Moody, officey, itchy for road

I don't like working in offices, but i like doing exactly the same office work at a coffee shop. And, truth be told, I get about the same amount of work done at both venues.

Someone said 'ambiance'. Now, maybe - maybe it is the cool indie tunes playing over the coffee shop speakers (compared to tinny lap-top speakers), maybe it's the moving scenery through the massive windows compared to the tiny window behind you. Maybe it's the moving scenery indoors - instead of stinky farts by the guy you share the office with (it's funny on weekends on social outings when it's a recollected anecdote or it's happening to someone else) - instead - it's a constant changing scene of people of all types, and you see everything in your periphery. Maybe it's the artificial(?) sense of pressure put on you in a place of walls, cubicles, efficiency, progress and stifled, fart-smelling air. And maybe it's just the difference between a damn good latte and coffee you quite gladly pass on. Probably not. That same latte doesn't taste as good in an office.

Now, you say, why don't you just work in that office on the top floor of that super massive sky-scraper in Austin you once delivered some photocopiers to? HA! Great question. Now there's an office that has some hip feng shui going on for it - massive windows with a constantly changing view of 360 degree Austin, with the weather always moving. And i'm sure the coffee is better there.

Well, friend, after staying at lovely hotels on the road, visiting lovely schools, meeting lovely families in lovely houses, karma says that the loveliness has to stop somewhere, sometime, and that sometime is in the office. One cannot have too much loveliness without turning sour. That is an ancient office saying i just created to make me feel more zen about my time served. The thing is, i work extra hard in that office, and i work hard already. And the reason i work extra hard in that office is so that opportunities, many opportunities, will be set up outside of the office. Otherwise, it's just more hard work in the office. And we're not talking Austin top-level-sky-scraper dream office here. We're talking Pennsylvania (hang on - i like PA, bear with me), office slightly below ground so you see ground outside window at eye-level whilst twirling on OK chair office. Different. And we're talking no smashingly beautiful women office. Smashingly beautiful women, placed anywhere in an office, is good feng shui, one must think.

The road is calling, and yet, the office is calling louder and closer and will pull me by the ear back to it's sweaty gross chest tomorrow, because it's the office's day to have custody of me. So i work hard, diligently churning over paperwork that is all electronic these days (electronicwork), as my eyes ache, and then behind my eyes ache, and then my head aches at the front, and somehow i must be closer to being on the road again, and must be closer to being on the road in a greater capacity - surely!

Whether the Weather...

Snow.

I had seen very little of it. Nowadays, I still haven't seen a super tonne-load (like they're getting in Philly/Baltimore/DC), but i've seen enough to make me giggle and then go all silent, tilt my head and open my mouth a wee bit.

The pretty kind.

And, as a side point, i've discovered that when it snows, it's often not even that cold. Two points here: since I arrived in the USA on January 14th, i have quickly adjusted to what is truly cold. At first i felt cold when it was something like 40 degrees farenheit. Now i've discovered that those people wearing t-shirts during that weather weren't completely, ludicrously crazy, but maybe just a touch silly. The second point is that, other than relativity, it's the cussing wind that is the eerk of all living creatures. It is the wind that makes my ears want to divorce my body but only after stabbing me multiple times in rapid succession in the side of the head. That one night - walking back to my car from the bar in Harvard Square, Boston - ugh - it was a deathly cold walk of fear at wind's evil doing. The guy wearing shorts and a t-shirt that night was completely, ludicrously crazy...and then some.

It's about time i told you what i'm doing in the USA.

Wells...i'm keeping busy, that's for sure.

Basically, my volunteering for Travel for Teens involves me driving around the country (currently in my little Toyota Yaris hatchback rental), going to super lovely prep type schools; camp fairs; and house visits in super lovely areas, and promoting our company's spring break and summer trips.
It's been fun!

First of all i studied up on the trips - the Travel for Teens office in Philly is a hot-bed for people Skype messaging each other when they are actually only 4 decent-efforted leaps apart. Since it's also not at all top secret but also not that much interesting, mum's the word for the rest of the goings ons (pssst...i will tell you - just between you and me - that there's also a dog in the office named Se7en who could possibly be super evil but by all appearances is friendly, placid and never barks).

Next i did some further on-the-road training with Fritz. Fritz has one foot in a post-surgery mega boot. He couldn't drive, and sometimes when he walks he sounds like a pirate, so i, after having never driven for a sustained period of time in the USA before, took the wheel and drove to NYC. All hell broke lose when it was discovered that Fritz was into hip-hop and so was his entire CD collection that he brought. Needless to say, i'm writing this blog now, so all's well that ends well.

