by I thought I’d note a few other observations about the parts of the US that I saw (and even though I travelled a long way it still only felt like I scratched the surface).
I found the general American public to be extremely welcoming, friendly, helpful, and easy to talk to. People whose job it was to be friendly and helpful were sometimes extremely so, but sometimes very unhelpful and aggressive with it, and I got everything in between. As for service being much better at restaurants than in NZ, because staff rely so heavily on tips, I didn’t see that. You got more service certainly, but to call it better would be like saying LA has “better traffic” than Wellington. You got the impression that waiting staff felt they needed to perform for their tip; I thought this was demeaning.
US physical currency is nasty stuff. Thai baht is six times more user-friendly. Let me see, I’ve got some black stuff, and some more black stuff… and everything required far too much black stuff. The taxes that varied from state to state (both in amount and where they applied), having to tip all the time, and the ATMs that only ever gave out twenties when you really needed a range, often made transactions a bit of a rigmarole.
I saw this everywhere. It seemed that you either have manicured lawns and a Lexus, or you can’t feed your kids. There didn’t seem to be much of a middle. It’s very different to Wellington where lots of people drive a clapped-out car (but they have one), aren’t going anywhere in their jobs (but they have one), are able to go fishing or maybe play tennis, go to Australia or Fiji occasionally, access nutritious food, and see the doctor when they get sick. I was thinking, maybe that’s why they don’t allow ties in baseball (when it would make so much sense to me to allow them). In the US, people don’t tie in real life. I think the middle is shrinking in the UK too.
Baseball. I enjoyed that so much that I’m giving it its own post (coming up next).
The flight back was long and knackering. Boston to LA was 6 hours. Then I had 7½ hours in LA and was able to go to Santa Monica beach (an unexpected bonus) before getting on the plane to Auckland – another 12½ hours. Air NZ have crammed in more seats on those 777s in the last few years, and you basically can’t win no matter where you sit. Of course I still had to get to Wellington, where it was wet, windy and 7 degrees. In Boston it had been 29. That same day I got a haircut – my hair hadn’t been that long in 13 years. It was also 13 years since I’d been as happy as I was in Boston.
Surprisingly, people at work seemed genuinely interested in my trip. That was nice. I’ve been in touch with my cousin – she goes to Boston for work sometimes and her husband and the boys have all been there. If it wasn’t for her I doubt I’d have gone there, so I’m very grateful.
