London to LA
Offline So work have just made a tenative offer to transfer me to our office in Los Angeles. Leadtime, depending on immigration stuff and on economic realities is about 12 months.
The package as it currently looks is pretty good. Pay rise, offer to keep my UK contract open for 3 months in case I don't like LA, etc.
What I need to know from an objective view (my co-workers in LA are working hard to sell the idea to me for both professional and personal reasons) is what is LA life really like. I've been there before on business and on holiday, but know that short stays often don't give a true impression. The negatives I've worked out and decided I can handle are;
Earthquakes. If the more common, smaller ones were that terrifying, the West Coast would be deserted.
Violence & crime. It's a concern but I've seen and lived with the fear of worse.
Rampant theism. The 2 coasts & the more cosmopolitan cities seem to be a good deal more secular than Falwell country.
Politics. George W will soon be history. I wouldn't be considering the move if McCain had won, but democracy did instead. Happy day(s). We truly hope.
Fox News. A VPN connection to a webserver that I'll be setting up at my parents' place here will give me even more alternatives to Rupert's shit.
The beer. Sorry guys, but every mainstream American beer I've tried has made me pull a face. However, I believe there are now a number of places in LA that serve London Pride by the pint, that with a little hunting, one can find a microbrewery that does a decent lager and that Heineken has a long & honourable presence there.
Are there any negatives I've left out or should be considering?
Stop that... It's silly.
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I have heard from a friend who's sister lives there that folks are pretty shallow and not open to inviting new folks into their friend-groups. She calls it 'West Coast Nice'. I guess you'd have a nice friend-base from work though, so that may not bother you!
As far as the beer goes, I think you've not been fully informed. This country has embraced fine beer. There are millions of beer stores with world-representative selections. LA, I'm SO sure, will have tons to choose from. Hell, even here in GA I can get all the delicious Belgians and Stouts and...hell...ANY style I want! I'm sure that should not be a deal-breaker for you. I will suggest to you to stay away from ANY mass-produced, crap, American beer. There are so many fine breweries in this country now. From Ommegang to Rogue and everything in between.
Cheers!
Well California as a state is pretty much going to hell, imo. That's why I left the state 3 years ago. I'm not sure what the cost of living is in London, but for California it's high, relative to the rest of the country. If you want to live "cheaply", your house will usually be about 30min-2hours away (depending on traffic, and then it's anyones guess how long your commute will be) from where you work. Usually you're very lucky to live close to where you work in SoCal. So if you don't live close to work make sure you have a nice comfortable car because you may end up living in it on the freeways.
Earthquakes are great once you get use to them. Then you start comparing how big it was and how close you were. The news channels usually make Earthquakes in California look worse than the actually seem. (After a few "big" ones you should be able to develope the sence of telling the difference between one you have to run for cover or not too.)
Violence & Crime: It depends mostly on where you go and who you know. There are crime centers, and well any local should be able to tell you where not to go if you're looking to no be shot. Sure it can happen anywhere, but in some areas you have a higher probability of being shot than others.
Yeah Theism is around, but not like the bible belt or mid west. The Catholics have some pull in LA since it has a large hispanic population. But in LA you have almost every religon there. Just remember to becareful in Hollywood, the Scientoligists are lurking to recruit you.(At least in California you have liquor stores that sell alcohol 24/7)
Fox News isn't the only news source in the US you know.
Screw beer, once you're in SoCal get some Tequilla (I'll even recomend a brand, Don Julio Blanco, high quality you can sip like wine)
Well, the one thing that you did not ask about is also one of the ones that might be the biggest.
My cousin moved from Boston to LA about thirty years ago and the one beef that he has is with the weather. It is boringly nice. Storms are exciting. Yah, it is odd and not a sufficient reason for him to move back. Even so, that has been the biggest problem that he has had with the move.
Past that, you seem to have some odd misconceptions of what our culture is like.
Violence and crime: Dude, you live in London.
News flash: there is violence and crime in London. The real difference is that murders in London happen with knives more than with guns. Except that all the gun crime in London is done with illegal guns. Actually, most of the gun crime in America is done with illegal guns, so we are not that different. Except that in America, you can shoot back.
I would recommend that you consider a revolver in .357 for your fist gun. It is not an easy gun to tame when you lack experience but you can load .38 special in most of them and that is fairly easy to handle.
