California dreamin’

A few weeks ago I went to California, well Orange County to be precise, just south of Los Angeles. I had been asked to take part in a workshop at my company’s head office.
 
To get the best possible price for the airfares I volunteered to travel out and back on the weekends (don’t worry I will do my darndest to claim these back as days-in-lue). Getting cheaper flights also meant I could convince the powers-that-be to upgrade me to Virgin’s Premier Economy. The Virgin flight was fine and they have a great in-flight entertainment system – It is totally digital and on-demand (this means you can select your film, TV program or music when ever suits you and even pause, re-wind or fast forward as you please. It also has seat-to-seat and air-to-ground e-mail facilities – at a price).
 
In Flight Movies
I saw:
- Grand theft Parsons (loosely based on the true story of the theft of the body of the American singer Gram Parsons). It was Quirky and very enjoyable.
- American Splendour (based, again, on a true story, this time of an odd-ball cartoonist). This was also quirky and enjoyable.
- School of rock. This was a light and not too taxing comedy staring Jack Black. (Jack Black so reminds me of my friend James).
 
While I was in California I did get to see a bit of the countryside and did enjoy the arid tough scenery and the wide expanse of Pacific Ocean. I found a couple if interesting seaside towns of 
Laguna Beach and Newport Beach  and I took a trip out to Catalina Island  which has a great garden set up by the founder of Wrigley’s Gum, Wrigley's Memorial Garden  I also played tourist in LA by visiting the Queen Mary  a fascinating look at how people used to travel before the jet plane.
 
 It wasn’t all fun and games though as I did spend most of our week in the office with colleagues from France, Singapore, the Middle East and the USA, but all of this is too way too boring to write about here.
 
A did overhear a couple of interesting things while I was sat in the bar at the hotel watching the TV. A long discussion was had between several people about the fact that there is so much ‘reality TV’ on all the time, when an advert came on for male treatments “if erections persists for more than four hours, call a physician”. One of the women in bar retorted “if erections persists for more than four hours, call me!” Who says the Americans don’t have a sense of humour?
 
One of my American colleagues was a guy from Louisiana. He was extremely lively and very funny. He told us a story about his little old mother, who was troubled by alligators in the bayou out the back of her house. They had set a trap for the beast and had left instructions that the old lady was not to touch it until they came back next weekend. Of course he receives a phone call from her the next day to say that she and her boyfriend had hauled up the trap to find a small alligator (only six feet long) and while the old boy was trying to restrain it the little old lady was ‘wailing’ into it with a baseball bat. Luckily (for the alligator) it escaped. He had many more tales about his mum including the one where she saw a deadly snake in the backyard and blew it to bits with her shotgun.
 
It seems this sort of behaviour ran in his family as he decided to test out the four-wheel-drive hire car by driving to the top of a nearby mountain. He had convinced one of the guys in the office to join him and one night they headed off into the canyon. Some of their enthusiasm was fuelled by the Margaritas, though a short way across rough terrain soon emptied out the contents of the jugs all over the inside of the car (they decided they didn’t need the seatbelts after that as the seats were sticky enough to stop them sliding about). When they reached the top they were surprised to find another truck up there, and having heard stories of a local sniper they started down. The journey down became very steep and so our Southern friend opened his door and suggested his passenger do the same “it’s getting a bit hairy so if you see me jump, bail out.” Needless to say they survived.