| Roisin 的个人资料California here we come ...照片日志列表 |  工具  帮助 |
California here we come ... or so we thought ©3月14日 Our Summer in Los Angeles - Part 5Apologies for not updating this blog! We keep forgetting! But we’ll have to start back at it again because our trip to LA was just so funny!
So where did we leave off……oh yes….
When we had finally recovered from our exhausting, demanding, arduous exercise experience, we thought we perhaps should do what we had come all the way from Ireland to do…..look for work! We had almost forgotten as we spent most of the time sitting on our moderately sized (but gradually growing) asses on our tiny little blue couch dreaming of all our summer prospects which, ironically, could not be reached without a few dollars – well considering our plans – a few hundred…..million dollars. We had planned to take trips to Tijuana, Las Vegas, San Diego and finish with one big shopping spree in New York…..needless to say that the nearest thing to a shopping spree was us in Rite Aid stocking up on our usual supply of chocolate and water. So jobs it was then! But where to start? Ralphs and Rite Aid had no work – we were hoping we could get free water and chocolate! So we ventured out into the world – that being the Westside Pavilion and Santa Monica Place – two large shopping malls near us. We were girls on a quest. I mean, surely, if nothing else, our extraordinarily white exterior would catch the attention of employers – it might even lure customers into their shops to see what we were! What are they mom? However, while we imagined ourselves receiving magnificent, high-paid jobs – perhaps with a large business company where they would require that we dress in Gucci suits and Manola Blahnik shoes – we had to settle for….yep….you guessed it….a dump! Only kidding – we actually couldn't even get work in a dump!
That is to say, that when applying to restaurants, we listed an vast amount of fictional restaurants that we had worked at back home, for toy stores, a list of fictional toy stores we worked at back home – you get the picture. We weren't lying, per sae, just bending the truth to the extreme. But we had no other choice – it was either this or back home to rainy Ireland. However, because each application form required us to write contact numbers for all past employees, we spent most of our mornings afterwards frantically ringing relations at home in Ireland to inform them that they now owned a number of businesses in the culinary area, hospitality field, children’s toys, women’s fashion, coffee production and orange juice companies – yes we even applied to Jamba Juice…the extraordinary health experience unlike any you've ever tasted!...apparently! This would be interesting we thought as we listened confused to the chirpy voices at the end of the line. They seemed to be taking this employment thing very seriously! Did these employers actually expect us to know anything about their companies? I mean, what was that about. We just needed money. It wasn't like this was going to be our career. They were already discussing pension options. Ok so even if we had to pretend like we were interested in Gap Kids to the point where we actually dressed in their clothes even though they were 100 sizes too small for us, we would do that for a few dollars that could buy us Cadburys!
Check out what happens at the interviews…..next time!
11月10日 Our Summer In Los Angeles - part 4Hey again, here's what happened with the chicken and our endeavours to be fit and healthy…hah…. even saying this makes us laugh!
In Ireland, on the 'rare' occasion that the weather is chilly, freezing or sub-zero artic like, we Irish like to tuck in to some good old-fashioned chicken – the traditional Sunday roast. Since we were trying to revive our "Bree Van de Kamp" phase, we decided that although unlike Ireland the weather in LA was scorching, sizzling and swelteringly boiling, something about our lives there needed an Irish touch – a chicken was the answer. So we bought one. But the hard part was still around the corner – the small matter of cooking it. The three of us stood in our kitchen and gawped vacantly at this strange looking lump of smarmy headless fowl. It looked back at us unresponsive (thank God) and raw. After what seemed like a half an hour gawking with baffled white faces at this ornithological wonder, we set about cooking the chicken. This would be interesting. Well first things first – We switched on the oven. After freeing the chicken of its disgusting internal gunk we put it on a baking tray and placed it in the oven. While it burned steadily in the corner, we set about to making the stuffing. Stuffing is the best part of a roast dinner but unfortunately our attempt looked nothing like our mother's lovely stuffing back in Ireland. We had looked to buy ready-made breadcrumbs in our local food store the day before, as we didn't have a blender to make our own. We pottered over to a sales assistant in Ralph’s and asked him politely whether the shop sold ready made breadcrumbs. "Sure thing" was his response. We exchanged glances, our white faces that were gradually turning pink from the sun of LA, beaming at each other. We had found our breadcrumbs. The salesman kindly directed us to the correct isle in the store where he reached up high on the shelf and presented us with a red tin, which bore the label breadcrumbs. "Great" we thought "Just Great". However when we arrived home, we realised that instead of exquisitely rounded knobs of bread for breadcrumbs, we had in fact bought a tin of what looked like sand – that is how microscopic these infinitesimal granules were. In the end, in order to counterbalance the minusculeness of the bread grain, we chopped some bits from a chunky sliced pan to make it thicker. After adding some diced onion which made us cry uncontrollably, and some basil which Carol insisted obstinately on – ("I'm telling you girls, it's basil that goes into stuffing"…… "Really? Not thyme? Not mixed herbs? Really? Are you sure?"….. "Girls, I am certain.") we were presented with the most outlandish, most unequal, most incorrect stuffing of all time. And while we stood for what seemed like half an hour gaping blankly at this pot of overflowing mushy sand grain, basil and a mountain of onion, the remainder of the dinner had shrivelled into utter bleakness. So……chips and beans it was then. The chicken was no longer our friend. But we still didn't want to give in to Cadbury's chocolate.
