Including the Kitchen Sink

There are many areas of unexpected difference between the US and the UK. One of these is kitchen plumbing. All three kitchens that I have used since arriving here have a tap on the kitchen sink that does more than supply a mix of hot and cold water. They have a button on top that changes the flow to a spray, when pressed accidentally for the first time this allows your shirt to share the benefit of the water with the plate you were cleaning. The head also pulls clear from the base, on a flexible pipe, so that you can move it around the sink. This makes directing water at all parts of the sink far easier and facilitates spraying plates prior to putting in dishwater without covering yourself.

Translation:
Tap (UK)   =  Faucet (US)

Indian Food

I paid my first visit to an Indian restaurant in California. Unfortunately, it offers little opportunities for a blog entry, as apart from the absence of flock wallpaper and onion bhajis, this was very similar to an Indian back in the UK. There were poppadums with mango chutney, a familiar range of curries, and Kingfisher beer. Definitely, worth a return visit; although there are another two close by which we should visit – including one next to a brew pub.

I visited an Indian in the US about ten years ago, in Peoria, Illinois. When we mentioned it to locals, they assumed that we meant Native American food.

Red Lights

In the UK a red traffic light means stop. Here in LA, and much of the US, a red light lacks that simplicity of meaning. After stopping you can turn right on a red, if the road is clear. This is probably the hardest thing to get used to when driving. Often, I stop and need reminding by a passenger or the horn of the car behind that a red light is not a final instruction to stop. This happens despite knowing about this practice ever since I saw Annie Hall over twenty years ago.

Open House

We have just started the process of looking for a home in Southern California. We will wait until I have my job until we make a commitment. However, it seems prudent to gain an understanding of the housing market; especially as the majority of jobs seem to be in the Irvine area. Over the weekend we visited a couple of “Open Houses”. I have not seen these in the UK.

An “Open House” is a home that is on the market and for a few hours, usually at the weekend, anyone can wander into the house and walk round – no need to make an appointment for a viewing with the Estate Agent. Based on this small sample, the house is staffed by an Estate Agent. Apparently, we were short-changed on these Open Houses, as they often include free coffee and donuts and no beverages were on offer.

The two we visited were both in the Woodbridge area of Irvine, an area whose environment and close proximity to shops, dining, and the business centres makes it very attractive. The first was bereft of furniture and to use the parlance of UK estate agents was in need of modernization; translated into English the fixtures and fittings were unattractive remnants from the 1970s. However, the hot-tub in an atrium off the master bedroom was appealing. The second home was owned by an interior designer and she had carefully prepared the house for sale. It had a great floor-plan, lots of shelves for all of the books that are currently making their way across the ocean, and seemed to be in move in condition.

Even if we had been in a position to buy now, we would have passed on both of these houses. My wife’s research on what is on the market shows that both of these places are overpriced.

Take the 57 to the 5 to the 55 to the 405

One topic about which I have not blogged with the frequency that it probably deserves is traffic and the LA freeway network. Here the absence of weather being an interesting topic of conversation, (Warm and sunny again today, forecast is warm and sunny tomorrow) the locals discuss traffic and alternative routes. Via Brit in the USA, I found this blog entry on that very topic on a blog called Crazy Aunty Purl. The main thrust of the entry is proven by many of the comments.

TV Nation

When I saw a bath-tub with a TV fitted, I suppose it should have given me a clue. Nonetheless, I was still a little surprised at the news that people are outnumbered by television sets in the average American household.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/09/22/tvs.everywhere.ap/index.html

My current household is not average. We have three people and just one television. However, we have three cell-phones, three iPods, and four PCs.

LA County Fair Revisited

I returned to the LA County fair yesterday. Mid-week there were far fewer people than on a Saturday evening; shocking I know. The return visit allowed us to see parts of the fair that we missed first time round and take a proper look at a couple of items that I passed by too quickly in the crowds on Saturday night.

I found a wine tasting booth, that allowed tasting of wines which had won gold medals in the LA County Fair competition. The wines were international in scope, which meant they had several from Italy and a handful from New Zealand. Moreover, the vast majority of US wines were from California. Maybe in a few years the emerging French producers will be a level that they can compete. I found a very reasonably priced, excellent, unoaked Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc which was truly stunning; this was one of the New Zealand wines.

