Our WONDERFUL day...25th June 2006

It was a beautiful day at Mackenzies Bay, Tamarama..
it was intimate, very relaxed and the sky was just amazing!

The Lowdown...first 4 months in LA

How time flies ... four
months has now passed since we left Sydney and I, in a moment of
derision at midnight fretting that I would never get around to
documenting our adventures in LA, decide to begin this blog. Some
observations and recollections of our time thus far:

The flight over

Our
excitement of finally beginning our trip was amplified by Mia's
enthusiasm, who just loves being on planes. However, this quickly
turned to guilt and sadness about a minute after take-off. Mia was in
tears saying she wanted to 'go home' and see 'paw paw' (grandma). We
felt really bad as this was totally out of the norm as she normally
loves going on holidays and being on planes...somehow we guessed she
sensed that this trip was kinda different. Luckily, we got over that hurdle or the next 14 hours would of been really painful...

(pic above- Mia gets a stamp from customs "not valid for further travel)"

The
flight over went relatively smoothly - Mia sat between Ev and I and
watched loads of cartoons and slept every now and then (luckily we had
a row of 4 seats at the back of the plane so Mia could have 2 seats to
herself and lie down when she needed a rest).

The real event was in the morning when we were just about to land in LA. The captain made an announcement
that there had been an 'incident' overnight in London and as a result
there was heightened security at all international airports, including
LA. No further news would be given until we touched down, other than to
expect delays and further announcements would be made. What later turned
out to be news of the London police foiling a scheme of terrorists to
smuggle explosive liquids/agents on board planes as hand luggage and
which would then lead to everyone not being able to to take any liquids
or hand luggage on board planes for the next month or so marked our
arrival into LA and the US...trying to get in or out of the US being on
the second highest state of alert is not a good way to go unless you
want to waste hours upon hours of your time in airports....

The recovery

For
the next week and a half, we would end up getting to bed at 3 am and
getting up at 11am, Mia included...enough said, it was rough...

Our initial stay @ Santa Monica



(pic- @Santa Monica Beach)

Courtesy of my work, we managed to get put up in Oakwood
corporate housing at Santa Monica for the first 60 days of arriving in
LA. This was such as relief to have something organised to stay after
such a long flight and having 10 suitcases, prams,baby seats etc (thank goodness I talked Ev out of taking her mini mal
surfboard with us and have that shipped!). What was even more of a
relief was that we fit everything into the hire car. I managed to get a
great internet rate on a hire car and for some reason thought a
'mid-size' car was all we needed...it didn't quite occur to me the sort
of luggage that one takes with you when you move countries and the fact
that the luggage allowable load for the US (unlike every other country)
is 3 times the weight...equally lucky is the fact that a 'mid-size' car
in the US is considered a much larger car by anyone else. We were lucky
to get a brand new Jeep 4WD,
which after some careful packing, we just managed to squeeze every bit
of luggage into...equally lucky was that Mia didn't develop some phobia
of being boxed-in (we really jammed those bags in around her!).

So we drive to our corporate housing which we had perused on the internet as being a 'beach side'...how beach side
you can get when you are 22 big blocks from the beach, I don't know. As you
can imagine, we got a rude shock when we found out that you can't just
stroll down to the beach - you need to get into a car and drive about
10mins away, oh well, at least it was free.


(pic- the very popular volleyball courts @ Santa Monica)

Our
2 BR apartment wasn't bad, it had all the mod cons - Cable TV in every
room (2BR and Living), big comfy sofa, decent dining table, blah blah
set in a mega security complex of about another couple of hundred
apartments, couple of gyms, couple of swimming pools etc. It was
certainly a bigger space than what we had been use to living in our 1
BR place at mum & dads. However, complex living was certainly not
our style and we were more than ready to get out of there after our
stay was up.

So we had finally made it to LA and had our new
life was beginning...we had left Sydney in the heart of winter and
landed right at the tail end of summer in California and how sweet it
was. Each day for the first month and a half was around 30C (still not
sure how to convert to F) so it was nice to be back in shorts and
things. Being close by (i.e. short drive) to the beach, we ended up
going there pretty much each day for the next week and a half,
interspersed with the usual trivialities of setting up a new ID in a
new place, i.e. applying for bank accounts, credit cards, social
security number, shopping for cars etc (more about his later).

We
really enjoyed staying in Santa Monica the first few months in LA...we
loved going down to 3rd street promenade and eating our sushi at
Monsoon, watching some of the street performances (which is Mia's
favourite), going into Barnes and Noble bookstore and reading the
magazines, guidebooks and checking out the children's
section and checking out the Mac store were some of our highlights! In
fact, Sushi @ Monsoon was our 'go-to' place in those early days, which
was almost every second or third day whenever we were out and about and
just could not be bothered going home to cook or trying to find some place to eat that wasn't fast food or a chain store (its not that easy, trust us).



