Stay Classy San Diego

I arrived in San Diego about a week ago, and it has been a pretty eventful time. I surfed with dolphins (not to be mistaken with surfing on dolphins – which is my new dream), I saw a tramp with a pigeon on his head and I landed myself a job. All of this actually happened on one day – it was a good one, partly due to the above but mainly because united got dicked 6 1 at home.

A hobo / flying rat hybrid

The job represents another important step forward in my career plan. As a male housekeeper I have quickly had to learn how to make a bed and hoover. Once I have some sway with the gaffer I am going to formally request a gas mask – the smell in the six bed male dorms is truly something to behold. It is a pretty sweet gig. Most days I start at 10am and finish by 2pm and I get to meet everyone staying at the hostel – although I'm not sure that they will like me that much given the circumstances (hoovering whilst they try to sleep). The hostel is mint – it is in fact rated number one in America. I have been informed that I am an ambassador for the hostel and the brand. I always knew that one day I would be an ambassador, I just didn't expect to achieve this through housekeeping. I think I will excel. My propensity for cleanliness and hygiene is complimented by a natural flair for changing bed linen. When combined with a disciplined work ethic and self control I envisage that my career will continue to go from strength to strength.

Looking forward to falling down these

For my efforts I get free accommodation and breakfast. Effectively for my daily four hour shift I am raking in a cool $6.25 an hour (pro rata). Whilst I am obviously accustomed to the blood, sweat and tears of dormitory life it is taking some getting used to cleaning it up. Even more problematic is trying to remember the names of my team mates. There are about ten of us in total – a jap, two brazilians, a frenchy, a couple of aussies and a few english lads. Yesterday I moved into the staff quarters known as 'the jungle'. It has earned this nickname as it resembles a wooden jungle gym. It is a room about 3m x 3m and sleeps seven people in triple fucking decker format amongst a mass of ladders and mezzanines. There is very limited storage space, no lockers and if I fall out of my top bunk then I am a dead man.

Welcome to the jungle

My Spanish amigo Alfonso, who I met in my hostel in LA has now returned to the city of angels, which is a shame. He spoke very limited english and I speak very limited spanish, so communication was not exactly smooth. Even though communication was difficult I could tell that he was a top top boy. We initially bonded over a mutual hatred of the yellow vested aussie. The bond was sealed through a mutual hatred of the worst aussie yet – some hick from rural victoria who kept banging on about “Tommy fucking Johnson”. I assumed that this was an obscure reference to the little known australian striker from the early 1990's. Alfonso said to me in really broken english that the aussie “looks like the chucky from childs play movie”, which he totally did. When Alfonso arrived in the USA a few weeks before me he could not speak english, but after spending around ten days in my company he has improved significantly. He was quite terrified of leaving the hostel as he could not speak the language, but I managed to persuade him to come to San Diego with me. He stuck to me like glue, but I hope that fact that everything turned out okay on his return journey will give him the confidence to get out a bit more.

My boy Alfonso

Last night it was the main Halloween celebrations in San Diego. Christ they make such a fuss about it over here. People have been going out in costumes since thursday evening. Last night they closed off two streets for a block party. As the new boy I have been utterly shafted and I have had to work three evening shifts in a row (friday, saturday and sunday). The evening shift (8pm – 11.30pm) includes cleaning the toilets, showers and kitchen. So instead of getting involved in the celebrations I have been cleaning skid marks off toilet bowls. As a hostel worker I have to wear fancy dress for shifts. Obviously I didn't want to spend much cash on this and without the inspiration from bobby fancydress breese it was unlikely that I could ever win best in show; so I cobbled together something from the charity shop and for the last couple of nights I have been scrubbing the floor and cleaning the bogs dressed like tom hanks in castaway. This being california there is a very laid back management system. Last night I was encouraged by the manager to drink during my shift so that I would be pissed when I went. By 10pm I had drunk half a bottle of rum with an hour of work still to complete. The responsibilities include making the pancake batter for breakfast – needless to say their were a lot of disappointed customers making their pancakes this morning with a sort of white water type goo. When I went out the streets were packed and people had gone all out to impress, and impress they did.