Rampant theism: Mostly that will take the form of people gripped with a sense of self importance insisting that they be allowed to hand you small pieces of paper. Apparently, they are free tickets to heaven or something like that.
There is the occasional time when somebody wants to knock on your door but you can shut the door and they go away. Or you can try a left cross to the sternum if you are so inclined. The fact is that they are not allowed to fight back. If they do, they have violated Luke 6:29
Politics: We are not a democracy. We are a republic and even when the guy we do not want in office wins, we, as a culture win. It is an orderly transition of power and we can fix that the next time around. Until that time, we get to talk about the mess that our leaders are making.
For example, President Clinton went on national television and basically said that blow jobs do not count as sex. The exact quote was “I never had sexual relations with that woman”. He wagged his finger at the American people while he did that. That is why we impeached his sorry ass.
Fox News: Yah, it is a bit of an embarrassment to us. The in-joke is that we call it faux-news. The only thing that is “fair and balanced” about it is that faux-news is the antimatter to the crap that CNN pulls. They are both full of crap, they just have different flavors. If you don't want to take crap, I recommend that you get your news from google.
The beer: Your countryman Michael Palin said it best. “American beer is like making love in a canoe. Fucking close to water”. He was, of course, talking about Budweiser, Miller, Busch and Michelob. We have better to offer if you take the time to look around.
The good beer is what we call microbrews. They can come from huge companies as well. They just make a good product. I happen to be a huge fan of Anchor Porter. It is comparable to Guinness stout.
Also, Sam Adams has several nice offerings. And a few that are not so good. Stay far away from the “summer wheat” or you will get the piss shivers. Mind you, Sam Adams is brewed by the Boston beer company and the historical Sam Adams lived in Pittsfield (which is as far from Boston as you can get without leaving Massachusetts).
Basically, you are looking at leaving a nice, predictable place and coming to the land of weird and contradictory. As odd as that may seem, it is really one of our great strengths. A couple of centuries ago, we got this idea that people should be allowed to do more or less what they wanted to do and we had to kick some British ass to make that happen. Today, you live in a Westminster model government, which is basically a response to what we did.
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Have to respond to a few comments there as a Londoner.
There murder rate in the US is 5 times than of the UK per person, that is just a fact other crimes are closer (I think burgularly rates are slightly lower in the US). During the troubles in Northern Ireland which was effectively a civl war the murder rates there were still lower than in the US. To say Brits just use knives but Americans use guns but still kill the same amount of people is just absurd.
Of course the chances of getting murdered in the US or the UK if you live in a decent area is still minute.
The US is democracy as in is the UK, the US is also a republic (as is Syria, China , Cuba,Vietnam and France) which basically means the head of state is not inherited.
The American political system is a direct copy of the British system (not the other way around), as is the legal system, of course there are differences but fundamentally they started as the same (limited democracy for the elite) and evolved structures which effectively ended up at the same point (all men getting the vote, slavery ending, women getting the vote). These advances generally happened within a few years of each other. The difference between the US and UK political systems are (and have always been) trivial compared to the similarities.
I'm sure 300 million people can come up with a decent beer between them, the fun is the hunt
How much do you like being stuck in traffic? That's a major consideration in LA as public transportation is either non-existent or sucks.
The people are rather shallow at that end of the state. If you can handle it, great.
You don't need a gun unless you plan on hiking in the woods throughout the state(cougars and pot farms) or East LA.
There are a lot of laws regulating minutia being passed in California. That may not bother you though. The economy sucking is likely to affect you though. Expect high taxes on top of the high cost of living.
(I'm from Northern California and have spent some time in Southern, but not much as I don't really like that whole area.)
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
Something pertinent that I left out of the OP; I grew up in Zimbabwe. The weather there is "boringly nice" too. I like it that way
Maybe. Blame Hollywood.
No need for the flash there. However, in the year 2007/2008, there were 156 murders in London (London Metropolitan Police), compared with 394 in LA during 2007 (LAPD.) 2008 figures are not yet available on the LAPD website.
The UK Office of National Statisitcs puts London's population at 7.56 million as of Sept 2008. The US Census puts LA County at near enough 10 million as of 2006. From that and I wish I had more up to date information on LA's population, LA's murder rate is about 3.94 per 100,000 & London is 2.06 per 100,000.