(pic- Santa Monica Beach palm trees)

We
also discovered Santa Monica growers market on Sunday mornings which we
went to a few times. Mia would get really excited about the pony ride
they had there for little kids. We would wait in a long line, pay our
money ($5 for a 30 sec ride!) and then have her freak out when she
actually sat on the pony....after that she would always want to watch
the ponies but say she didn't want to ride them...what a wimp. The pony
was barely bigger than her and there were many younger kids enjoying
their pony ride. We don't know what happened but Mia's become very
scared of riding any moving kids rides which is not very good - we are
dying to go to Disneyland with her but feel it is a waste until Mia
gets through this phobia...


Cars, roads and trafficc

Simply
you need them (cars), there are lots of them (roads) and there is
always plenty of it (traffic). Living in LA involves having a car and
navigating the myriad of roads/freeways and traffic. The freeways are
quite scary - normally involving some six to ten lanes of the most
terribly maintained roads you will ever see. We remember our first few
days of driving around (thankgoodness for GPS) and seeing these criss
-crossing layers of freeways up ahead, about 4 or 5 layers built above
one another. It looked very surreal. People drive here at unbelievable
speeds (when not jammed in traffic)! At nights it is not unusual to be
driving at 80-90 miles (around 140km+) and still have
cars passing you...and these roads ain't no autobahns either...so when
there are accidents, they end up looking pretty bad. It is also very
scary to drive on the wrong side of the road, something that both Ev
and I managed to do a few times at the beginning...



Petrol is way cheaper here than back in Australia, which sort of explains why so many American's drive ridiculously big SUVs. The Hummer, including your stretch Hummer, features pretty prominently here as do all your wide-body utes and your monster truck style 4WDs.
We ended up settling on cars we normally wouldn't get back home - I, a
2 door convertible (very family orientated I know!) and Ev a Ford 4WD.

Our drive up the north coast on Hwy 1 and San Fran





(pics- Highway 1 at Big Sur)

After
a week of settling into LA life and buying a car, we decided to take a
drive up the north coast to San Francisco and stopped off along the way
to some great coastal cities -Pismo Beach, Monteray , Carmel by the
Sea, Big Bur etc. Beautiful coastline and we had great weather all the
way. Definitely a highlight of the trip was the drive along the coastal
cliff face roads of the BigSur - simply spectacular and great to do it in the Bimmer which handled the corners like a dream (now I know why these cars cost so much new!).



(pic- Hearst Castle at San Simeon, Between La and San Francisco on coast)






We felt really bad for Mia though as the constant toing and froing got a big much for her and she had a bit of a chuckie at the end of the 2 hours+ of zig-zag
roads. If that wasn't bad enough, Ev wanted to get some pics on the way
back so we took the road again ... with the same results for Mia
(totally irresponsible parents we know!).


(pic- showers at Pismo Beach, CA)




We got to San Francisco after about 4-5 days and just loved the city. It was Ev's first time and my 2nd time and our immediate thoughts were.."ummm,
we could live here"...we had to quickly try and get that out of our
minds as we were moving to LA not SF!!! But the city is wonderful, full
of character, charm, a real 'city' that has a proper business centre,
one of the best (if not the best) Chinatowns i have every seen -
apparently, 1 in 5 residents of San Fran is Chinese so you really have
to be there to see the size of the Chinatown.





SF also has the Golden Gate bridge and some amazing hotels, museums, restaurants and bars. We splurged a bit...well alot...and stayed 4 nights in SF at some amazing hotels - first The Clift
for 2 nights then the W. Probably the best 2 designer-style hotels in
SF and we ate out at some great restaurants there....poor Mia, we
dragged her out late those nights but she coped really well.



(pic- The CLIFT bar, San Fransisco,CA)

We also went to this great reportage photo gallery - FiftyCrows
- which Ev had been getting emails from and which had recently just
relocated to SF. They had some great collections of reportage
photographers and supported many interesting projects. They get these
donations from famous Magnum photographers of prints and they try and
sell them to raise money for their reportage projects. Ev managed to
find this great shot from Eve Arnold, the first woman photographer to be
admitted to become a Magnum photographer (and who made her name
shooting Marilyn Munroe and Malcom X) so i managed to pick up the print for her as a birthday present. Umm, SF..great city, will definitely be back there sometime soon...



Working in LA

So
with the end of our road trip and the final days soaked up being a
beach bum at Santa Monica and Venice Beach, I had to go to go to work.







