Category: Stories to tell

A great volunteer experience

April 30, 2011
What are you reading? wall
What are you reading?

Awhile back, whilst on a search for new friends in LA, I decided to volunteer at the Festival of Books.

Today dawned my first of two shifts at the LA Times Festival of Books and although I’m not so concerned with making friends now as I’m about to embark on a great American roadtrip, I came away from the day after having talked to a number of Americans and having a great time.

Wearing my wide-brimmed hat I’d bought in Venice Beach, I opted for an outdoor volunteering role (in spite of the suddenly 30ºC heat) and found myself being line monitor for a number of book signings with authors I’d never heard of before. My job description said I had to ensure that the lines were orderly, people were happy and that they only had three books for signing. I also had to hand out little post-it notes for the people who wanted their books inscribed with their names. Just so’s the authors could spell it correctly.

I was kind of surprised to note that the other volunteers in my area avoided people. They avoided speaking to them and they avoided being in places where they might be asked a question from a guest at the festival, like behind the signing booths, or sitting under a tree. I put myself out there. I made, or in some situations, tried to make, conversation with people in the lines. Not only was I helping their time in the line move along faster, but I was staving off the boredom I would feel if I didn’t have conversations with people. I also used this opportunity for my own good, and found tips and suggestions from people for my roadtrip.

Most of the people I spoke with were probably of the RV crowd, and they were excited to share their thoughts on various destinations across America. I used the Sharpies and post-its to take notes. I heard about national parks and cities and various routes. It was great research.

When the authors and book signings had thinned out a bit, I stood near the stack of programs and maps to help people out. Most were looking for the children’s area. I wasn’t just going to sit about. I had volunteered because I wanted to meet people. I want to note a few of the characters I met:

  • The guy who asked me what my native language was then wore a surprised look when I said “English”. He thought I was Asian as he’d taught a number of Chinese, Malaysian and Korean students. This is the first time someone has told me I look Asian. I think this guy just looked stupid.
  • The ebayers. This type of festival goer can be easily picked by their trolleys and canvas bags laden with books. They are professionals and linger all day to get all the signatures. They are typically older- say in their fifties – are plain looking, overweight and have ruddy faces.
  • The young guy wearing a black CAA cap (Creative Artists Agency – a major Hollywood agency) perched on his black hair, a green t-shirt and jeans that gaped to show the elastic of his underwear when he sat down. He also hung around the signing area for a good portion of the day. He struck up conversations with others in the line about whether they’d read the book and then spoke at length to one of the more popular authors who said to call him after he’d read a couple of books.
  • The volunteer from Christian College with short blonde hair and tattoos circling her forearms who looked like someone from home. Her and her friend hardly said boo.
  • The volunteer author escort with shaking hands who barrelled up to me and said at rapid-fire, heightened-stress pace “I have the mystery panel here, where are they supposed to go?” I pointed him in the direction of my bookworm supervisor because I had no idea what he was talking about. I had equated mystery with potluck, and so I thought it was like some kind of mystery hotel deal, you don’t know who you’re seeing until you get there. In reality, it was a panel of mystery authors. I think the yellow t-shirt I was wearing reflected onto my hair making it look blonde.

After my shift finished I wandered through the festival, still being stopped and asked where the nearest restrooms were and the children’s area. I got to sit in on hearing a woman demonstrate how to bind books, pick up a free postcard, buy a stack of discounted Lonely Planet guidebooks and enter a competition to have a private screening of a Focus Features film. It was really fun. And I get to go back tomorrow.

Making up for being a bad friend

April 29, 2011

I’ve been in LA for three months and hadn’t yet caught up with my friend who I met when she was on exchange in my hometown 15 years ago. That’s poor form.

I guess a number of things conspired against it, like my car woes and her late stage pregnancy. So now that her baby is birthed and Esmeralda is fixed, we finally arranged a meet up.

It was a nice 30 mile drive out to her place on the Foothills Freeway 210. This is a much nicer freeway than the 10 freeway. As the name suggests, it traverses the foothills of the mountains and it quite pretty. On the way back in the evening it afforded incredible views of the city lights and downtown.