So, we reluctantly decided to go back to our healthy phase again – we wanted to try and make it last for longer than a day this time! As you can probably guess already … it didn’t! We were all so determined though – that was the funny part. We really believed this would be the last day we would devour junk and this would be the creation of something new, something exciting, something healthy, something ... something other than stuffing our faces with Cadburys! We thought of ‘fun’ ways to exercise – one being rollorblading. Once again we drifted off into our fantasyland and imagined us rollorblading along Santa Monica pier, the sun radiating intensely, our long hair blowing in the breeze and us ‘hopefully toned’ – Instead the reality was somehow different. Picture this – Three extremely white girls, ‘trying’ to roller blade, completely red faced, out of breath and one who will remained unnamed, falling all over the place! Thankfully she had a backpack on her back to soften her fall – ah it was a very ‘graceful’ fall though. Meanwhile, hundreds of gorgeous tanned people were gracefully gliding along the pier on their roller blades. They did it so effortlessly it was embarrassing. We must have stood out like sore thumbs, especially with all our protective padding. We had kneepads, wrist pads and elbow pads. In fairness, we did get better … after some time. However, throughout our hour of rollerblading, Helen began to realise that she was in fact quite burnt. She thought she would be more burnt than the chicken we cooked the day before. And because of the protective pads on her arms she got burnt in funny lines and markings. They were very pronounced markings especially against the exceedingly white skin. People thought they were cult markings, as we’ll tell you more about later.
Another form of exercise we decided to try was ‘power walking’ – this was not as fun In fact, it was hell. An hour of power walking in the blistering heat was absolute torture. God, we really were so unfit – but at least we had ‘dreams’ of being fit and healthy– even if they didn’t exactly work out. Anyway, once again we were so determined to make this work. We said without thinking what hell lay before us, “Lets try and do this everyday”. How naive we were! About 5 seconds into our walk we started thinking …. “Huh …. This is actually ok … I can do this”. Another 10 seconds went by and we were kinda getting a bit tired at this stage but wanted to walk for the full hour. By the time we were 30 seconds into our walk we were absolutely, one hundred percent almost dying. We felt like our heads were going to explode – We kept on thinking, “What the hell were we thinking of those 45 seconds ago!!” We could feel our heart pounding in our heads and we could see out of the corner of our eye, the flabbergasted glares of passers by as they saw these three massive red-faced girls crawling towards them – it wasn’t a pretty picture. When we finally arrived home, the couch somehow seemed to far to get to – we plonked ourselves on the floor outside our building and pored the remaining drip from our bottles of water over our cherry throbbing heads – what a site.
So as you can see, everything we have tried to do so far has failed – sorry let me rephrase that – failed MISERABLY with flying colours. You could say … we pulled a ‘Monica’ (for those of you who watch ‘Friends’) well many Monica’s really. Check back soon for more crazy mayhem – and if you thought it couldn’t possibly get worse or more comical … believe us it does!! 11月9日 Our Summer in Los Angeles - part 3Hey again!