My new work attire - depicting perfectly my career progression

I have really been enjoying life in San Diego. The hostel is located bang in the centre of downtown where the streets and bars are always teeming with minge. The weather is really good and the city has a great vibe. The rules of employment are pretty liberal. Basically as long as your are not too hungover or stoned to work then anything goes. Staff are allowed to use the roof to smoke joints and one of the guys has made some ridiculously strong cookies. He gave me one to eat a few nights ago and it tore me a new asshole. I had played interhostel football earlier in the day and was recovering from a hangover. I ate the cookie at around 8pm, and by 9.30pm I was pretty much handicapped. The staff also have a private smoking balcony, aka a wooden fire escape. I managed to summon the strength to go for a burn and then got quickly back into bed. Around twenty minutes later I heard a load of commotion, so I peered around the door and there were people making haste towards the fire escape with bowls of water. It turns out that I had stubbed my burn out on a rotting wooden post and because it never rains it had caught on fire, which was a tidy situation for someone who could barely walk after 3 days of employment. I closed the dorm door and slept like a baby.

Beach day with the staff

There are four lads and two girls in my room. I find myself stuck between two social groups. The two english lads are pretty dominant personalities and form the cool kids clique. They go out a lot and are fairly good craic, but I am struggling to really click with them. They are best mates from back home, it is always easier with a wing man in tow. On the other side are the stoner misfits – many of whom have a cool story to tell but are sometimes not the most sociable. I find myself hovering between the two groups. Aside from blurred social hierarchy's and the occasional fire life in San Diego is good, and as I lay in my bed at 5am this morning listening to the soothing grooves of one of the english lads knocking the back door out of some bird from Burnley, I thought to myself that I could get used to this – so I'm going to stick around for a little bit.

And pop

You trippin on me fool

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Joints and Bulldogs

I have been in San Francisco for a few days now, man this place is expensive. It is an amazing place though. My first full day here was an interesting one. I had woken up at 4am due to the jet lag, so I wasn't really too sure what to do with myself. In the end I plumped for the Forrest Gump approach - I just kept walking. I decided that I wanted to try and see if I could remember the ill fated day trip from my university days, so I headed down to Fisherman's Wharf where all of the sea lions hang out all day. It brought back very, very vague memories, but what really astounded me was how much had happened in my life in the ten or so years since I had last been here. I highly doubt that there is a decade in your life where you go through more change than between the ages of twenty and thirty. I certainly would not have believed that so much would happen during this time. At that age I assumed that I would be married with kids at this stage of my life - instead i'm trawling the planet in search of somewhere that I can purchase the aforementioned at a reasonable cost.

So, onwards I went. I could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background so I headed in that direction. I found quite a long pier that had really good views of the bridge and Alcatraz so I followed that. This is where it all started getting a bit messy. I rolled a burn and these two black fella's approached me. Obviously I assumed that they were going to mug me, but it turns out that they were just interested in what I was smoking (people don't roll their own cigarettes here). After chatting with them for a few minutes one of them pulled out a joint, sparked it up and passed it to me. They were two 20 year old lads who go down to this pier every day to fish, crab and get stoned. To begin with I didn't really get anything off the joint so I kept chugging away. It was a real lung tickler, and upon enquiry as to what tobacco was in there I was informed that it was a blunt (for those unaware of what this means - it's pure weed). Ten minutes after smoking things started to get a bit weird. The one guy started talking about the size of the crabs that they caught, which he claimed were the size of a human head. The more he talked about it the more he began to resemble a crab. It was kind of weirding me out and I was feeling a little uneasy. I looked across the bay and realised that I had walked about 6 or 7 miles, and I was fast losing control of my legs. I decided at that moment that I needed to remove myself from the situation, so I told them that I wanted to go and get some breakfast (it was still only 9.30am at this point). To my utter disgust the one named Olly, aka crab face, stated that he was going to join me. Anyone who is familiar with the feeling when you have smoked a little bit too much will probably appreciate this feeling. All you want to do is be somewhere you know on your own. Instead I was 6 miles from my hostel stood toe to toe with some crab face in a city and country completely unfamiliar to myself. As we began to walk I just knew that I was not anywhere near capable of holding a conversation with this guy, so as we walked back around the bay I told him that I needed to make a phonecall, and we went our seperate ways.