Meeting my friend’s new baby was lovely. When I visited her about 11 months ago, I had no idea that I’d be back to see her so soon and that by that time she’d have another child. It must be quite some time since I’ve seen a newborn because I couldn’t believe how tiny he was. As I held him while he struggled against sleep, his head warmed up the crook of my arm. That’s a nice feeling. For all my friends who know about how I feel about me and babies, I tell you I’m not getting clucky!

My friend and I talked about how it is that we’ve kept up our friendship that started way back in 1996, and the fact that we have seen each other four times since then, once when she returned to Australia and now that I have visited her in LA three times. Whilst Facebook makes it easy to stay in touch, actually visiting really cements the friendship beyond the electronic. I never regret travelling to meet up with my friends living overseas, be it Los Angeles, London, Buenos Aires or whether it’s even just closer to home in some far-flung place in Australia. There is something special about the memories you create with them in their current cities, and it adds to the relationship because you understand their life there.

I hope that I will continue to do this for the rest of my life, because a little bit of effort goes a long way. Perhaps I should be looking to book a flight to see my friend Shanghai Slipper.

A most wonderful chiropractor

April 23, 2011

A sore back from sleeping on an airbed for a month and hoiking furniture upstairs sent me on the quest to find a chiropractor.

After a couple of different experiences back home, I wanted to find someone who did minimal crunching and who had some other manipulation tricks up their sleeve. I did a search on Yelp.com which is a great review website where you can find information, reviews and ratings on all types of services from restaurants to mechanics to health professionals. It threw up a few names in my area and I came across Sally Kleinbart.

From her website it looked like more than a crunch-crunch experience, so I sent her an email and made my first appointment a few weeks ago.

I knocked on the door of her home, where she practices from, and was greeted by a friendly and totally chill Sally who I instantly liked for her down-to-earth attitude. After filling out something like five pages of paperwork which went from my contact details, to health issues, to my description of the pain and location, I signed my chiropractic care away to Sally.

Today was my third and final session with Sally (until the need arises again) and what I love about going to visit her is that she spends an hour with you and wants to get to the bottom of your back problems. I am amazed by what she can find as she gently moves her hands over your back. With the lightest of touches I can feel my back muscles moving and realigning in the correct spots. On my first visit she found that my diaphragm and liver were all knotted up together, and after working on this, the spasms in my back stopped. My sore lower back came from some swollen discs, that were coaxed back into place and then the pain disappeared. On my visit today she discovered more connective tissues all mixed up.

After all this gentle manipulation, which Sally calls ‘body sculpting’, there is a small amount of crunching to iron out anything else in the back or neck. I always leave her place feeling put back together again. It also goes to show that you should never underestimate the value of having a healthy and strong back. I had never really had back problems until I sought help from Sally, and I would be screwed if I had chronic back pain. I mean, if that was the case, how would I be able to hit the road with my backpack?

How do you make holy water?

April 4, 2011

Losing one’s debit card is not a good feeling.

When going to use it over the weekend as I went to Gelson’s three times at 8am, 12:30pm and 5pm (each time buying alcohol for the shoot) and being served by Dorothy who asked me about the Tasmanian Devil facial tumour disease, I couldn’t find it. Not feeling too worried, I paid with my Australian card and made a mental note to look for it on my desk where I’d probably been buying something online (my new addiction in LA).

This morning dawned and I couldn’t find it on my desk, even when I checked under all the loose papers. So I looked up my last transactions online, breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t been used on the weekend and realised the last time I’d used it was to withdraw cash on Thursday. As I’d withdrawn an odd amount, it gives you your card in a different order to normal and I must have left it in the ATM.

I waited for 9am and then raced down to the bank to find out if it had been handed in.

While waiting in line, the older gent behind me leaned in and said “I like your tennis shoes”. I thanked him for his compliment and he said “Where did you get them from? … No, don’t tell me, I’m psychic.” He then looked shifty for a bit and said “You got them on your feet!” I gave him a little haha for his dad joke and then it was my turn at the cashier.

That wasn’t the end of The Joker. While the girl was looking in the drawers for lost cards, he came over to me and said “How do you make holy water?” A little surprised by him continuing to talk to me, I said, “oh, I don’t know.” He then said “You boil the hell out of it.”

