-49 degrees celcius

Getting up at 4am isn't one of my strong points, usually. Yet today.. or yesterday, I'm not entirely sure, I awoke as if I had slept for a week straight. If your reading this in New Zealand, then I'm writing this from the past, hey hows it going? The thing that really threw me, was that after flying for about 20 hours'ish (including transit time in Brisbane) I landed here at the exact time that I got on the plane in New Zealand. My plane took off on Wednesday at 7:04am, and landed here a 7:04am on Wednesday. Crazy huh?

I was preparing myself for the worst on the flight, to be cramped up, hot, stuff and unable to sleep the whole way. I wasn't entirely disappointed. Whilst I'll admit it never is comfortable flying economy for that distance, the in-flight entertainment seemed to help wheedle the hours away. Between Iron Man 2, How to Tame Your Dragon and Clash of the Titans (which is really bad by the way) the time seemed to pass by relatively effortlessly. At one point I do remember check the in-flight map to check our progress, thinking we must be easily half way by now, only to see we were hardly a few Cm's off the shore of Australia. Whilst looking at this map though, a little info thing popped up on the screen informing me it was a nice cool -49 degrees Celsius outside. I couldn't help but think to myself for a second as to what super technology is stopping up from just freezing up in the air and crashing, but the thought passed pretty quickly as the next I know I was jerked awake by some screaming child a few rows back.

So, we landed. Woo yay! Then the lovely effeminate male cabin crew member reminded us all about US customs.. And the cheery atmosphere dropped almost instantaneously. The only example I could give as to what it felt like was this, picture yourself as a budding 5 or 6 year old, its Christmas morning and your all excited, you wake at about 5am whilst every one's still asleep and you can't get back to sleep, because Santa came last night!! You check you stocking cheekily to see a few chocolate goodies inside and it makes you super excited, making it even harder to sleep, and then, out of nowhere, your parents get shot by a mugger and you are left an orphan for the rest of your life. This is the easiest way I can explain how the mood changed.

I have to say, going through US customs, was the easiest thing I've done in an airport ever. I don't know what they've done, but it was so stupidly simple that only an American could get confused. It took about an hour to clear customs, purely due to the amount of people there were (thanks to 2 other international flights landing at the same terminal at the same time), but as soon as I'd grabbed my bag from the carousel it was out into LA in seconds, no stupid bag checking for the millionth time, just straight through and into the LA heat.

I think it hit about 100 degrees Fahrenheit today, that's 37 degrees Celsius! After coming from below 15 temps straight into this hit me like a brick wall hits a car at 60kmph. Jumping on the shuttle I'd pre-booked it took me all the way to the door of the apartment I'd be staying in until Sunday. It cost basically nothing, took me absolutely miles (LA is stupidly huge, think Auckland time 10 at least) and in an extremely timely manner. None of this NZ taxi driver asking you for directions because all they've done is buy a GPS, lob it in their car and called themselves a taxi driver, this guy knew LA like the back of his hand!

Getting into the apartment was a bit of an ordeal, but I wont bore you with that. Once in I got my bearings or what was where, and then crashed on the couch. Something felt odd.. I couldn't really work out what until it caught my eye, well, they caught my eyes. On top of the bookshelf sat an Academy Awards Oscar and an Emmy. Just chilling up there. They weren't fake either, they were the real thing. After admiring what is basically the trophy any budding actor would die for, I got changed and waited for a guy called Toby to arrive.When he did, he showed me heaps of stuff that, once again, I'm not going to bore you with. Apparently he works at the Kodak theater just down the road most days. He told me this as if it was just something perfectly normal. This place is crazy. It's a different planet, let alone country or city.

After being briefed on some things and given a few hints as to what was where in Hollywood by Tony he had to run off back to work, so I decided to throw on my flip-flops (yea that's right, flip-flops) and go exploring. It's weird walking down Hollywood Blvd knowing that you're going to be there for the next 8 weeks. It's primarily been designed as a street to make tourists think they are closer to the stars, and make money from it. So being there as someone who is actually going to live there for 2 months, makes it a different beast all together. Whilst walking along the street I got harassed by about 1million different people trying to get me to go on their tours with them, to show me where the stars live or their bedrooms or something.

I've got myself an American Sim-card for my phone, so I'm now in contact with the rest of America (yay!), and currently I'm writing this in what willy probably become my local Internet cafe where I write these, as there doesn't seem to be another one for miles. I'm now off to get food, possibly call some people about looking at apartments to live and then back 'home' to sleep. Until next time. x