For the next two hours I lay on my back on a sort of man made beach trying to pull myself together. The scenery was incredible, but quite frankly that was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was how exactly I was going to get myself home. I lay and watched people walk by and one thing that struck me was the number of individuals who were basically me. Travellers, tourists, lonely souls wandering aimlessly not really knowing what it is that they were looking for, all fighting the will to consult the map that is nestled in their pocket. Some seemed completely happy and content whilst others appeared lost and mildly concerned. After that joint i think I fell into a new third category: fucking terrified. Thankfully the feeling began to pass, and after a few hours of terror I began to find my feet again. I spent the next few hours walking around the city amusing myself by taking photo's of funny signs. As I look these over again I realise that they are probably not quite as funny as I originally thought, but here is a little selection.

Ho Yays Ho Yays, Powell Place Powell Place

Bong, James Bong

Each step that brought me back closer to the hostel made me feel marginally better, until it got to the point that I had completely forgotten the fear and I decided to have a few beers. Te waitresses here are unbelievably flirty, which literally makes them about twenty times fitter. When I compared this to the bar staff you get in England i came to the conclusion that the difference between a flirtatious fitty and a sour faced wench is almost certainly a tipping system. Sitting in a bar with Americans is a very different experience to the UK. There is invariably a bunch of people on their own sat at the bar. In the UK these people would probably do everything in their power to avoid conversation with each other, but over here they all just begin talking with each other and the bar staff. My conclusion about this is relates to the fact that the bar in a UK pub is a complete fucking free for all. The only thing that people are interested in is getting served and not letting anyone who has joined the queue after them get served first. In America the bar staff take your order and bring your drink to you. The bar is completely clear pretty much. You can run up a tab and they will just remember what you have ordered. Most places have table service so you don't even need to go to the bar. Why the fuck do we not operate this system? It completely removes the hassle of going to the bar, and allows the lone drinkers to congregate in an area where they can socialise with each other. The bar staff are earning their tips and the whole experience is improved for everyone.

By 2pm I had gone from feeling anxious to feeling good, and just as I was beginning to peak I only went and saw four bulldogs within a period of thirty minutes. So I was still feeling pretty blasted, but the bulldogs had put me at ease again. So brave.

This whole city stinks of weed. Everywhere I go someone is offering it around. This morning I opened the curtain and there was a lad sat on our fire escape smoking. I joined him for a couple of quick tokes before heading out to a two big hills with the best views over the city, called twin peaks. To get there I had to go through the gay district, which was denoted by huge rainbow flags adorning the sidewalks. Needless to say once again I found myself getting caught up in the amusing signage:

When I got to the top of the twin peaks it really dawned upon me how big this city is. It is an incredible place and it is also incredibly expensive, which leads me onto yesterday, which was an utter ball ache from start to finish. I went to the reception of my hostel and asked to extend my stay by a few days. Unbeknown to me was that it is the SF half marathon this weekend, and literally every fucking place in the city is booked out. They told me that there was one bed left but it was $80 (2.5 x normal price). I said no way hosay, and spent the rest of the day trying to work out what the hell I was going to do. I looked into renting a car but even that came in at $150 for 2 days. The next option was trying to find somewhere to set up my tent, but this was also a very unattractive option. In the end I just got pissed and stoned and when I got up this morning in a haze the woman at reception told me that someone had cancelled and therefore I could stay. The important lesson here is that things always pan out if you just drink a beer and have a smoke.

