sorts of people that like going to art galleries and discussing surrealism and the fact that our schools had polo teams and had slightly ridiculous arguments about who had been to more obscure countries.
I should not actually have been surprised that he wanted to sleep with me and kinda expected that I would sleep with him but no. :| JUST. NO. STOP, HUMANS. IT'S BAD.
On a happier note, we went to the Grand Canyon!
It looked strangely not real. Like, I'm not even joking, it looked like the biggest greenscreen in the world.
Our poor tour guide kept on freaking out about the possibility of people falling off the edge, so naturally, a group of like minded individuals and myself went skittering all over the place and frolicked happily where there were no railings.
No one was harmed in the making of these memories, so all good!
Meandered through Hoover Dam, lost a couple of dollars on the slot machines in exchange for free drinks, did some outlet shopping, etc, etc. I missed Halloween by a couple of days but was there for the weekend before it, so went to go frolic in Hollywood Memorial Cemetery because that's what's done during Halloween, right? Drinking amongst the graves, frolicking about dressed as skeletons, all the cultural appropriation, etc, etc.
Still cool, though;;
And thus ends my highly abbreviated adventures in Amurrica. I leave you with this national landmark and say,
God bless.
I think everything in my life can be summed up with "I went here and then this creep tried to talk to me, so I left. It was okay."
[previous recaps: japan+hk | hobbies+fandom]