Paradise is the cool(most of the time cold) wind breezing past and slapping itself against your face in the land of California. Yes, i was there on holiday about four days ago and it was amazing. The atmosphere, the weather, the people, the freedom, the everything there is just great and it leaves your memory in a bittersweet place that you find yourself visiting ever so often. It's bitter because you know you can't actually go back there anymore, yet it's sweet because you get to still revisit as much as you desire within your mind. Obviously, i enjoyed my short trip overseas accompanied by my mom and brother although the horrific experience on board of a 777 plane leaves me, well, rather reluctant to get on another plane anytime soon. I mean hey a 15-hour flight that was constantly disturbed by heavy, and when i say heavy I MEAN HEAVY, turbulence was not very pleasant, especially when you're kind of a anxious flier. Heck, i didn't even know i was afraid of jumpy plane rides till the plane shook 10 minutes into the air. And of course, before the 15-h flight, we had a 2-h one, and then the 5-h to Hong Kong came along before the longest of all knocked on our doors. So yes 22 hours plus waiting time in multiple airports was not very good motivation to get people pumped up for their overseas trip to America. Did i mention i was also suffering from the flu, cough, extremely bad throat infection and bipolar headaches during the long and torturous journey from my hometown to the state of California? I kid you not.
Upon our arrival at the San Francisco International Airport(it was around 9 something at night), not only have i discovered that i've lost my voice(i had to communicate with people through hand motions and typing the words out on my phone because apparently i suck at mouthing), i was also quite under-dressed. 5 minutes outside the airport waiting for the shuttle back to the hotel and you could already see the blood draining from my cheeks. It was cold alright, but it was freezing for me because dumb-bitch here forgot to pack an extra coat in case i got sick on the way, which i did. Thank you God, for blessing me with such a great brain and the ability to think ahead. And because my life is a joke to God and his fellow angels, the shuttle got here a little over 25 minutes of us waiting outside in the cold, almost-midnight air. Not only did the driver hadn't apologized, he also took his time exiting his warm, comfortable driver's seat in the white shuttle. So after making small talk with the driver who turned out to be Chinese for hmmm about 45 minutes, we reached our shelter for the few nights we were gonna spend in the city of San Francisco.
Blablahbluhhhh we got in, got comfy, got our stomachs filled and then got sleepy. Who cared about jet lag? We slept like, well, we just slept really well. I woke up the next morning with my throat feeling even worse than before. Definitely no talking for me that day which was really sad because my excitement and joy could only be expressed through shrugs, yay-ing silently and hand-waving. So we went around town, looking at scenery that can only be found in San Fran yabadabadeedooo and then we went to the most exciting place of the day-- Rasputin's Music. Maybe i'm being biased here but wow, it was the most beautiful, most awesome place i've ever been in(The Grand Canyon comes in second and Taylor Jardine in third). Tidy DVD racks were seen as i gleefully entered the store. They had a section, "Punk Rock Metal on 3rd floor". I immediately knew where my calling was. When the doors to the lift opened, it was like the opening of the Golden Gates of Heaven. I rushed in without a second to spare and started looking through every name of artist/band they had on the racks. They were in alphabetical order and thank God because finally, something easy in life. All the band names looked familiar to me and they were oh-so-bootiful but only one band had that number one spot in my heart when i was at the store and it was Mayday Parade. Soon enough, i found them and all the six albums they had stacked up. Naturally i'd just take all six and leave the premises with no regrets whatsoever, but i wasn't very fond of their debut album so i ditched the piece and grabbed the rest of the five. I took two more albums later on but i was already fully contempt with my Mayday Parades. Life was a complete circle now. I was ready to pass on if my time was up, but no because it was just my first day in the States and i would be staying for another 12 days? So we went back to the hotel, happy and high(it was just me) and slept. I did wake up in the middle of the night to go over to the bag containing my albums and carefully, lovingly caress them in my hands, feeling the smooth texture of the plastic cover.
