A stop over in LA and the 4 hour work week

  Hermosa Beach, California, United States
Friday, July 18, 2008

Until I'd decided to continue working for Sun Life I had it all planned out. I'd bought the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and in the book Tim describes how to quit your job and work 4 hours from anywhere in the world. The basic premise is start an Internet business and outsource all the management, distribution and customer service to other people and live on a beach is a country where it's cheap to live. He also talks in his book about persuading your boss to let you work remotely and that you would be a lot more productive without all the distractions from the office. I guess I had accomplished that side of things. The point is though I had the whole journey to LA to read this book and think about all the other dreams I'd had for what I could do in Darwin - maybe start a brew pub, maybe look at taking photographs professionally and setting up a stall at one of the many local markets in Darwin. I'd already spent a heap on money on some flashy new lenses for my Canon with the hope that they were going to get some serious usage!

We were going to LA to spend some time with Erica's family before our big adventure and drop of our cat Nutmeg (or as she was affectionately know by me, Fatty). Poor Fatty didn't like cars and miowed the whole way from Foxboro to the airport. We had no idea how she would handle the plane! She did do remarkable well but did miow a bit as we came into land. I wonder if cat get ear pain and popping ears during the descent?

We did hear after we arrived in LA about strange goings on, on our flight route that day. An earlier Boston/LA flight that day had a guy stripped naked and try to get out of emergency exit, only to be tackled by a member of the Revolution soccer team and the LA/Sydney flight that day was delayed 13 hours after a bomb hoax!

We did some cool things at Hermosa. We saw a Beach Boy tribute band on the beach. How Californian is that! We cycled the strand cruiser bike up the strand (the exercise path that goes along the coast). These bikes have no brakes though; you have to stop by peddling backwards! We ate some of Guillermo's fantastic chilaquiles for breakfast one morning and nopales tacos one afternoon. Highly recommended if you get to try them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilaquiles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nopal
We also had time after our hectic final month in Boston to do a little research on Australia!

I though I maybe able to drive down and see my sister in Sydney every now and again, I Google mapped that only to find it was nearly 4000km and a full 2 days driving! Even the iconic Ayers Rock, in the same state, is 2000km and 23 hours driving away.

Australia is about the same size as the lower 48 in the USA and compared it to the UK it looks huge!


All this size with a 20M population compared to 300M in the USA and 60M in the UK. Australia is the 6th biggest country in the world.

Australia also owned the dubious distinction of the biggest greenhouse polluters per capita in the world
http://www.aneki.com/greenhouse.html

For a few other interesting facts and figures check out this link
http://www.aneki.com/Australia.html

Before we went I was meant to file for an extension to my green card. I had to do this before I left the country, but found out at the last minute the rules had been changed and now I also needed to go in so they could take biometric information. Why they needed to do this was beyond me as I'd given them all this already when first applying for the green card! Had they lost it already? More bureaucracy, but the short of the story is I need to return to the USA within one year and fill in the application and arrange and appointment for this or lose my green card!

Erica was getting excited for her new opportunity before we left. In short and hopefully a correct explanation of what she will be doing is - working on determining some of the environmental impacts of an Australia government plan to redirect some of the water from the tropical north to the drought stricken south. Apparently they messed things up so much taking water out of the main river through Adelaide and the main water source in the south that the estuary closed up and they have to dredge it to keep it open!

Our flight over was uneventful, no Fatty to miow but we did have a baby behind us! Luckily we must have had one of the best-behaved babies in the world! I managed to get my usual 8 hours sleep and Erica got her usual restless flight. We left at midnight and due to us following the sun it was dark for the whole 14 hours! We lost out Tuesday because we crossed the International Date Line - Erica had some concerns originally that we would have flown they day before her birthday and would have lost her birthday and was happy we flew when we did! The one thing I will say about Qantas is that they do provide some of the best in flight entertainment with over 20 movies showing on demand! I watched a great documentary showing some of the 17 world heritage areas that Australia possesses. It should also be mentioned that we got free booze unlike some of those unfriendly America airline policies I could mention!