Okay, okay, I'm writing, I'm writing…

I didn't mean to put off writing another entry for so long after getting back. (I arrived home about 10 days ago)

It's not that I was waiting for Cocopuffs to do something to add worth to an update (he actually has done some stuff tho. )

It's that I did so much stuff in the states that I've been putting off writing my inevitable long blog.

But that time has come, so I'll get right into it.

The week before we left I had work 7 days in a row, all PM shifts so it kinda messed up my sleeping schedule more than normal and the night before we left I was up till about 6am watching Freaks and Geeks. (awesome show)

But that's all good, made me tired for the 12 hour flight to LA even though I didn't actually sleep on the flight, I watched like 8 movies.

So LA huh?

Yeah, first thing I noticed is how the traffic never stops, even in the busiest part of town here you'd still find at least a 10 second gap to cross the road.. and that reminds me, half the crossings have timers.. now that's something we should have too.

Also, the sky is really grey in California, man what a ton of pollution, and at night you can barely see a single star.

We were only in Cali for 2 days, the first of which we spent at Universal Studios.

Which actually, was pretty cool.

I'd say the tour was the best, you get to see stuff like the Delorean, Jaws, a bunch of sets I did actually recognize.

And they take you through a few sets that flood with water, explode, fall apart, all kinds of cool stuff.

Oh, I should mention, they have these long ass escalators from one part to the other, and they have speakers playing TV show themes and two hosts encouraging people on the escalators to yell out the name of the show if they recognize the theme song.

So the theme to friends is playing and I'm sure everyone on the escalators knew it, knew that everyone else knew it, and didn't want to act like they thought they'd impress anyone with their extensive knowledge about a show that's still being re-run for the 15th time.

So my mum yells out "The Monkees!!!"

And I was standing right behind her, so I just turned around and walked down the escalator.

I would ask if the Monkees even had a show, but 10 seconds on IMDB says, yes, they did.

So I kinda blocked out the rest of the day from that point on, and the next day we spent at Disney's California Adventure.

And well.. meh.

The rides were alright, some were so small my knees stuck out and I got bad cramps.

Some were cool like the twilight tower that just throws you up and down in an escalator, and the roller coaster, I rode those two twice to make sure I.. didn't forget them I guess.

But overall, I felt like I was too old, I'm not even 20 yet and there were plenty of people older than me.

I guess it's just that basically every kid dreams about going, and when you finally do go, you stopped dreaming about it a long time ago.

But hey, there's Disney Land ticked off my list.

Oh and about 10 minutes after we arrived at our hotel we went for a walk and saw a dude riding a bike get hit by a car, an ambulance came 'n everything.

Then we flew to Vegas, we stayed at the Circus Circus hotel which was pretty cool, they have the largest indoor theme park in the world, but after Universal Studios and Disney Land who cares.

There isn't much to say about Vegas, it was probably the most sobering of all, I'm 19 so the main attraction goes out the window.

But I did walk down the strip sipping a margarita (tick) and every 100 feet or so there's a group of usually Mexicans or Latinos handing out 'escort' cards.

The roads are seriously covered in them, I think it's safe to say they're doing their job.

Just walking around Vegas isn't that fun, there are some really cool buildings and stuff, but just about everyone else walking round is a tourist, I couldn't help but think about how miserable the people working there are.

The best part of Vegas was the Hard Rock Cafe, not only was the food awesome, but they had so much cool stuff on the walls, hand written letters, the massive painting of Hendrix done in the time it took him to play a song was especially cool.

I also bought a bunch of cool stuff for my friends and coworkers there.

One of those days in Vegas we took a bus tour to the Grand Canyon, the tour there was actually pretty good, we had this cool guy… Mike driving the bus and he just had so many things to say.

He would answer any question, like what's that bird over there and he'd not just know the name- but list it's wing span, preferred prey, how long they live, etc.

When we finally arrived it is pretty amazing, you definitely don't get the same experience from a photo or video, but at the same time it's so huge it looks like a painting.

We spent 6 days in Vegas, which honestly was too long, there isn't really 6 days worth of things to do when you can't gamble.

So fast forward to our flight to New York. (Ja Rule was in first class btw)

I had a bunch of loud Italians behind me (they started off the landing applause (don't you hate that!?) and basically yelled "bravo")

They kept pulling and pushing on my seat to look out the window and stand up for no reason.

New York is cool, but it is also basically a Mall.

