A Private Bathroom With Towels

Joni's Diary:

25th June 2006 (Sunday night)

Arrived into LA for the last time at 11.00pm, and checked into Sheraton Four Points Hotel. I picked it because it was practical – I was arriving late and it was close to the airport with complimentary 24-hour shuttle service and 24-hour day stays (i.e. midnight check-in = midnight check-out – why didn’t the others think of that!?).

For the first time after staying in five different places over the course of two weeks, I knew I was definitely getting towels. Towels! Fancy that. Not to mention a king-sized bed, large open spaces, toiletries, a lobby so massive you could be lost for weeks, and...behold, a lift up to my floor.

Strangely however, in the face of all these universal, modern comforts of a typical Western hotel, instead of falling to my knees and crying Hallelujah, I stepped back and thought - by golly it’s predictable. :s

Then for the first time after staying in five different places over the course of two weeks, I was suddenly immensely glad that I didn’t deprive myself of the multi-faceted, full-flavoured adventure that it has been. I didn’t opt for air-conditioned luxury coaches. I never took a cab to and from any airport. I didn’t opt to be spoon-fed, taken by the hand, to follow the flag of a tour leader, to be told to eat, walk, see the same things as the people on the next tour bus. Yeah, I was on a budget but I shudder to think of all the experiences I would never know of and thus would never miss, if I hadn’t gone cheap. I wouldn’t have experienced charming neighbourhoods, stayed in a lop-sided building in Chelsea, laughed all the way up 5 storeys of stairs in a tipsy state after cocktails with my galpal, savoured the doggy-bag breakfasts at Nana’s Treats, heard the most colourful 'Jerry Springer'-style domestic dramas next door, realised that florists opened 24 hours, or had breakfast on a warm early morning atop a quiet rustic roof overlooking NYC.

What would I get instead?

A private bathroom with towels - metaphorically speaking.

26th June 2006 (Monday)

Caught the $0.75 Blue Bus to Santa Monica after waffles at the hotel. Love floating amongst local Los Angelenos and just observe them go about their everyday lives. Get on the bus. Get off the bus. Sit and stare. Sit and listen to music. Stand and daydream. It wasn't New York. And it wasn't glitzy glamourous 'Hollywood'. They were suburban children, grandmothers, pensioners, housewives, dads and babies. Everyday people of multi-ethnicity and for that 40 minutes we spent together, I was just one of them...

New York: Meeting People - Part III

What's a holiday without cultural exchange?

'We' doesn't mean You & I

Now that was awkward.

And I mean, I'd never been given the face before. The face that wholeheartedly said, "Look, I don't know you, but either way, I'm heterosexual." Holy moly if I only get one chance to be beamed up, Scotty, let it be now.

On 23rd June, rain darting down on Manhattan sidewalks and fizzling like cold water on screaming hot teflon streets, I found myself struggling with my umbrella and map in the southward direction on Fifth Avenue, wondering why it is that I never figure out where I'm going before leaving the hotel.

Feeling aimless, I detour into a quiet breakfast place for refuge. Have to regroup, I thought. Need to rethink my day now that the streets were turning soggy. Sit down, eat, study the map, and regroup.

I asked for their Breakfast Set No.2. You'd think after forklifting my belly out of restaurants in the US would have taught me to order a little more conservatively. So shoot me, I'm a slow learner.

I'll have the creamy cauliflower soup too, thanks. Doh!

Checked out and started chin-wagging with the cashier chick. Asked her directions to an Internet cafe, and where else I could offload my hard-earned cash besides at all the other shopping stores I'd already been to. She was happy to help.

Food arrives and as usual, hungry for food as I am for good views, I ask: "Can we go upstairs?"

I get the face. I don't recognise it.

"Oh, is it closed?"

Now she speaks, one eye-brow raised so high it's lost over her hairline, her body retracting further back and slouching on one shoulder.

"You and I? Go upstairs?"

One...two...three seconds....

Hey Oblivion, meet Realisation. Realisation, say hello to Oblivion.

There's something about having just picked up a girl, unintentionally, and now trying to defend your sexuality, without sounding as if you're covering up your disappointment of her rejecting your lesbian advances. Your stuttering and fumbling does nothing for your efforts to diffuse this sinking misunderstanding you've inflicted upon yourself.

'We' and 'Us' are everywhere in Australia. I do prefer it too. Just seems more polite, I think, instead of 'I want this, I want to go here, Give ME...Please show ME this...'

Obviously, I didn't explain this very well to her.

Before I exit I apologise to her once again, and I'm convinced she's absolutely none the wiser when she replies with deliberate emphasis,"WE don't mind. It doesn't bother US". And she smiles.

She's mocking me, isn't she?

Sigh. I give up.

What can you get for a dollar?

A slightly dramatised story that has a slow start, garnished in the middle with a bit of suspense, a nice-to-know lesson, and ends somewhat in a Hollywood-style finish i.e. happy ending, befitting of its setting at LA International Airport.

Not exactly your episode of 24, but I had exactly an hour to make a phonecall, have my luggage delivered to LAX from a god-knows-how-far offsite storage facility, check-in, proceed through the security screenings and board my flight from LA to NY.

Armed with a dollar bill, I became the one no one wanted to know. While everyone went about their own business, I was the lone wanderer who invaded the personal space of highly cautious and suspicious travelers, not surprising if a dozen security cameras were already closing in on me (keep up, hey? - we're talking American airports here!) as I went in search of someone who could break the bill for me.

"Do you have two fifties for a dollar?"

The African-American taxi attendant screws his face up, shakes his head and says, "Huh? What do you want?"

I tilt my head back to look up at him towering over me.