Anyways, San Fran was cool, with their ups-and-downs-streets(when people say "oh that place? yeah it's just a good two blocks down" don't hesitate to get on the tram because two blocks is a lie just because it seems close doesn't mean it is with the hills they got going on in that place), their Golden Gate Bridge, Fishermen's Worth(they serve mouthgasmic seafood and have a lot of sea lions sunbathing by the bay) and most importantly, Rasputin's Music. Also, we took a day off to visit this wonderful place called Yosemite(pronounced as you-seh-me-dee) National Park. There were a lot of trees. And rocks. Big, big trees and even bigger rocks. It was an amazing and mind-blowing sight because i've never liked trees because when there are trees, there are bound to be snakes and insects and things-that-kill-you but nope, not the trees you see in Yosemite National Park. They were so beautiful, the only thing you'll remember about trees is how much you wanna live in them. We were oh-ing and wow-ing and oh-my-god-ing everywhere around the park but it was also freezing up there so there were also constant mom-i'm-cold, mom-can-we-sit-down, mom-can-we-burn-ourselves-alive and mom-lets-just-leave-before-we-die-of-hypothermia. Yeap it was one hell of a day because it only took us about four hours to get from the city and up to the park and we spent around 5 hours there before making our descend which took around an hour because damn it was one steep mountain-hill-thing with a shitload of twists and turns and another 3 hours on the road.
Three days in San Fran and we were off to the City of Angels or what i'd like to call the City of Fallen Stars because do you know how many pop stars/actors/actresses lose their morality and whatnot there all in the name of fame and fortune? Yeah, so the City of Fallen Stars. We reached LAX in the morning and again waited for a looooooong while before our ride finally arrived. It only took this guy 75 minutes to get to us this time round even though the travel agency promised great service which no doubt included great punctuality. When the car came(it was a Lexus), i was like damn straight you better come in one of them better automobiles but as the Lexus drove nearer to us, the heavily bass rap song was also becoming clearer than distilled water in a Chemistry lab. Out came a pretty lengthy fellow with one of those hats i call a "swag hat". The dude also had a varsity jacket and RayBans on. Immediately i thought "oh a total swag fag" and then he started to talk. "Yo i'm so sorry i'm late but uhh traffic was so sick. Here lemme get yo bags." When i tried to help him with the luggage, he went all "No no s'alright i can handle this man. You guys just go chill in the car." Yeah imagine a black dude in this scenario and everything's cool, but change the black dude to some young 22-year old Chinese kid with the stereotypical Chinese accent and what do you get? A scene from the comedy film "Life of a girl named Valerie Chan" available now in Blu-ray Disc at DVD stores Heaven-wide because yes, my life is indeed a joke to God.
After the whole I'm-Chinese-but-with-the-soul-of-a-black-rapper scene, we got to our room and i just fell faced down onto my bed and stayed that way for 2 hours thanks to Chinese swag fag just now who left us waiting at the airport for a good an hour and 15 minutes standing around like a bunch of sick and lost puppies(i was the only sick puppy but i got my voice back) wondering if he had died in a car crash or something. I was undeniably convinced that Chinese people were as punctual as much as they are reliable(Made In China=Bad Omen). By the way, the city of Los Angeles is not what it seemed to be like in movies. Well, yeah it actually is but you're so focused on the hot actors and actresses there you forget that L.A is actually a gigantic piece of desert land, much like Vegas. It's like you're on the highway and you see these green-colored signs above you with the road names and whatnot and you just have your deer-in-the-headlights-moment but then you turn over to the window-screen on your right and you see these dead, dried up plants on the side of the road, oh wait i meant dirt, like really-really dried-up dirt. I'm not even sure if they were plants? but i'm sure those were dirt next to the road. So that's how deserts are like, only this desert is cold, have dirt instead of sand and is the centre of the Entertainment Industry. Not much to look at compared to the city of San Fran, but it wasn't as cold here in L.A than it was back in S.F. It actually feels much like home in L.A, the weather i mean, but just cooler and has more dried-up dirt. Oh, and dead plants.
So, L.A wasn't much to see. Just this and that, the city tour, the nearest mall to the resort i was staying in, Universal Studios. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. Wow okay, yeah so this is like the single most interesting thing in L.A, other than "the slums of Beverly Hills"(quote from my all-time-fav-movie-to-quote-from, White Chicks) where all these rich and maybe-famous people were living in, but it's not like we could break into their three zillion dollar mansion with pool and built-in jacuzzi in every room, steal their undergourments and toothbrushes, take selfies with their curtains and couches and exit the premises without getting hunted down by the LAPD.
