Hey! I'm back from a trip to the US of A! Here comes excerpts from my travel diary as it unfolded. Every bit's written on the date below.

2010-11-09

As I'm writing this, it's the first morning in the US of A.

CNN is on. They're talking about pot possession, saying "what what" at basically everything, making my heart race more than the Reese's peanut butter-bit I just ate. Good morning.

Yesterday, the trip went well. No problems at all, other than two very nervous Swedes (not us!) jumping a long queue at Chicago. Of course. And "Salt". Oh gawd, "Salt"! It's a film starring Angelina Jolie. She's super-intelligent and brilliant at basically everything, and is framed as being a Russian spy. Oh really. THE RED ARMY IS COMING! You couldn't really tell whether that last sentence was mine or something from the film, right? Chuck in explosions, action à¡ la MacGyver and you've got it all figured out in two minutes. Like calculating 1+1, although that gives you more than the film does.

We picked up our rental car from Hertz and were advised to the max by a cowboy who let me know what I should show "my woman", e.g. The Aquarium Restaurant. His deductive skills were so cool. Despite my "we have a GPS!" he showed us where our Studio 6 motel was: "There are two Studio 6's here. I've lived here [showed us stuff on a map] for 20 years, and this [points to another map point] is not that motel. So. This is it." Add cowboy hat and generally cool demeanour plus an I-don't-give-a-fuck-if-people-are-queuing-behind-you sentiment and you might get the gist of it.

Driving in the middle of the American night, when it was, say, 4-5am in Sweden isn't the most clever thing I've done. Add freeways with more lanes than I've got fingers (well, nearly) and the fact that I hadn't figured out a few kinks about exiting freeways, and presto, I'm surprised to say X and I are alive! Well, maybe not that bad...maybe.

So we stopped by a Wal-Mart Superstore. Yes, capital letter "S" is in order: we walked around for a long time around gigantic aisles decidated to minutiae, all packed to the brim with sugar and other stuffs that are tagged as "addictive" by DSM-IV. We had a hard time trying to buy something in small quantities or just something small, full stop. So, we wanted five plastic knives and ended up with 48. No biggie. And I often gawked at the fact that everything was cheap. And I gawked at how many very big people I saw; The Morbidly Obese flocked the shelves of What's Cheap, while the workers draw minimum level-wages. As we checked out the counter attendant said something about her entire family being on Facebook, shouting at people she knew who were shopping.

CNN wants to show me how broadband access at home is "racially divided". Apart from the grammar, another thing I have a tough time with is grasping why anybody wants "race" to be an issue; I use those quotation marks as I don't believe in the concept of race. I've yet to find intellectual use of the word. No more CNN, no more of them during this trip (or ever).

While X and I are getting ready to visit The Galleria, which is supposedly one of the five biggest shopping malls in the USA, "Flashdance" is on the TV in all its glory. And the sun is shining outside. It's around 27 degrees Celsius and I'm gonna shut off the computer now.