So sorry we took so long to update. We’re back though and we’ll update it more frequently. We’ve so much more to tell you. And if you thought the first part was funny wait till you see what happened to us – it involves constantly hiding from our apartment manager, a lot of chocolate and one to many trips to rite aid and Ralphs
Ok, so when we first arrived in Westwood, the tenants of the apartment, whose names we still didn’t know, were just clearing out all their stuff. We greeted them with our usual Hello ‘cough sma’. Just in case you forgot from our last blog, their names were Usma and asma and we could never tell who was who. One of them watched us as we signed the contract and was bemused when we offered her $1200, or our first months rent, in a wad of notes. We were very unorganised – we had no envelope or anything. It was like we were criminals with all the rent in 20 dollar bills. All we were missing were the shades and the briefcases! Anyway, the girls couldn’t get over all the bags we had. We had more stuff for 3 months than they had in her apartment for the whole year!! The manager was even more amused as he believed our 13 bags belonged to only two of us, as there are only supposed to be two people living in the apartment at any one time. This meant one of us running to the bathroom every time the manager paid us a random visit. He must have known something was up, because every time he knocked at our door he heard the crashing and banging of us trying to hide. After some time we eventually came to the door, outwardly trying to act calm and adding polite but flustered comments like “Eh just dropped a cup!” but inwardly freaking out and thinking “I hope Carol’s ok squashed into the cupboard under our sink!”
As we said earlier, Usma and asma were clearing out all their stuff and when I say all their stuff I mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!! We were lucky they left the mattresses for us!! We decided to settle in with a nice cup of tea as we Irish like to A LOT! However when we opened the press a bare sight was beheld. There was no kettle! NOOOOOOOO! Its ok we though, don’t panic. We’ll just boil it in a pot. So we opened another press and to our utter disbelief there was no pot – sorry let me rephrase that – there was NOTHING what so ever in the fecking apartment. Things didn’t look good. You see, we really like our food and our tea, as you will see later. Once we came out of shock, we swung into action and marched to our nearest Rite aid … what a dump – no just kidding. It was very ‘practical’ as my mother would say. We stocked up on all the necessities – pots, pans, sweeping brush, bin, cutlery, toilet paper – you name it we got it! By the way, the pot we bought was probably the dinkiest pot in the world – it could only fit one carrot and one potato – no we’re just kidding – it could fit 2 carrots.When we got to the checkout our hearts fluttered slightly as the girl asked for “ 300 dollars please”. We stared at her blankly! Again she repeated “300 dollars please …” Outwardly we remained calm and handed over the money … inwardly … we died. In the space of 24 hours, over 1500 dollars was taken from us. Rite aid somehow seemed too expensive for us. 7.11 here we come! As we emerged from the shop with all our bags and crates upon crates of water, we called for a taxi. Tired from our ‘spree’ in rite aid we rested on our crates of water. When the taxi man pulled up he smiled graciously and place our bags in the trunk. He thought he was done … how wrong he was on. His smiled vanished when we stood up revealing the 8 crates of bottled water that were to fit in his car. “Are all of these yours?” he asked nervously. We smiled embarrassingly. For the next ten minutes the four of us, with much effort, managed to manoeuvre the eight crates into the car, with occasional help from passers by. It was another story trying to get them into our apartment – thank god for the elevator.
So now we were settling into LA – a place obsessed with appearance and bursting at the seams with size 0 starlets. This was the perfect place for peer pressure to force us to eat sticks of celery instead of sticks of Cadburys. We had prepared for a summer of slimming down – exercise, fitness, general skinniness. How wrong we were. Skinniness turned quite rapidly into mild obesity (just kidding but that's the way it was heading). We imagined ourselves after the summer – toned, tanned, our hair blowing in the breeze. The reality was quite different – somewhat chubby, with white bodies and red faces from sunburn and kids saying – "What are they mom?"
What were we thinking? If LA was so obsessed with weight then why were the shops exactly the same as back home. Filled with sweets like shops in Ireland. However in Ireland these sweets are present to comfort the citizens because most of them suffer from a disease called SAD disease which is basically a disease about the weather. SAD stands for Seasonal Affected Disorder – it is actually a disorder. Look it up if you like. Basically it's because we rarely get sunshine to boost the endorphins in our brains so we substitute this with chocolate and sweets like Cadburys. But even in LA, where the sun is blazing down on our Irish brains and filling them with endorphins we still seemed to eat sweets. Little did we know that Cadburys was available in LA so basically after that revelation…..well lets just say the only muscle we were exercising was our jaws.
