santa monica, habibi and rude street vendors

so I'm sitting on the plane which is firmly parked on the runway. Fog and rain apparently refuses to alleviate my misery. I'm a smart guy. I book my tickets in such a way that I'm stuck for 15 hours in SeaTac and have just 1 hour between San Fran and LA. Yes, bow down to me.

So anyway, plane eventually takes off - 30 minutes late. Race against time starts. Old lady maintains pace. Asks me interesting questions about Canada - are there airports in Canada? Do they have electricity in Canada? Do you live in an igloo? That sort of intelligent stuff.

So we eventually land. Time to sprint. San Fran airport is HUGE. I get off at gate 23. LA flight from gate 67. Run. Pant. Trip over carry bag. Embarass myself. Continue running and panting.
Reach gate 67. 10 minutes left for take off. Indian uncleji looks at passport.then me. then passport.then me.so on and so forth. a grunt from him occurs. indicating that im good to go. Not so fast. Strip search time. That also finished. Run. 5 minutes left before take off. Yay. Excited. Slavering anticipation. Think about street hockey for some reason. Get on plane.

Eventless flight to LA. awesome. Get down. wait for friends to pick me up. Make 6 phone calls in 10 minute gap trying to locate them in LAX (and you wonder why i got awesome cell phone bill?).

Finally locate friends. Joy. plenty of joy. worth the hassle of getting here i thought. Aarti and meghna hadn't changed at all. same ol' same ol'. Introduction to new friend. Name's Amit. Awesome guy. Perfect drink buddy to discuss music,women, and the universe. And so the 4 of us were united. for a few short days, life was to be happy, carefree and the fun side of america was to be exploited.

We get into the car and the 3 ex-VITians catch up on eachother's stories (or the lack thereof). First stop - santa monica. Santa Monica is like vancouver's granville island. Lotsa street performers, street vendors all over the place. Christmas eve lights. Fun stuff. So we wander aimlessly. I take in the scene. The palm trees. I wanted to see a coconut tree but I couldn't. Feelings of relaxation seep in.

I noticed some things about LA. In Vancouver, a street vendor will politely ask you if you'd like to buy something and if you politely decline, they will smile, wish you a good day... and curse you under their breath. In LA, there is no need for such formalities. Make the person feel cheap 10 metres away from your shop.
-"Hey you guys, aren't you going to atleast buy the ladies a rose on christmas eve?"
-" Uh. no"
-"Hmmm. whatever".

Yes. They make you feel like a million bucks. After walking round a bit more, we decided to go home... and eat yummy sambhar, rasam, and potato curry...with wine - joyous food. and so we stuff our faces (aarti and meghna had made it just for me, so a big thanks to them here!) and head off to habibi's.

Habibi is a hookah parlour where the iranian crowd of LA hangout. It's a UCLA hangout so people from USC are generally not welcome there. They actually have a sign saying "UCLA welcome, USC smc (suck my cock)" or something like that. Welcoming. The rivalry between UCLA and USC seems to be quite big in this city. They rape, plunder and drop manure on eachother's mascots. Stupid kids. Back to the story. Habibi... it was a fascinating place. I've never tried a hookah/shisha before. It was a bit of a challenge to start off with. Partly because our's wasn't working too well. I felt like a wus watching aarti blow copious amounts of tropical fruit flavoured smoke while I managed something weak and pathetic. But I wuldn't give up now would I? No. Ofcourse not. Bwahahahaaa. yes. I finally got it... like 15 minutes before we were about to leave. no, actually much before that, but time seems to come to a halt as we puffed away to glory. We ordered some sicko iranian dish. There were tonnes of gorgeous iranian women there. some shaking their booty. some sitting and watching. then there were some gay type guys. dancing in groups. while there were women just sitting there. so what was I doing you might ask. I was sitting. and puffing away. No, I didn't dance. why? I just didn't. Because im a wimp and I didn't feel like asking the iranian girls to dance... well that wasnt the only reason. I was with my friends there and its kind of rude running away asking random women to dance when you came with friends - that you are meeting after 2 years. So thats that. We left after a couple of hours. back home. I was too tired to go clubbing. SeaTac was still doing a number on me. Went home, and crashed. We were heading to San Diego and warm beaches the next day... what fun. It's snowing in vancouver right now by the way. Depressing.

"and I don't want the world to see me,
coz don't think that they'd understand.
when everything is made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am".

just felt like writing that... it's the story of my life. I'm reading catcher in the rye right now. creepy book. i can relate to it on so many levels.