My breast friend

Well, here we go again. I am writing this at 4.30am because my body clock refuses to adapt on command. I landed in San Francisco at around midnight last night after a tidy little 11hr flight and went to bed at 4am, which is actually only 8pm local time. Needless to say I am now wide awake as it is midday, aka 4am. The people in my dorm must think i'm a complete freak. Speaking of the dorm, I wish cameras could take pictures of smells, if it could then I'm pretty sure that it would look something like this.... 

This was in the communal toilet

It is not pleasant being back in a dorm, but hopefully I'll adjust again soon enough. My room is a 2 x 2 bunk bed little number, and the beds are uncomfortably close together. When I was getting stuff out of my backpack at 4am my ass was about 12cm away from the guy on the bunk next to me's face, not a pleasant thing to wake up to. It is also about nine thousand degrees in there, but if you open the window then you may as well be sleeping on a bunk bed on the hard shoulder of the M4. Moan moan moan. 

Anyway, I vowed to a friend that in my first post of this next trip away that I would write up something that I wrote last week, just to remind myself whilst i'm away that if things do get a bit shitty, then they could always be worse - here we go...


I don't want to tell anyone this, so I may as well just tell everyone. It is just six days until I depart for the US and at this point i'm probably supposed to be feeling excited. Well I do not. My house is falling to bits and I have to evict two tenants, another is six weeks behind with their rent; my tax return has not arrived so I have to complete it online in peru, puyfect. I probably could and should have sorted this all months ago, but that would just be taking the easy option. But the best part of it is that i have found a lump on my chest, and following some trusty research on the internet I have discovered to my surprise that male breast cancer does actually exist. Ever the hypochondriac I have self-diagnosed myself with this, although I am still holding out mild hope that I have just battered myself whilst drunk on a night out or something. Either way it is stressing me out to fuck, as I am due to leave in just a few days and if it needs testing then I am not making the flight. 

No one who develops cancer should ever feel humiliated by it, but there is something ever so slightly humiliating about the idea of male breast cancer. Apparently 400 men a year are diagnosed with the condition in the UK, so whilst the chances of me having it are pretty ruddy slim, there is enough of a possibility to cast a shadow of doubt in my mind. So I am going to embrace the humiliation of a hypochondriac turning up at the doctors with a self-diagnosis of male breast cancer, as I would rather this wasn't playing at the back of my mind. Heading out of the UK for nine months I will have something far more valuable than dignity, and that is peace of mind. I hope by the time people read this I will be basking in the Californian sunshine and I can just chalk the experience up to my expanding backlog of faux-infliction's that essentially amount to wasting a GP's time (which thankfully is not a criminal offence, although it probably should be). But seriously, anyone who knows me knows what my family and myself have been through with this terrible disease, and it is an illness that I respect enough to have checked out. Yet still I find myself chugging away happily on another cigarette as I write this in the midst of a cancer scare. A paradox like this truly does define stupidity. 

So I went to the doctors and it turned out to be just a cyst; I feel like I can now fully relax and get on with enjoying myself. The stress involved at that point of the week was pretty high, but it's funny how quickly these things are forgotten (time for another burn). Not much else of note has really happened to report back. The doorbell of this hostel keeps going and as I am the only person up and around I keep letting them in. There have been some of the fruitiest characters that I have ever seen (baring in mind it is 5.21am). I just let in a bloke who was about 5ft tall and was wearing a pair of denim hotpants and a stripy vest. Whilst San Francisco is supposed to be a very liberal place with a big gay population, I'm fairly sure that this bloke had just been out to watch the footy with the lads, followed by a curry and a fight. I guess all of the poppers and bumming probably explains the weird shaped poo's being left in the toilets. Anyway, enough of the toilet talk.Today I am probably going to hire a bike and have a tour round. There are a small amount of hills in San Francisco (43 in a seven square mile I'm reliably informed by the minibus driver yesterday), so it will be nice to get a bit of exercise. Laters gays