The food is nice, there are public bubblers with freshly squeezed OJ on every street corner, everything comes with optional hot sauce, which is lovely. The coffee is, however, UNSPEAKABLE. It is like someone mixed International Roast with dog shit. Possibly it's a green initiative to recycle dog shit, or a clever marketing plan to make money from same.
I have a bolt hole, a beach head, a little place in between big roads which is forever Oz. It's a cheap hotel, not pretty but pretty good value. I wander outside to smoke and catch the cooling breeze from South West, where the ocean is, and watch crows fleeing to the mountains in the East. It is a topsy turvy place. The 'burbs at night are no place at all.
On the upside ... So much stuff is so cheap. I have resolved to tip at least 25% since I learnt waitresses get paid $2.70 per hour, barely enough to pay for their transport to work. I think of it as an appearance fee in the drama entitled "Please get me something to eat, and stop being so damned bubbly and solicitous."
Margueritas, $2 each. I could get used to that.
At night, the earthquakes come.
Only A pissweak one, admittedly, 1.6, but only a km or two from where I am sitting. I thought it was someone walking in my room. Then I noticed some old cracks in the balcony, thought about it a sec, and googled. Sure enough! On a possibly unrelated topic, drove past a nuclear power plant on the way here ... Sitting on the ocean shore ... At the end of a spur which (to my untrained eye) looked like it could even have been a fault line.
I guess The Big One will be like Disneyland comes to you. Two minutes of abject terror, and then you get to line up for refreshments. Oh well, at least I can carry my survival kit everywhere without feeling completely silly.
Colin
That is precisely what the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake was like. Oh, and some people died, but surprisingly not many.
ReplyDeleteI usually tip between 20% and 25% but am considered a high tipping anomaly.
Lest you think I'm being hyperbolic with the Coffee Dogshit Nexus: there was a guy in NY who scored a toxic waste disposal contract and owned a chain of petrol stations. He mixed the dioxins etc in with the petrol and his customers did the disposal for him. Admittedly this was more like spraying the countryside with deadly chemicals than actual disposal, but I admire his evil psychotic genius.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I reckon that guy moved on to Folgers or Nestle after he got probation.