After Universal Studios, we went to the most popular, expensive, desirable to all shopaholics shopping center? shopping area? shopping place? in America, a place called Rodeo(pronounced row-day-yo but why not just row-di-o?) Drive. What i found amusing though, was that Rodeo Drive was included in the city tour. I mean people, wait let me just scratch that. Rich-like-their-nuts-are-plated-gold people come here to shop but nope sorry we just came here to take pictures and stare into the windows of branded stores like Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, i-don't-really-know-much-about-designer-stuff-so and gawk at their empty racks because it was 7 in the frickin' morning and no one this rich is up yet to spend an amount of someone-else's-life-saving-of-60-years on a pair of socks. So yes, my family and i and the rest of the tourists were waltzing around this disgustingly magnificent place where only the rich is accustomed to visit, pretending like we own the damn streets when in truth, most of us couldn't even afford a bottle of drinking water here. We might stand a chance with a tiny cup of tap water though. Might.
Before the trip down rich-and-famous-lane, we spent a day at Universal Studios and my, it was a day well spent. And for people out there who think that tours are stupid, you my friend are absolutely wrong. Not only do you save (some)money, you get to save a crap-ton of time as well. If you go to ginormous amusement parks like Disney World or not-as-ginormous Universal Studios, you're bound to get lost and end up wasting your day trying to find you way to Pirates of The Caribbean or Transformers: The Ride only to end up going on Winnie the Pooh's Great Adventures! So, join a tour because they bring you to the important and popular locations or rides you probably would want to get on beforehand. Universal Studios is a pretty cool place to be in if you're into movies and even cooler if you're really really into movies cause there are all kinds of rides based on the movies you watch and there is also a splendid behind-the-scenes tour which makes you go "aaah ooooh i seeee so that's how they did it how utterly brilliant" or if you prefer the more vulgar teen-angst way of speaking "jesus are you for real these are some smart motherfuckers man". You get to see all these stages they set up, to film all kinds of scenes in and if you're a serious movie buff, the whole trip will be you going "OH THAT'S WHERE THEY FILMED FRANKENSTEIN'S 1981 REMAKE AND OH OH OHH THAT'S WHERE THE JONAS BROTHERS WERE SHOT IN THAT MUSIC VIDEO". All in all, it was a pretty cool place to be in. It's the only place where you get to see your movies come to death(cause lifeXdeath) because going to the Universal Studios and seeing the BTS can be described as Edward Cullen stripping in front of a crowd of red hooded people in a scene of The Twilight Saga: New Moon for when he's all done with unbuttoning his blue buttoned-down shirt and you see his half-naked body, a thought similar to this will cross your mind, "Seriously? That's it? All the mysterious hotness of Edward Cullen and that is what it actually looks like? LOLOLOL OKAYY?" because once you're seeing the BTS it's like you're seeing your movie for what it really is. A fake. Just like Edward Cullen's supposed hotness. That New York City backdrop from Heroes? Just a big, fat green-colored screen. Dracula's evil little coffin? A freakin' cardboard box. The man-eating shark from Jaws? A miniature stuffed toy. Once you get the real picture behind the motion pictures, you will find out that your whole life is a lie.Yeah, Universal Studios will do that that to you. They ought to put up a sign at the entrance of Universal Studious, "Children under the age of 12 are not allowed unless appropriate consultation with professionals have been done", but it was great though. Universal Studios California was fun, mind-blowing and possibly even life-altering.
Right, i feel like i've been typing for hours and it's not like anybody alive is going to see this. HAHA WHO THE HECK AM I TRYING TO KID. Even the dead wouldn't care enough to read this crap-o-a-blog, but umm(bottoms up if you watched How I Met Your Mother season 5 episode 13: Jenkins) this has been fun. cause i got to do this little reminiscing thingie i call 'Blast to the Past'. Keep in mind though as there is more to come. Peace.
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