In the middle of the fairground there was a garden model railway, covering some 30,000 square feet. The level of detail and the quality of the trains made this worth the $10 price of admission alone. The fair site also hosts a collection of old locomotives belonging to the Southern California Chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. The collection includes a Union Pacific “Big Boy”, the largest steam locomotive ever built; weighing over one million pounds in operation. I found interesting to note that while in the UK, preservation societies received little co-operation from British Rail – here in the US, locomotives were donated to the society by the operating companies when they were retired from service.

We visited the livestock section of the show. This was a mixture of prize winning creatures and displays of farm animals for city living children. The display of pigs had three shelters – one made of straw, one of wood, and the third of brick with a picture of a wolf on the wall behind. This mix of actual animals and the fairy story seemed a little odd.

There was a hall devoted to prize winning crafts. Seeing the jewelery, decorated cakes, and similar was interesting. However, cabinets with jars of jam and their associated rosettes seemed rather pointless. In the “only in America” category there were the results of table setting competitions. If you thought that all there was to setting a table was placing a fork on the left, a knife on the right, and a plate in the middle; this was a revelation. The settings were intricate with cutlery, crockery, glassware, and linens all carefully chosen to match the theme. Of course, calling such an event a table setting competition is perhaps unfair, hence the official title of Tablescaping. The picture below is not from th fair, but gives an idea of the entries we saw.

I also saw an interesting service for parties on offer. There was a slot car racing track with cars more on the scale of a matchbox toy than Scalextric. The track was intricate and compact, needing just 10 x 10 ft of space, with eight lanes of cars.

Counting Differences

One slightly disconcerting aspect of living here is that Americans start counting from one. If you think that is how people in the UK count, I should qualify the statement by stating that I am talking about floors in buildings. In the UK there is the Ground Floor, then the floor above is the 1st floor. Here in the US, however the Ground floor is the the 1st floor.

At the Fair

We went to the LA County Fair on Saturday evening. This is a massive event that runs for most of the month of September, on a 523 acre site with 325,000 square feet of indoor exhibit space. Each year over a million people attend. The fair has rides, food and drink, agriculture exhibits, horse racing, concerts, and booths selling everything from tee-shirts to cars and boats. The concerts this year include performances from Credence Clearwater Revival, Pat Bennatar, and Heart. We spent five hours looking round and managed less than a third of the fair.

I was shocked to see that even in the twenty-first century there were still freak shows at that fair. A set of three booths claiming to show a massive horse, steer (10,000 hamburgers alive), and a tiny horse. Entrance was $1 and they seemed to be doing brisk trade.

We saw a woman go up on a crane to do a bungee-jump. Stood up above the crowd, she had second thoughts. It was shocking to hear the crowd shouting “jump” at her, followed by boos as she retreated into the cage and came back down. This flack coming from people who had both feet firmly on the ground.

There were multiple displays of hot-tubs, ranging from the small to the vast. There were people selling barbecue units, not the little items you see in the UK, but large gas fired items built into a stone counter with fridge, sink, storage bins, and side burners. My favourite item was a bath-tub. Not only did this tub have built in water jets, but a built in TV Screen, radio, beer cooler and wine bottle holder.

When the Earth Moves Again

Downtown Covina is one of the local gems. I have made mention of it before. It feels like 1950s Main Street USA, with local shops and just two chain stores; the previously mentioned Starbucks and a Del Taco. The other shops include a Candy Store that makes its own chocolates on the premises and offers chocolate dipped strawberries. There are two bookshops, including a second-hand bookshop that strikes the balance between junk and antiquarian.

The only slight downside are the signs in the windows of most of the buildings that read “This is an unreinforced masonry building, unreinforced buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake.” This suggests that Covina high street buildings date back before 1933 when building codes were changed to require reinforcement of buildings. Apparently the brick construction means that when an earthquake hits, there is a risk that the walls will detach and fall outward. Fortunately, most of these buildings are single storey, so I guess if the ground starts to move while I am strolling down the street I should make a dash for the middle of the road and take my chances with the traffice.