My missus, being Californian, has some mates in L.A. Now she herself is from San Francisco and is an entirely different kettle of fish having lived almost longer outside of the US than inside. We took a road trip from San Fran down to San Diego and took in the delighted of California along the way. It was a wonderful trip and we got to meet some very interesting people in the towns you go in and out of. She has some really cool friends, but the standard seemed to drop significantly the closer we got to L.A. It was profoundly noticeable.
When we eventually got to Los Angeles I had the misfortune of having to put up with LALA-Land mates for 5 days. God almighty is it any wonder I'm bald. The missus spent some time in Hawaii as a teacher, and many of these girls were her students.
Fair enough at the time I was about 28 and they were all in their early 20s but feck me they were a head ache. I just couldn't manage to find a way to relate - and believe me I tried. Quite simply put it's a different world with different citizens holding different senses of importance and values.
The first experience I had was when we all hit some Cocktail bar. I don't like those types of bars but the missus was catching up with her mates so I'm not going to moan. We sat down at the table, her mates all came in (fecking gorgeous by the way) up to high dough ! Fair enough, they haven't seen one another in ages and women.......well you know how that goes. But it continued. And then I noticed they all talked over one another ! And then I noticed they weren't interested in hearing the missus' updates, but treated it as a chance to almost "act" to the world. And there was some fecking ejit there the missus didn't even know (Hot!) who was expounding about how her love life was so unlucky - yet she was so god damn material and plastic I felt like sticking a tail-ender on her forehead with the words IDIOT in bold.
You may as well have put them in an audition box and gave them their 60 seconds to impress because that's all I could see going on here. It was all so plastic, and here's me thinking "Shit I have to put up with this for another 4 days."
Then the clincher......her supposed "mate" started chatting to me after 3 cocktails. I'm not sure why it took her so long but she ventured up to the bar, started flirting in a way too obviously fashion (shit like pulling a cherry in and out of her mouth whilst fluttering the eyes) and then she asked me was I going to buy her a drink. I laughed followed by a "Ehhhh no..." and turned on my heels. The missus later told me that this particular girl has this thing where she tries it on with all her mate's boyfriends. God knows what's going on there.
I was glad the missus had noticed it too though and wasn't exactly rushing to their defence because sometimes women can be funny in that department. Almost overly defensive of their female friends.
So yeah - different culture altogether down LA
, Fascinating stuff!