LA - Home of the Beautiful?

My apologies, it’s been a few days since my last guest blog entry, I’m on the move again. This time I’m in LA – the home of the beautiful! I must say it’s a challenge to feel anything other than really ugly when up against all these beautiful glamorous people, yet one thing is a little worrying, and please indulge the ramblings of a visiting Welshman here. We know in India there’s a huge divide between the rich and the poor and also to varying degrees in the UK itself. Yet the divide it seems can be even greater here in Santa Monica, not least because of the surroundings. You have stunning scenery, beautiful people who are fit, tanned, toned and fed only on low-fat, organic, additive-free food, with poor people living alongside, sleeping on the beach, benches and toilets, everywhere you look. I’m looking forward to spending more time here though and gaining an understanding of what makes this place really tick.

The journey over, with Virgin Atlantic, was well…… long and tiresome, as I anticipated. My 7 year old, along with my 11 year old have a strange fascination with toilets. Not sure why, I can’t remember that far back to know if I was like it at their age. Added to this is the the fact that planes are supposedly built for ‘normal’ people…. whatever ‘normal sized’ people look like…. who just don’t seem to be all that common, from my experience. What I mean here is that I was too big for the seat, and my girls too small. The toilets too large for my 7 year old and…. well you get the picture. It seems the real function of the plane has been forgotten somewhere along the line, and the design of it without humans particularly in mind.

The Virgin staff were as always, a delight. they are so well…human. There doesn’t seem to be any ‘standard practice or procedures’ for them, or formal and rigid rules….. (practiced by some airlines….like BA…shhh, I didn’t say that!). They are just pleasant, happy and will try for the most part to make the journey in a steel tube, designed for ‘normal’ people, as comfortable as possible.