I learnt the company craft from Fritz, then we crashed on the upper west side, with a pitcher or two of the finest cheapest beer we could find, in between.

NYC is gorgeous in the winter. We walked the city, caught the subway around, did some research, and found a coffee shop to crash out at and do all our laptop and phone business type things that are essential and boring and made tolerable and faster by lattes.

Before too long, Fritz is gone, I'm visiting schools in Massachusetts, I'm making friends with couchsurfers, I'm doing house visits in areas where celebrities such as Bill Clinton live, I'm catching up with old buddies in New Jersey (great times), I'm flying from Philly to Miami and visiting schools down there, I'm catching up with my roller-coaster buddy in Fort Lauderdale, I'm talking to the guy I'm sitting next to eating my dinner with at a sports bar (and we're having another great time), I'm watching silky smooth Dwayne Wade get schooled at basketball by my countryman, Andrew Bogut, I'm flying back to Philly just in time to drive like the evil wind to Boston and escape the heaviest snowstorm in Philly in forever and ever (the accuracy of this statement can be attributed to Fox News), and after schools and fairs in Massachusetts and Connecticut, I'm now in New Hampshire, writing this.

I talked about Ned and Kate's parents in the last blog...

Seems like I'm doing a US tour named: 'Travel for Teens staff - meet their parents'...with me last night getting a home cooked meal that was delightfully delicious from Nic Emery's parents. Fantastic stuff, there. I could write a blog, indeed two blogs, about Jerry's intrepid edge-of-your-seat stories and Juliette's split pea soup. Divine. Had i ever met these people before? No. I was just scared of snow, they lived close to the school that I was going to the next morning, so Nic hooked me up. Best couch-surfing-gone-sleeping-on-Nic-Emery's-bed-surfing ever.

Watch out Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA. I'm heading in your direction....

...and this time: i have a beanie.

Disoriented Landing

This is how I flew from Adelaide to Philadelphia:
via Auckland (with a pat-down in both ADL and AKL)
via San Francisco (with another pat down, i believe, and a long enough stop-over that i could get the BART train into town, and have an awesome Indian lunch in Mission with my mate Pat and his Indian boyfriend, Waylon)

...and then i landed in Philly the same day, after 25 hours of travel. C'mon - that 'going back in time' time difference thing, never gets old.

So, i'm sitting on the train on the way into San Francisco, and my mind is racing, and a smile is growing huge on my internal face. And i'm walking down Mission - definitely not San Francisco's 'poster street' - and i'm radiating happiness, completely overcoming tiredness. It's all these little, irrelevant American nuances - eavesdropping on loud conversations that are difficult not to; ridiculously cheap things (relatively speaking); a warm, sunny winter day in San Fran (now how can you go wrong with that); a girl wearing thrift shop clothes and a Belle and Sebastian sticker on her bag.

What can i say - i like the USA - and i know all the negatives - probably the biggest negative being the blandness and repetition of shops and restaurants as you cross the country - not a family-owned fish & chip shop in sight. That's what you were going to say, right? Ugh, those diners and fast food chains turn me off. OK so maybe i've changed...but on the other hand, i don't think i've ever enjoyed Denny's. Not a single good memory.

So, arriving in Philly i hit the ground running - with a slight sleep-in, i'm in the office the next morning.

I'm staying with Ned, the Vice President of Travel for Teens, and his wife, Kate. The house, in Conshohocken, PA, is a dream house for someone like me - that is, late 20s, with a disposition to be hospitable. Funny, that's a pretty similar non-detailed description of Ned and Kate, too.

I'm using the master bedroom, and N&K have been brilliantly welcoming. Watching football or basketball on the massive TV, eating good food, drinking great wine (a very tidy little cellar in the basement) - Ned and Kate are fun to be around - it's getting a little serious, i gotta say: I've met their parents.

Ned's parents are cool - dad watches football and mum makes sensational art. Quality. Kate's mum cooks a mean roast, and Kate's dad is hilarious. I pretty much fell in love with Kate's dad because his wit is cutting, and, on his advice, i even had a little horse-radish on my roast meat (ahh the things you do when you're in love. Actually, a little horseradish is a good thing, and i knew this already, but it's always good to give credit to 'love' - it brings about good karma).

I don't believe in blogs being too long (see i have changed), and although this one hasn't gotten across the info i intended...

...there's always the next blog.