This is a follow up to the post I put up last time; written in 2010 so the dates and views are from then; I wonder, on this day September 28th 2024, if Los Angeles is the same paradise as Ieft.
Well
the medics, Remote Area Medical, have left Los Angeles after treating
over 6,000 patients and after a couple of other states they are
heading for Haiti – and more power to their elbows.
One
or two people have asked me how we manage to eat out so often –
well let me tell you it is very cheap to live here and very cheap to
eat out. Petrol is about £2 a gallon – in the UK the last time I
was there it was that much per 2 litres.
Last
night we went out to eat at a French Restaurant at the Farmer's
Market and it cost, for two of us, about £25. We both had boef
bourguignon and a posh bottle of water so it would have cost more if
we'd ordered a bottle of wine, I suppose, but you can see how cheap
it is.
On
Sunday we had a curry and it cost around £23 but there I had a few
pints of Guinness.
The
Indian food is not great here but we have found a few places – the
Guinness is not that good and it's better to have canned Guinness and
pour it properly.
The
Guinness I drank on Sunday was from the pub next door to the Curry
Palace on Sunset Boulevard where they open the can and dump it into
the glass upside down.
If anybody came here straight from Dublin they would kill the bartender for doing that.
It
makes the Guinness look like slops and it doesn't settle at all
properly.
Guinness
won an award for the design of the can and the widget inside to make
the Guinness taste and look as close to draft Guinness as possible.
The draft Guinness in the pubs here leaves a lot to be desired and to
be honest nobody here has ever tasted a real pint of Guinness. They
may be used to what they drink, and if they ever visit Dublin or
even London they might not like the real stuff – a bit like people
who are only used to eating processed food not liking the real
stuff.
It's
the same with the cheese – it's all processed – and there is no
real dairy industry as the milk and cream have to be processed more
than I am used to.
The
milk – when I was there – in the British Isles is pasteurised and
here it is homogenised; in Britain it was possible to save the cream
from the top of the milk over many days and churn it into butter; if
you tried that with the milk here you would end up with cramp and no
butter.
Anyway,
apart from the dairy and the Guinness, the food here is great. They
haven't quite cracked English food and their version of Irish food
with actual lumps in the mashed potatoes would cause another potato
famine if it was introduced in Ireland.
I
haven't drunk wine for a few years, by the way, which was the best
decision I ever made – just whiskey and beer and the beer is
usually Guinness. So none of those red wine headaches any more and I
also object to drinking beer straight from the bottle so if that's
the only choice I don't drink.
The
area we live in is very nice; we overlook Runyon Canyon and see
plenty of palm trees, humming birds and a lot of greenery.
In
this shot you can see the welcome you get when you get to the gate of
the canyon which might frighten people who are scared of snakes away
but I have been over the canyon hundreds of times and I've only seen
two or three snakes. I've seen plenty of other things there though
like a woodpecker. I have heard them all my life but here I actually
saw one.
There
are also loads of butterflies and a morning yoga class just as you
walk through the gate.
The
other photo is on the way down the canyon and you can just see the
roof of our building – right at the part where the canyon
disappears; the flat roof.
All the talk here at the moment is
about the new immigration law in Arizona where cops will be able to
stop people, who they suspect is an illegal immigrant (what they call
illegals or illegal aliens) and ask for papers. The chances of them
asking me is quite remote so they will have to racially profile
people with brown skin – the Latino.
The Latino does a lot of
the work here by the way, and the Latina; they sweep the streets, do the gardening
and do a lot of the manual work the Americans won't do and if they
don't do that you can see them selling oranges on street corners. Of
course I have heard that the gangs rip them off for, what can only be
called, protection money.
What you don't see the Latino doing is begging;
there are lots of beggars here after spare change; they are not called
beggars they are called pan handlers – is that the politically
correct way I wonder?
Santa Monica, I would say, have the most
beggars around here; nearly as many as San Francisco, and you see all
races begging except for the Latino. Some
people just come up to you in the street with their regular decent
clothes on and ask for money. Sometimes it comes as a shock, if
they're well dressed, and another place you find beggars is at the
traffic lights.
At the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard
people are dressed as Jack Sparrow, Superman, Batman (he gets into
fights) and other movie characters and they have photos taken with
tourists who tip them – so they're begging too; in the richest
country in the world.
The Los Angeles police are reluctant to get
involved in immigration issues; they don't want undocumented
immigrants being too scared to report crimes – I've always equated
undocumented immigrants with sperms; the strongest come here and
survive.
The Arizona law – which comes into force in a few
months – signed April on 23rd by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, is
similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General
Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates
that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal
immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal
immigrants.
Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a
felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are
deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa
violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help
illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
This was pointed out
to me by someone who supports the Arizona law but I don't agree with
any of it; just because someone else does it doesn't mean we have
to.
If the border between Mexico and the USA was open or easy to
pass through like it is between the UK and the rest of Europe there
wouldn't be an influx of Mexicans to the USA; they would come here to
work in the richest country in the world and go home at night or
weekends or whatever. People don't really want to leave their own
country; they want to stay with their friends and extended families;
sometimes they want to, like me, but that is another matter.
So
what do people really have against immigrants – maybe the way they
look?