We found a local food store. It was heaven. We spent more time there than at the beach (only kidding but it was heading that way) – scanning the food isles like crazed peasants who hadn't eaten for months, grabbing random items off the shelf. In the beginning, when we went through our "We're going to be so healthy it's unbelievable" phase, we hovered in the organic corner plucking fresh vegetables from the shelves and trying to look like professionals sniffing the sweet aroma of health from their unprocessed exterior. How LA were we? However, as time went on, our noses were gradually drawn to a far sweeter aroma – chocolate in all its delight! Homemade cookies, muffins and Betty Crocker homemade mixes shone in front of us. We were moving from our "so LA" phase into the "let's be like housewives and make lovely home made buns and tea" phase. This would be interesting. We envisaged ourselves sitting on our cosy apartment couch snuggled with our cups of Barry's tea (we actually brought Irish teabags with us!) and eating fluffy muffins or mouth-watering cookies while watching an all American chick flick. Yes we were all going to turn into Bree Van de Kamps – with our neat little buns and immaculately white little aprons hovering (we hover a lot don't we?) around a ceramic pot mixing our light fusions of creamy delights. However, the nearest thing to Bree was the mouldy cheese in our fridge. And we ended up mixing our prepacked batter with drops of milk, red faced from the blasting heat from our oven…..We really should have learned how to work that! Instead of floating little buns of heaven however, we had lumps of undercooked sinking goo. That wasn't going to be nice. Even though we had predicted this inevitability when we saw how our buns looked, we still were somewhat curious. Maybe these chunks of imperfection would in fact be divine. Well divine is a bit of an overstatement – they were …..Well…..gooey, gummy, mushy lumps of crapiness. So it was back to being healthy – well for a day anyway! Back to "Ralph’s Food store" it was. This time we headed towards the chickens. The chickens were our friends. We could relate to them. They were white and plump and in LA and I mean…..half the time we run around like headless chickens anyway!
Check out what happens with the chicken next time. Especially with that tiny pot – it's quite a story! Also come back to read more about our adventures - you don't want to miss our disastrous night out in Hollywood, having 40 applications rejected and working for Environment California !
10月12日 Our Summer in Los Angeles - part 2
Our summer in Los Angeles - part 1Hey fellow Bloggers,
We are three Irish girls who have just returned from sunny LA to rainy Ireland, much to our disappointment. We were in America on a J1 work visa but couldn’t find consistent work and were apparently unemployable to even Jamba Juice. Here’s what happened.
It all started on June 8th 2005. After many security checks and many disgusting plane dinners and flying at an altitude of 30,000 odd feet, Carol had a panic attack. At first we thought she was just shocked at the movie she was watching (Carol is easily frightened by the way). How wrong we were. As we tried to calm her down by informing her of various breathing exercises you often see pregnant women doing when in labour, we finally decoded through her uneven speech and incessant air gulping that she had left her travellers checks in Heathrow airport which was now approximately 3,000 miles behind us. Suddenly we were grabbing for our oxygen masks! Since Carol’s travellers checks were the only form of currency which Carol possessed and came to a grand total of $1700 we were inwardly shouting “What the hell are we supposed to do now??” but outwardly nodding politely and acting completely calm. We figured we would just be poor. Only kidding. We decided not to worry about this humongous problem until we landed in Santa Monica. Because as they always say – If you haven’t a bloody clue what to do in a sticky situation just put it on the long finger and hope that it will never bother you again. Unlikely but…hey…that’s Irish mentality for you.
Eventually, we arrived in LAX all excited and delighted. Our lives were before us. A summer of opportunity, sun and fun awaited us. We could smell the excitement in the air. We just couldn't wait to be rollerblading on the Santa Monica pier and playing volleyball on the Santa Monica beach - yes I know - we watch far to much American TV.
After our crazy and very windy cab ride, we arrived at out sea side motel called the Bayside Hotel...... What a DUMP! I mean not so much a dump but rather a little pile of crap. On arrival, after 14 hours of flying above nothing but ocean, we proceeded to the reception area of the hotel – sorry let me rephrase that – rather a dinky little box, a three legged desk and a very unfriendly non English speaking man in the corner. To make things worse he informed us (With much difficulty in broken English) that we had in fact not paid for our reservation which we had booked on the internet … oh fuck! After many wild attempts at charades explaining that we did pay… we still had to pay again.
While dressed in our finest and heels, we awkwardly struggled to lug our suitcases up two flights of bloody stairs. And believe me there were a lot of suitcases. Between three people, we had precisely 13 bags. It surely was an eye opener for the staff seeing as our luggage took up most of the hotel. Our bags formed a barricade around the entire premises. We finally got to our room …. What a dump! No, we’re exaggerating … for dramatic effect. Two double beds and three girls … don’t get excited…..oh and the thirteen bags…..this would be interesting
Check back soon to see what happened next … you know you want to.
Helen. Carol and Roisin. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