I'd pull gun crime numbers but feel that the weapon used is less important than the crime committed.
Like I tried to infer in the OP, albeit unsuccessfully, the violence etc. is something I can live with. An enduring memory from my time in Zimbabwe is being told by a 5" 5' "war veteran" who had invaded the farm I was working on that if I did not leave, the "vultures they will be picking your dead body." Given that he was holding a machete, sniffing thinners out of a Vaseline lid, led a group of about 30 similarly armed solvent-dependents and that his commander had almost certainly been responsible for abduction of several other white farmers beating the shit out of all of them and murdering one, I took him seriously.
The run-up to that incident was punctuated by an effective riot where farmers from the surrounding area together with a local security firm had to rescue my dad & I from the office we were sheltering in. I had learnt the previous week that the order for both of our deaths, together with that of our boss had gone out but been vetoed at local party official level (we had a long-standing & friendly relationship with a local party member who's word had weight).
1x .410 shotgun (for despatching snakes that came into the house)
1x over & under 12 bore shotgun (for skeet & guinea fowl)
1x .308 rifle (for larger game)
1x .22 Hornet (extended cartridge) rifle for smaller game
1x .22 (normal cartridge) rifle often used with sub-sonic rounds for hunting where we weren't supposed to be hunting. Never anything endangered.
1x 9mm pistol (FN Browning HP only carried if collecting salaries in cash from the bank, otherwise it lived in the gun cabinet along with everything else)
We always ate what we hunted. No trophy hunting. We never ate snake.
My late gran carried a .38 special in her handbag. I remember her using it to scare off a couple of burglars when she got home after a NYE party. Not sure what they were scared of most - the sound of bullets overhead or the fact that the person firing the gun was a 75 year old woman.
And once we went hunting with an AK-47. You'd be surprised at how useless that is as a hunting rifle. Especially on full auto.
Had that experience at LAX a couple of years ago. An apparent monk approached me asking if I wanted a free copy of the Gita. I figured it would be an interesting read. He then asked me for $20 to cover printing expenses. I gave him the book back telling him that at least he wouldn't have to cover the expense of that copy.
Download "Festival of Life" by an Aussie comic called Kevin Bloody Wilson. It helps.
More democratic than what I grew up with. At least you have the option to impeach.
Already do. More embarassing, perhaps is the fact that Fox's take on the news has a market. Embarassing for the both of us, as Sky News & The Sun (other Murdoch outlets) are heading the same way.
I'll take the time, believe me. It took me almost a year to settle on a beer here. Fun year, too.
Big call. I used to work for Guinness.
My last encounter with Sam Adams did have more flavour to it than the offerings from Bud & Miller, but that may have been because the horse it came from had been at the malt bin again.
Looking forward to it already.
Edit; clarification
Stop that... It's silly.
Dude, you more or less completely missed the point that I was making. No worries though. This is the internet and if we spent all of our time trying to be right, we would never get anywhere. However, I do thank you for the opportunity to get to know a bit more about people whom I have never met.
That being said, some of your specifics don't really add up to more than another biased picture of what us Yanks are really like.
I don't know where you get the number that the murder rate in America is five times that of the UK. I would tend to think that if you average across the whole nation, a figure of double the rate in the UK would be realistic. Since we are talking about single digits per 100,000, it is still true that we are both fairly safe.
That being said, America is a big place and what holds true in DC, Detroit or LA may not be even close to what is going on in Texas, Alaska or Vermont. The fact is that where gun ownership is widespread, crime is lower. After all, why try to rob, rape, maim or kill people when they might shoot back?
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Also, you seem to have strange ideas about the nature of government. To understand my point, it might be helpful if we go back to the birth of our nation.
Remember that in the nineteenth century, England (and by extension) America was a totalitarian state with the king as a limited monarch. Now we did not much care for a huge chunk of what was going on but we considered ourselves (more or less) loyal subjects of the king.
The government forbade metal working in the colonies so that they could sell us finished goods made in England. So we made shovel blades from wood.
The government put a tax on windows, so we bricked over our windows. I could go on but you get the basic idea.