While he didn’t get the belly laugh he deserved because I was distracted, when I related the story to housemates Gin, J and Devoir in the car we all let out big laughs.

* Celebrity spotted: Rufus Sewell (The Holiday, A Knights Tale) in a sweaty shirt at the Oaks Deli at lunchtime.

PS The post about my first film shoot is still coming, it’s going to be an essay, so it requires more time than I had today whilst set undressing.

Networking by the pool

March 31, 2011
Poolside outfit
Perfect poolside networking outfit courtesy of Charlie Brown & Nine West.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect at the Advance Global Australians, Global Networks Word of Mouth event, but any opportunity to meet new people is welcome.

I checked out the venue’s website and found that it looked pretty swanky, so I thought I’d best dress accordingly for my first poolside event in LA, in Beverly Hills, no less. I’m so glad I didn’t skimp on the frocks and shoes I brought with me as I definitely have something for all occasions in my wardrobe.

When I arrived, I was glad I’d deliberated over my outfit as I first met one of the organisers, and then the Consul-General. It was a really interesting and diverse crowd ranging from executive types to artist types, to those who are firmly rooted in LA to newbies like me and with quite a number of Americans trying to recreate time they spent in Australia thrown in for good measure.

My first real conversation was with an older woman all glammed up and with her silicon enhancements on display. At first I felt completely gauche beside her and her posh accent, but then I just rolled with it as she told me about her new grandson in Byron Bay, her two ex-husbands from Adelaide, the nightclub she’d once owned with Sean Penn, her career in interior design, real estate and News Corp and her 32 years in LA. While I was a bit intimidated at first, I warmed to the task and let myself be in awe of these people with super interesting tales to tell.

I met Broken Hill’s version of Billy Elliot. Whilst he first introduced himself as a carpenter and builder to me, later in the evening he divulged how he left school to do his apprenticeship as soon as he could. He rode motorcross for Suzuki and took boxing for strength and then a girlfriend introduced him to ballet for balance. He ended up in Adelaide where they said he had the talent to pursue ballet further, and then ended up dancing in the US for 12 years. He also recorded a song with Tania Kernaghan which kicked off his country music career. Wow.

I met a guy with three passports who shared how he met his wife on Contiki and then detailed their courtship. I met an American lawyer who said he left his heart in Australia in 2009, specifically at a restaurant called Crocodile Thai in Kings Cross while on a 2 week holiday. I met a British photographer with a love interest in Melbourne.

And then I met Peter, a meditation teacher. He too, had an interesting story. I guess I’ve always been kind of wary of ‘new age’ stuff, most likely a product of my upbringing, but as I get older I start to open myself more to new concepts outside the structure in which I live. I have a feeling that I met Peter for a reason and that meditation is going to have a role to play in my personal journey.

One thing I discovered this evening was that every Australian in LA has a super interesting story; one that they are not afraid to share in a significant amount of detail with strangers. Which makes me wonder about what my story will be in ten years time. Whatever it is, I’m pretty confident that it’s going to be fascinating.

Mortified

March 16, 2011

So my Friend Who Puts the A in LA took me to a comedy show at King King in Hollywood tonight that totally rocked.

The premise of the Mortified show is regular people digging out their old diaries, poems, songs and old mortifying soul-baring and sharing it with a crowd. There were people sharing their pre-teen “my name is Susan I have long blonde hair, brown eyes and a dog called Happy” diaries, their adolescent “does he love me, should I sleep with him” thoughts and their college “who am I” dark inner workings. And it translates into pure comedy gold.

As I was laughing at the re-enactments of those awkward writings, it got me thinking about my own juvenile journals. Specifically the creative writing piece I wrote for Year 11 English about my first kiss called a very melodramatic Shattered Expectations. That’s the kind of stuff that would go down a treat at this kind of show. And it’s not just a live gig, but a whole bunch of other stuff and soon to be a tv show.

It was so great, so original, so funny and such a trip down my own memory lane, that I can’t wait til the next one in LA.

