I'm back!
Well, back from sunny and smoggy southern California. The weather, the little I saw of it, was pretty amazing. However, the smog in the city was pretty disgusting. It was right up there with the grossness in the ocean on the east coast. The pollution was visible in the air above the city. Instead of looking over the city in the morning to see a combination of buildings, mountains, and a beautiful blue sky - there was this haze above the buildings that was the color of pee - nasty yellow brown in color.
The other thing that really bothered me was the car culture. We were stuck in traffic anytime that we needed to go into LA. There's no reason for it. It was literally just everyone sitting on the highways going <20mph for hours. It didn't seem to matter what time of day. There are tons of people and a total lack of good public transportation apparently. I would think that the LA area would be an awesome place to have a huge train system. Both in terms of having a subway and a light rail to really get out of the downtown area. Since the area is so wide spread in terms of having a high population density over a huge area. It's really ironic that people in LA overall seem very interested in trying to be very healthy - but yet they drive their cars all over the place and create massive amounts of pollution which is not at all healthy.
On this trip I was with one of my co-workers. He's a year older than me and he's been working there about a year, his first job out of university. It is amazing how different our lives are and how different our views on life are. We had a discussion about the writers strike. He thought that the writers were wrong for putting everyone else out of a job just to get more money. Yet he had no idea that the writers were really getting screwed in terms of DVD sales and online plays. This seemed to be a theme on our trip. Opinions based on very little research or fact - but rather just based on one or two sentances that he saw on the news headlines. It really was a good hard look at how the other half lives.
We work in the same place, but come from two completely different backgrounds. He grew up in the lower class, me in the middle class. He went to a non-competitive state university with no scholarships, I went to a private uber competitive university. He met his much younger wife online, she stays home and takes care of their new baby while he works. Clearly, I'm not a part of that. He also has ausbergers. I do not. Clearly, it made for a very interesting trip. He was also a terrible driver. I was getting car sick at one point. I'm not the kind of person who normally gets car sick. So, I'm glad to be home and not having to hang out with the same person that I don't see myself becoming good friends with all day and every day. It's those types of weeks where a 10 minute phone call to someone who you actually want and like to talk to just makes you feel a million times better.
The other thing that really bothered me was the car culture. We were stuck in traffic anytime that we needed to go into LA. There's no reason for it. It was literally just everyone sitting on the highways going <20mph for hours. It didn't seem to matter what time of day. There are tons of people and a total lack of good public transportation apparently. I would think that the LA area would be an awesome place to have a huge train system. Both in terms of having a subway and a light rail to really get out of the downtown area. Since the area is so wide spread in terms of having a high population density over a huge area. It's really ironic that people in LA overall seem very interested in trying to be very healthy - but yet they drive their cars all over the place and create massive amounts of pollution which is not at all healthy.
On this trip I was with one of my co-workers. He's a year older than me and he's been working there about a year, his first job out of university. It is amazing how different our lives are and how different our views on life are. We had a discussion about the writers strike. He thought that the writers were wrong for putting everyone else out of a job just to get more money. Yet he had no idea that the writers were really getting screwed in terms of DVD sales and online plays. This seemed to be a theme on our trip. Opinions based on very little research or fact - but rather just based on one or two sentances that he saw on the news headlines. It really was a good hard look at how the other half lives.
We work in the same place, but come from two completely different backgrounds. He grew up in the lower class, me in the middle class. He went to a non-competitive state university with no scholarships, I went to a private uber competitive university. He met his much younger wife online, she stays home and takes care of their new baby while he works. Clearly, I'm not a part of that. He also has ausbergers. I do not. Clearly, it made for a very interesting trip. He was also a terrible driver. I was getting car sick at one point. I'm not the kind of person who normally gets car sick. So, I'm glad to be home and not having to hang out with the same person that I don't see myself becoming good friends with all day and every day. It's those types of weeks where a 10 minute phone call to someone who you actually want and like to talk to just makes you feel a million times better.
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