England could not afford to support us and we chafed at every attempt to draw more cash out of us. Eventually something had to happen to change what was going on. So we revolted. We fought a long and bloody war for our independence and we nearly lost. Only intervention from France made our nation possible.
Actually, the King of France would not even talk to Benjamin Franklin until we had won at least one significant military action. Oddly enough, that action was won by General Benedict Arnold, who then went turncoat and fought for the British.
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Anyway, we had a new nation and a chance to make a government that did not stink like the one that we had before. That being said, yes, we did borrow from you that which we thought was good (like a bicameral legislature). However, we rejected that which sucked donkey balls (like having a king who could just say stuff and it would be law).
We also decided to be a republic and not a democracy. There is a difference and this is important: In a republic, we do not vote for the things that concern us. We vote for politicians and they vote on the things that concern us. In a democracy, the vote on any given issue is direct.
A good example of the difference is the current spat that we are having over gay marriage. The people's democracy of California did not much like what their Supreme Court did. So they voted on the matter and 52% of them decided that gay marriage is not going to happen. So the rule of law is that gays cannot get married in California. In a republic, the only option is to vote for candidates who will support and end to gay marriage. What that means for gays who get married in the interval is anyone's guess. There are competing legal theories over whether marriages can suddenly not exist by act of law or not.
Personally I am a huge fan of orgasms and the ones that involve someone else are not to be disrespected. Provided that they are consensual, I really don't see where there is a huge problem. Even so, did we get simply copy/paste our government from the British? Hell no! We got our idea from the ancient Greeks and we picked a model that had not been used successfully for about 3,000 years. Most of the world at the time thought that we were nuts to try it. In the current world, it seems that our idea was pretty neat.
But yes, we borrowed the parts of the older government that made sense to us. Then you had to deal with thirteen breakaway colonies and a world wide war with the French. You decided to not let that happen again. So you borrowed from us to make the Westminster system that you have today.
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...ahhhh Sadz, please don't disparage the sacred AK !!! I own two of them and I love them. They're oh so crude but they are reliable to an extreme.
( ps, since you apparently favor hunting with military hardware perhaps you could switch to self-propelled howitzers instead ?
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18th/19th century Britian was a developing democracy (which it has been for several hundred years). The American revolution wasnt about having some fundamental new form of government it was about Americans having the same government apply to them as it applied to the UK. I.e raising their own taxes instead of paying someone far off.
The US has exactly the same form of democracy as every other democracy in the world, you elect representatives they run the country that is a democracy (republic = non-inherited head of state it has absolutely nothing to do with the electoral system, it nothing to do with individual rights, it has nothing to do with whether the government can tax you or shoot you).
The history of democracy is basically the Greeks tried it 3000 years ago ish, got squashed by the Romans. Then everyone forgot about it for 2000 years with a supreme dictator everywhere.
Barons got pissed off in medieval England in 1297 and limited the supreme dictator power (slightly), then over the next 700 years or so democracy evolved bit by bit. I would actually go as far as saying modern democracies only really begun in the early 20th century with womens suffrage everything before that was a dictatorship (whether a republican dictatorship or a monarchy based one)
Never said I favoured hunting with military hardware. Just tried it, that's all. Proved the point that assault rifles are not for hunting;
"TUHTUHTUHTUHTUHTUHTUHTUHTUH!...."
"FUCK ME!... Wait. How did I miss?"
"No idea man, but you've scared anything edible off for about a mile in every direction."
"Shit."
"Should we go get the fishing rods?"
"Think so. And lets get this bloody thing back to Corporal Moyo while we're at it."
The AK is a superb bit of engineering. Have known the things to sit in a cache inside a septic tank for at least 15 years then fire reliably after a quick clean. (Caches left over from the Bush War turn up from time to time down there.)
Stop that... It's silly.
Thanks. Interesting testimony regarding the AK's long term reliability. ( ....Btw, I was only pretending to scold you about "criticising" the AK; many people hate them of course but I'm something of a firearms junkie who has a special affection for military hardware. )
Here's an old saying about LA that is stuck in my brain:
During the summer in New York city it's 1,000,000 degrees. In LA it's about 72
During the winter in New York city it's -1,000,000 degrees. In LA it's about 72
There are about 1,000,000 interesting people in New York City. In LA, there's about 72
Your god's silence speaks loud and clear