(pics above- @ Venice Beach and bike
riding with our German/Aussie friends Anna&Marcus)

My office is on the 11th floor overlooking Grand Ave in downtown LA and just a short walk from the Disney Concert
Hall (the silver plated funky Building which is one of the landmarks of
LA). They have much more 'traditional' looking law offices, the dark
wood desks and bookshelves etc. The firm is huge in LA, very old, very
established and from what I hear, the firm that helped to build LA. You
have very connected people in the firm (for instance, the Chairman of
the firm use to be the Counsel to the White House under
Reagan!...although I heard from someone that there are more Democrat
partners than Republicans). SO with such a name and the 'prestige'
factor, its pretty much a firm most people in the legal and non-legal
industry has heard about. They are a bit of a powerhouse in the West
Coast and it is amazing to see how quickly firms like this are growing.
For instance, their summer associates program aim to get around 30-40
summer associates just in the LA office! I recently went to a "New
Attorney/Counsel Retreat" which was a retreat for all the new lawyers
and laterals that the firm had taken on this year form all their
offices (so people flew in from the overseas offices) - they had nearly
170 lawyers all up...can you belive that, that is quite a sizable law
firm in itself!! So with 1,000 lawyers plus worldwide and growing, its
a tad more difficult to get known and quite easy to get lost in a firm
of that size (I think LA probably has about 400+ lawyers). That said,
my group, although small, handles some pretty big transactions and
there is so much work. In fact, I (and Ev would support me) in saying
that US work culture is exhausting - you are constantly on call and
they expect you to work 7 days a week if the work is on (which it is).
So most weekends have involved me in some form or another logging in and
ploughing through work which hasn't been great...on the brighter note,
the work is interesting and I have been given quite some latitude to
deal directly with clients. However, this also means I have spent quite
some time in client meetings off-site and out of the office (at least
it isn't gettng on a plane to Jakarta every second week). Clients,
after getting over the novelty factor of the Aussie accent, have been
good to work with generally and the different document and drafting
styles certainly takes a little time to get use to (US lawyers like
drafting 1 page clauses!).



We recently had another work
retreat in Las Vegas and stayed at the Venetian Hotel. The retreat was
very small as it was just our group and had people from the SF office,
Silicon Valley, London and Shanghai offices attend. It was nice as
partners were invited to the dinner so it was good to be bale to bring
Ev and Mia (who everyone just adored). We ate at some really great
restaurants and even had a bit of a flutter with a few members of our
group. The partner who co-chairs our group wanted the retreat in Vegas
as he is a bit of a gmabling man so it was quite funny to see him
quickly departing after the dinners to hit the tables. What is really
weird about the place is that you never know what time of the day it is
in the casinos - the Venetian, with its indoor canals and painted skys
etc constantly appears like the middle of the day and it seems very
strange coming out of the bar or the casino at 2am in the morning to
blue sky!





(pic- Dancing Fountains at the Bellagio, Las Vegas)

On
a more cultural note, its amazing these casinos also have some good
travelling exhibitions and Ev got to see a Robert Mapelthorpe
exhibition and we both saw an Ansel Adams exhibition, the later of
which was fantastic. We decided to drive to Vegas from LA so the 5 hour
drive was worth it when we left on the Sunday afternoon to a
spectacular sunset - we had heard that sunsets out in the deserts are
pretty good but were blown away by this one.



Our home







(pic- our fantastic 'Walkstreet')

So
we have now finally settled into our home at Manhattan Beach in a
walkstreet (ie. essentially the road has been converted to a
walkthrough area with no car access). We are a few short blocks from
the beach in a 2 BR house. It is fantastic, very much a beach bungalow,
holiday house feel. Not a modern house but very neat and great layout
which makes it seem much bigger than it is and lots of windows and
light. Our past month or so has been pretty much filled with setting up
our house and making it homely.





We have found most of
our stuff on a website here called criagslits which is brillant -
essentially a website where people post up things for sale with a set
price and usually as they are moving, redesigning etc. So you can get
some great bargains if you scan the website and postings daily and for
a while we were pretty much addicted to this site, always looking for
the best deals. Now that we have almost bought everything we need, we
have not used it as much but it has really has been a saviour for us as
setting up a house from scratch is a very costly exercise. We have
splurged on a few things - like our massive plasma which we have
mounted on our wall etc.




(pic- Mia with her new friends Madison
and Mackenzie who have unfortunately moved to Arizona)

But
we are really happy where we are and Ev has made some good friends with
some of the neighbours who have been really good in taking care of her
on some nights when I have been stuck at work and cooking dinner for
her...in fact, our neighbour came by when we first moved in and had
baked a cake for us and gave a card with a picture of their whole
family on it to welcome us onto the stret...we felt as if we were in a
movie like Desparate Housewives or something...






(pics- enjoying the sun @Manhattan Beach)