"You know - I have a dollar. I need two fifties to make a phone call."

"Fifties??"

He takes my dollar note and shoves four quarters into my hands and gets on with serving other people.

My flight to NY proceeds as planned.

The end.

Moral of Story: If you're asking for a particular currency denomination, make sure it's last circulation was not in the 1970s.

Simple Saturday Pleasures

Saturdays for me are about getting back at all the militaristic days between (& including) Mondays and Fridays. You sneer at those painful early mornings by rising slowly, letting the afternoon sun warm your sheets and meet your restful eyes. You pull faces at efficiency & productivity by sitting up on your bed and watching through the window, the world already spinning a few extra hours for those down below - rowing, jogging & soaking in the most welcoming of weekend weathers - and realise...my my, something's missing today. Ahh..that presence of guilt.

(today's picture-perfect view from the window)

Payback for weekday half-hour lunchbreaks at 12.30pm sharp in the cafeteria, is a time-stopping Saturday afternoon alfresco-style Sashimi Don and Salad Platter in South Melbourne at our favourite Japanese restaurant, then taking it back to homebase with a truly unremorseful serving of Christine (brownie biscuit, valrhona milk chocolat mousse, crème brulee) and soy hot chocolate at Laurent. Whilst reading The Good Weekend. Whilst adoring the excitable pooches as they greet each other at each passing by.

There is no day like Saturday to send the work week to another mode of existence, and seeing it only comes but once every seven days, use it oh so wisely...^_^

A Little Lemon & Lots of Love

Following Wednesday's stand-down time, I was marched back to work the next day. This mental decision to interrupt the healing process obviously did not go down well with Body, because then she decided to retaliate. Let’s see you try to go to work without a voice. How’ya like that, huh? Wanna call your manager and tell her you can’t make it? Let’s see how productive you’ll be without Sign Language v.101. Go on, hotshot. Let’s see you go to work.

Friday morning Voicebox malfunctioned, just as Body promised. At every one of the incessant coughs, I felt as if the back of my head was smashing against a brick wall. I was a concussing pro-bacterial human-sized germ. I was a pantomime. A silent movie. A wind tunnel.

Defeated once again, I plumped up my pillows and tucked myself back into bed with my laptop. Here’s where my story really starts.

I want to say, that I’m in love again, simply because, I know I am loved.

Some may say that a year and a half isn’t quite long enough whereby you can belch, spit, snort and expel right in front of each other. Heck, they’re absolutely right. Gav and I never began to draw up a courtesy rule, but somehow have always mutually respected each other strongly in this way.

Unfortunately, recent circumstances would have me in an embarrassing state, where my coughing and blowing would bring about expelling unnameable substances which even to me is already undeniably disgusting, let alone for another individual. Oh and the sounds I make whilst I’m at it. Boy do I pull good impersonations of my grandpa on a good day.

In spite of my most grubby form, Gav battled my surrounding landmine, as he calls it, of soggy tissues to care for me all morning. The wonder of this person is that I never asked this of him. Despite having planned some time ago to take this day off, he was in and out of my bedroom with hot lemon juice and water, then it was breakfast in bed, then my laptop was losing power so it was the battery charger, then it was a top-up of water for my lemon juice. Instead of repulsing him, my grandpa impersonations were what brought him back into my bedroom time and again with cuddles, and kisses to the forehead.

I ask, my head hanging in shame, “Hon, am I grubby?”
“Yes, you are.”
He smiles and leaves the room again.

I especially loved his response to my request for a chilled TimTam from the fridge. Here I was, a mute and a throat filled with muck, and I wanted a TimTam!

I whisper: “Can I have a TimTam?”
“No…”
“Please please pleaseee…I need a TimTam…”
“hmm…OK, but just one...”


If I ever felt more beautiful and loved on one of the worst, daggiest, grubbiest, snottiest days, it would be because of him and the way he made me feel.

To the most wonderful boyfriend an icky girl could have…thank you sweety. Still so in love with you...

Geez...Just Take The Day Off

Perhaps it was overdue. Perhaps this is in fact a picture of strength and not weakness, for the fact that she had skimmed through over 40 hours of flying, 17 days in a foreign country, 30kgs of baggage pulled across NYC streets, some 100 hours in accumulated sleep debt, surviving summer, autumn and more than half of a freeze-me-over-please winter, an overly obsessive week at work - all with the zest of an athlete and the energy of a show poodle.

Perhaps it was last weekend that really steered Titanic into the iceberg, when she was outrageously outnumbered on the dancefloor by ridiculously young freshies who looked like they should be back in their dorms studying hard for some exam, or at least be sparing if only just a cheap after-thought for their parents' money instead of spending it all on make-up, skimpy clothes, hair rollers and buying every cute female a drink so that these girls might think something of them, though sadly not realising how wrong they are on that one, or how about something a little more original like not making repeatedly stupid mistakes for the next couple of years that they'll regret but seriously who cares because when that time comes they'll conjure up some philosophical excuse to console themselves that this is all part of growing up, and learning to be stronger, wiser, and whatever the yadda yadda yadda is. Yes, they were still there when she left the club. Youth wasted on the young. Tragic.

Anyway, now Miss Immunity, long-standing employee, has decided to go on vacation after having worked tirelessly for the past 6 months. I sure wasn't going to approve it, but she threatened to quit. No arguments there. So out she went, the ink off my signature barely lifted from my pen, her straw hat on and bags packed, and she was gone.

The tissues are mounting. My glands are having a field day. My taste buds are going on strike. My throat is conducting a science experiment. My ears are turning bionic. My body is on lockdown.

Now I know that defeated feeling of late last week was merely a prelude.

Let the opera begin.