From the airport we had one of the worst drivers in NY, I know you're thinking they're all pretty bad in NY and I'm just not used to it, nah, he was fucking crazy.

He crammed as many people into our shuttle bus as possible and damaged all of our luggage, he nearly hit so many people and made turns so very very late.

He of course turned down our $1 tip.

We stayed at the Pennsylvania Hotel right across the street from Madison Square Garden where there was more often than not some performance going on outside.

We were supposed to be in two 2 double-bed rooms, but when we arrived the guy had to 'downgrade' us into a one 2 double-bed room and a 3 single-bed rooms.

There were only six of us so it wasn't a big deal, so we checked out the one double-bed room they still had for us, and then we checked out the 3 single-bed room.

And the single bed room was anything but a downgrade.

It was 2 rooms with the wall knocked out, walk in wardrobe, bigger bathroom, bigger TV, fridge, couches.

So we kinda went over what we'd say if they tried to add any 'upgrade fees'.

I'm just gonna list the things I did in NY:

Rode horse cart through Central Park

Saw several commercials being made in time square and central park.

Went up to the top of the Empire State building

Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Went to the New York Comedy Club.

Went to the Wax Museum.

Went to ground zero.

Went to a ton of shops and delis.

Used the subway and taxis many times.

Went to the Late Show with David Letterman, I was the last person they let in, it was the one with Robert Downey Jr (Ironman) and Alicia Keys, you might have seen me during the camera sweep of the audience during commercial lol.

Also, my brothers girlfriend was asked if she wanted to be on the show in Rupert's Hello Deli, she agreed and waited in there, but they decided not to run the skit, or game, or whatever they had planned and she came back to the audience.

I think that's every significant thing I did in NY, the comedy club was really cool too. These girls were having a sweet sixteen there and half the jokes every comedian made was about them.

After eight days in New York we caught a train to Indiana, a roughly 30 hour ride.

Which sucked sucked sucked.

It's like riding in noisy turbulence the whole way on a really long flight.

Sitting at a dining table in a train eating pretty bad and definitely overpriced food is not fun, but (tick) I guess.

And there was this loud walrus woman sitting across the isle to us, she snored like she was choking for about half the ride so I only slept about 30 minutes, but I know in those 30 minutes I dreamed about stomping her face in.

Admittedly the first few hours in daylight were alright, the chairs were comfy, we went over plenty of rivers, and through plenty of towns. But once it turned to night and she started snoring…

Also there was a psychopath on the train, like he was probably fleeing New York after a triple homicide or something.

He went crazy at anyone who came near him, made a girl cry and stared intensely at people sleeping.

So when we finally got the hell off that train we had to catch 2 taxis to the airport where our rental car was waiting.

One thing I really like about America is how easy it is to find a taxi, 6 people with 10 suitcases requires planning here in New Zealand, but it only requires a few minutes on the corner of an intersection in America.

We hadn't done any driving until we got the rental car and my dad was the only one of us who was going to, we drove around the car lot for a while until he got used to driving on the other side of the road, I would say he got used to having a footbrake instead of a handbrake, but he didn't- when we stopped for petrol (it's twice the price here btw) we slowly rolled away until he noticed.

We drove from Indiana to Terre Haute (I think I spelled that right) as the sun rose behind us, it was bright red and looked really cool.

James and Pina have a big place that used to be a frat house I think, they have two other roommates, one's dad came to visit for a night and it still wasn't cramped.

Terre Haute was my favourite of the whole trip because I was looking forward to seeing James and Pina again, plus it was really normal.

The people walking around aren't tourists too, no constant crazy traffic, no one getting hit off their bikes, the sky's blue, the homeless aren't abusive.

We actually did quite a bit in Indiana.

We met the people James and Pina have come to known, went to a BBQ with them all, went to their Graduation (they did play that classic graduation music) (one dude was naked under his robe), we did almost as much shopping as in NY, the prices are so much lower there and the stores are so much more bearable.

We went to the indi 500 track, we actually snuck through security and drove on the F1 track until we decided to turn around, this was obviously the highlight for my dad, he wanted to keep driving.

It is really surprising how huge it is inside, there's also a really cool museum with a ton of cars that look like they're straight out of speed racer.

We went to the smallest theater I've ever been in, we saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall which was unsurprisingly pretty awesome.

It had Jason Segel from Freaks and Geeks (he always seems to play very emotionally unstable characters (see Undeclared also)), yeah a really good movie.

I think I've touched on about every part of the trip, but I'll just go through some of the things that are very different to what I'm used to or what I was expecting.

