Rob's Blog

Update: I’m slowly adding photos from this trip.

I’m typing this from my hotel room in Newport Beach, California, just outside of Los Angeles. I’ve been here on business since Sunday night. I’ve never visited the West coast of the USA before, so I jumped at the chance of coming.

The first thing that struck me was the view out of the plane window from about half an hour before we landed. After hours of emptiness in the form of Greenland, New Foundland and the Rockies, the urban vastness of LA was staggering. It just goes on and on, in its fractal grid pattern, for mile after mile. You can drive along ten lane freeways for hours and see nothing but city. The grid just stretches away in every direction.

But that’s not to say it’s boring – far from it. I have done very little sightseeing so far, but there are distinct parts of town that have their own character. Newport Beach, where I live and work, is an affluent area with hotels and business parks near where I am, and marinas, beaches, bars and restaurants closer to the sea. Despite being connected physically to LA by concrete sprawl, it is quite separate in character. Rudendo Beach where some of my colleages are staying, is genuinely a part of LA, but from what I’ve seen of it it doesn’t feel like it’s part of a vast city.

I’m enjoying staying in America partly because it’s an escape from the anti-Americanism I’m bombarded with at home. I like that you can drive around in an absurd, gas guzzling truck if you want. That there are a million types of fast food restaurant, and yet more extremely good and extremely affordable (especially when the company is paying) proper restaurants. I like that nobody here complains about these things, and I like the constant daily reminder that Americans are well balanced, well educated, friendly, helpful people – not the fat, ignorant hill-billies many Europeans like to believe they are.

I’ve noticed that the media is much more diverse here than back home. The first radio station I tuned to when driving from the airport had a talk show in which the host described the French as cowardly and the UN as ineffectual. This is just not something people say in public in the UK! Newspapers and news programmes routinely speak of cutting government spending (especially when talking about Reagan, as they do so much lately). When was the last time the BBC called for cutting government spending as something that could ever seriously be considered?

I’m also struck by how street savvy you have to be to live here. Everywhere you turn people are trying to sell you useless products, or rip you off with get rich/healthy quick schemes. I think many brits would not be able to cope, coddled as they are by the nanny state, they would soon be clamouring for protection if they planned on staying longer than a short visit. People here expect solve their own problems, they don’t go running to the government every five minutes. Political talk seems more about economic and foreign policy, and less about what new legislation needs to be brought in.

And America feels more like a foreign country than I expect it to; more foreign than it has any right to feel being an English speaking country. I’ve noticed this on previous trips too. Thousands of everyday things are different in tiny ways – from the design of light switches, fixtures and fittings and toilets, to fire hydrants and road junctions. The same problems are solved in slightly different ways.

All this makes it a challenging, interesting, exciting place to be.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2004 at 6:51 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.