A photoblog and other things

This entry is coming in late – mostly because I’ve been busy as heck at work and I’m just plain buggered.

I spent most of Saturday recovering from the previous night since I only ended up getting home at 4:30am or something like that. Saturday night I didn’t have anything planned – but that didn’t particularly worry me at 2pm in the afternoon. At 8pm however, I was starting to get worried so I called Chet the player to see what he was up to. He was at this place called “Roundup” – a country themed bar out west of where I live. I was told there were lots of guys wearing cowboy hats but hey, I wanted to meet some new people so I didn’t really hesitate. Chet the player hadn’t been there before either so it was all new for him too.

I rocked up to this place, had the security guard scrutinize my license details for ages and then a grin started to form on his face. I rewarded him with a “thanks mate” and moved inside. Whoa! I wasn’t really prepared for what I saw. There were lots of guys in cowboy hats but even more – there were dozens of people line dancing. Sheesh, they weren’t joking about it being a country bar! Some of the people had the biggest belt buckles in the west I reckon. I could see Chet and his friends right from where I walked in so I headed over to where they were, pronto.

Chet the player started chatting to some girls who I later found were from Miami – this was also their first time in a country bar, so we all had some common ground there. One of them had taken a keen interest in country music and was telling me the names of a lot of the songs. I sorta found this a bit weird since she was very South American looking, and South American and Country music just don’t go together. Anyways, I have to admit I did participate in some of the line dancing routines and, surprisingly, I had a ball! It was the most fun I’ve had in ages – I didn’t think synchronised dancing could be so fun! I am seriously contemplating at this stage in doing the line dancing lessons on Thursday nights from 7-9pm. Hehe.

So anyways, the girls we met up with promised me a tour around Miami – they were probably under the influence of too many Bud Lights though so we’ll see about that 🙂

Speaking of Bud Light, the ‘light’ doesn’t mean low alcohol content – just low carbs (everything over here is “low carbs this” and “low carbs that”). The alcohol content isn’t anywhere on the bottles so you have to guess at how many standard drinks you’ve had. The Bud Light commercials at http://www.budlight.com/index_flash.html are pretty funny but.

So after Roundup I headed back to Chet’s place to meet up with the rest of his group. He had Hootie and the Blowfish’s album on repeat for 3 hours or so. I ended up drinking some really bad red wine, crashing on the couch and falling sleep at around 4am. Is anyone getting an idea of why I’m so tired this week?

Soon enough I’ll write something about Sunday – which involved more of Fort Lauderdale, Bud Light, and Hooters.

Friday night I was due to hook up with a few people from work at a place called the Baja Beach Club. Here was the invite I received:

Baja Beach Club, Riverfront. Upstairs, just past the movie theater. 3 for 1 from 6-10, with full dinner buffet. Come on out, and bring anyone you can.

I hadn’t been to Fort Lauderdale yet, but this sounded as good an excuse as any to go. Because I was uber prepared, I decided to do a quick internet search to find out where this place was, just in case. No problemo, I had an address and I said I’d try to arrive at around 8pm.

I headed out after work but could not for the life of me find this damn place. I spent a good 2 hours driving around Fort Lauderdale, in what seemed like peak-hour traffic, to no avail. The address I got off the internet was just plain wrong. Shit. What was I to do? I was down and depressed. Luckily I found a Krispy Kreme store and I bought a few donuts from there. Mmmmm, sacrilicious. I never thought that food could pick me up so well. I asked the guy who served me whereabouts the Baja beach club was. His directions sounded ok, but after another 1/2 hour of driving around I decided to cut my losses and head back home. Five minutes into my journey home one of my Aussie mates called and so I went to pick him up and, feeling reinvigorated, we headed back to Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t believe it, I found the place and there was no way in hell I would have found it by driving around. Of course I found it 4 hours later than anticpated. Oh well.

There were stacks and stacks of people everywhere. It is at this point in the story I’d like to say something to all those people who, once I told them I was going to Florida, said: “Isn’t that where old people go to retire?” Ummm, yeah. You’ve been watching too much Seinfeld. Take the clientele of the Savvy bar in good ol’ Adelaide. Multiply that by, ooh, 50. Empty them on the streets of Fort Lauderdale. Got the picture?

Actually truth be known, the Baja Club is very much like the New York Bar and Grill in Adelaide. Think popular RnB music with a smattering of dance music and there you go. It probably would’ve been a lot better earlier on but I wasn’t going to hang around much longer. A couple of the other clubs we went to were like those in Adelaide. There were slight differences, but not enough to invoke a “wow!” Actually, the biggest difference I found was in the toilets – there are guys who wait next to the hand basin who offer to wash your hands for you, for a tip of course. Yeah, right! I couldn’t believe it. I said “no thanks” and proceeded to wash my hands myself like I have for most of my life. Because I felt like being a bit cheeky, I washed my hands again. I can’t believe there are people who would hang around in the Men’s toilets (of all places) all night for tips!

It was about 3:30am that I was in this club with my mate and he said that he was going to the toilet. He didn’t come back for ages. I went looking for him and saw him standing outside – I tried calling out to him to ask what the hell he was doing but he couldn’t see nor hear me so I headed outside. What I saw was both funny and shocking at the same time – some guy had punched him in the face. He couldn’t remember exactly what provoked the attack apart from him accidentally bumping into some guy, but he had a nice black eye brewing. He was very drunk too so I decided to call it quits for my Friday night out and drop him home.

Wowsers, I think I just had the hugest weekend in a while – my first real weekend in the United States. I’m going to have to break it into several posts I think. I made it into work this morning, so that’s a good start I guess.

I thought Adelaide drivers were supposed to be bad! Things I’ve noticed:

1. The indicator is just a novelty item and rarely gets used.
2. If a person driving in an adjacent lane notices that their vehicle will fit in the gap between you and the car in front of you, then they’ll take that gap. Refer to (1).
3. There is no such thing as a safe distance between cars. If you can count “1001, 1002” you’re too far away from the car in front of you. Refer to (2).
4. Don’t expect anyone to safely let you in even if you have your indicator on. You’ll have to barge your way in. Refer to (2)
5. Stop signs are red and octagon shaped. That’s about all people notice about them though.
   

Then there are some other things I’ve noticed – like the number of crashes between my residence and work (a 5 minute drive). I’ve seen the result of three crashes so far, and the one this morning was a doozie. It looked like an SUV had rolled a couple of times and was lying on its side – and that was in a 45mph zone!

Also, the location of places is given as the intersection of streets, not actual street numbers. This is probably better than using street numbers as you rarely see street numbers anywhere.

I nearly made a fool of myself on my first day of driving because I was going to tell someone their brake lights weren’t working properly. Then I realised a lot of cars had the same problem. Then I realised the brake lights over here doubled as indicator lights in a lot of car models. But then again, I dont’ see this very often – refer to (1) above.