First, the people.

Americans that come to New Zealand don't give the best impression, and every medium seems to remind me that America is a terrible place with terrible people.

But it's not, even the fakest places like Disney Land and Vegas had helpful happy people and service much better than anything here, sure the tips are probably behind the service, but still.

And in New York, if you stop to look at a map, more often than not someone will ask you if you need help, everyone I asked for directions offered as much help as they could, and everyone seemed so happy.

The food.

American food sucks, pretty much every aspect of it is incredibly inferior to New Zealand food.

The bread tastes like it's covered in sugar and feels like it's gone stale, the tomatoes are freaks of nature, the milk keeps for 2 weeks, I don't know what the hell was in those mashed potatoes, KFC is garbage, even subway was pretty sickening.

Of course, food in restaurants was nice, and a few places like Arby's were pretty good.

Pepsi and Coke.

What's going on there, it's like some states are Pepsi states and some are Cocacola states, Pepsi is a borderline failure here. Plus American coke is way richer and hard to burp without foam coming back up my throat.

Money.

While the $1 note is cool, I kinda hated all the coins, is it the smallest coin is worth 10c and you also have 1c coins?

I ended up with like 40 1c coins because whenever I tried to get rid of them no one would fuckin' accept them.

We used to have 5c coins but we got rid of them because even they were annoying, no one really wants them anyways.

Also, everything is way way way cheaper in America, the more expensive stores were basically regular prices here, games usually cost at least $100 here, and some are as low as $20 in Gamestop, but since there's regions n everything that is basically just a slap in the face.

Eating out is way cheaper, even with tips it's like stealing, clothes are like 4 times the price here, I bought 3 pairs of shoes for what would cost less than 1 pair of shoes here.

Hats for like $10, shirts for around $20, pants for around $30.

And like I said earlier, petrol is twice the price here.

But really, the biggest surprise was the people, that one driver in New York was the only bad experience we had with someone.

Since getting back I haven't done a whole lot.

We had the backyard almost re-landscaped while we were away and Jazz has to stay out while the grass grows, so I set up a wall around the side of the house and she'll have to stay in that area for a month or so.

She was ridiculously happy when we went to get her from the kennels, I actually filmed her patented happy dance.

I might upload it to youtube or something if you guys are interested.

Basically, I've just gotten back into the regular routine, I did buy some new games too.

Sonic & the secret rings was 60% off, No More Heroes is too awesome to skip, and I bought Mario Kart just yesterday. (your jedi mind trick did not work, at least not fully)

Sonic isn't that bad, it's pretty broken and unpolished, but there is a decent amount of fun to be had.

No More Heroes is pure awesomeness, it's like they went back to NES days and thought what those developers thought 3D games might end up like, there's no blood in the NZ version which sucks (cutscenes are also toned down) and there isn't a whole lot to the city, basically suda51 could've just replaced it with a menu, but I appreciate they put in the effort to make a town that wasn't really necessary.

Mario Kart is better than I was expecting, Gametrailers kinda slammed it in their review, and the wii-wheel has gotten very mixed feedback, personally- I love it, it works like an absolute charm and it's kinda got me back into need for speed carbon again.

The only thing I'd say is a definite negative is the weapons, they really have gotten to the point where they absolutely rule the game.

It pays to hang back until the last lap just to avoid a pummeling for the first two.

I think it's about time Nintendo included the options to disable specific items, or at least turn all items completely on/off.

Online is actually, really good.

I've already spent probably 5 hours racing (haven't even done a battle with bots yet) it's a lot more fun with people when you or they do something stupid, also downloading ghost data is fun, some people are insanely good at this game.

Tricks, bikes, even the new drifting are all good in my books.

My Mario Kart FC is:

1161-0632-5026

Leave a comment with your FC if you want me to add you.

And I've kinda gotten back into Galaxy again, hunting down those last few stars.

Oh and one last kicker, I've finally checked out the Twilight Hack and have been playing snes9x on my Wii, and guess what game I've been playing.

Super Metroid Redesign.

I just thought what the hell, I'll see if it works (coz it doesn't on the DS emulator) and I ended up playing for a few hours and realized it's nowhere near as hard as I remembered it as.

I'm around halfway and only 6 hours into the game, almost half the time it took my first play through.

So um, I think that about wraps up my trip to America. (tick)

I took a bunch of photos and I'll probably include them in the next update.

But until then,

BYAAH!