Oh my gosh, you’re going to be famous

January 30, 2011

This is one of the standard responses I get when I tell people I’m moving to LA. Another frequent comment is

“Don’t forget about us little people.”

Which brings me to two points I’d like to make:

  1. I have no intentions of becoming a celebrity or doing anything that may make me movie-star famous (even if only for 15 minutes).
  2. I think about people I know and have met all the time, regardless of whether I only met them for a few moments in Argentina or whether I grew up with them.

Once upon a time as a self-interested teenager with an inflated opinion of her acting talents, I want to be a movie star. Not an actress mind you, but a movie star. I even remember a conversation with my hairdresser who said “Can I come be your hair stylist when you are a movie star?” to which my gauche comment was “Maybe… if I remember you.” Oh how I cringe at my teenage self.

I blame it all on one Year 10 guy who, jokingly I’m sure, asked for my autograph after a school play. As a Year 8 girl, that cheeky comment (taken quite seriously) was hugely flattering and such a boost to my self-esteem/inflated ego.

Thankfully, that childish dream passed and I spent my time studying marketing at uni, which I loved. I know that I don’t have the discipline, drive or talent to be an actress. And I definitely don’t have the desire to be. I’m happy just to play myself in everyday life.

So rest assured, I won’t forget about you. But don’t you forget about me either!

Maybe dating isn’t dead in Australia

January 16, 2011

I bleat a lot about how people in Australia don’t date. This is one of the reasons why I am very much looking forward to moving to LA where the dating culture is vibrant and prolific.

Now I’m just starting to think that maybe I only need to live in a city, where there are so many more people that I don’t know. Last night while at a hen’s night in the city (tasteful hen’s, might I add) I met The Balkan Lift Guy.

Returning from the bar, I found that a number of our previously well held seats had been taken over. The lounge chair next to mine was now occupied by an interesting looking male who I had to tip-toe and shimmy past to get to my spot, which now had a mountain of handbags on it. After relocating the handbags, I sank back in the chair and rested my ringless left hand on the arm.

While joking with the girls I noticed this guy beside me behaving in the kind of way you do when you are thinking about what to say to someone to open a conversation. So the conversation started with “That’s a nice watch. It suits you.” My thanks for the compliment was speedily returned with “What brand is it?” and less than a heartbeat later “Is it a Guess?” When I said “That was a good Guess” (because it is indeed a Guess watch) he admitted to having studied it close enough to read the name on the face.

He asked all the standard questions, including one question which I only ever get when in the city “Where are you from?” This is not a “Where do you live” type question, but more a “What is your ethnic heritage” question. Playing coy and curious, I asked (as I always ask) “Where do I look like I’m from?” His reply was more vague than others I’ve received over the years, with a continental “European” response. I’ve had all sorts of nationalities like Italian, Brazilian, Argentinian and once I even got Egyptian as responses. The truth is far less exotic than that. Both sides of my family have been in Australia for more than 150 years. The most recent immigrations in my family are my grandmother’s Irish father and my other grandmother’s German grandmother. The rest is all just a mix of English and Scottish heritage.

His response to my right-back-at-you question was “the Balkans, you know, Yugoslavia, Macedonia”. I have heard of Iranians calling themselves Persians but I hadn’t ever heard of Macedonians saying they are from the Balkans.

Another speed date style of question from The Balkan Lift Guy was “How old are you?” I’m not one of these girls that subscribes to the theory that women never reveal their true age. I actually like being told that I look five or six years younger than I really am, because that is often the case. He was somewhat taken aback so I asked if that was way older than he’d expected, and said that usually people think I’m 25 or 26. That was what he had been thinking, but then again, given that he was 24, no wonder he was taken aback.

His subsequent comment was one that continues to baffle me “You know there’s a European saying that is ‘The older the woman, the better they suit'”. My Google search isn’t shining any light on that one. Perhaps you know what The Balkan Lift Guy was talking about? I’m not sure what better type of suiting I am to a younger man.

Anyways, what was nice was that when I had to leave after 10 minutes of conversation he said “If you weren’t moving overseas, I would have asked for your number.” And I would have given it to him. Maybe dating isn’t dead in Australia. Maybe it just got lost in the country.