LA Living

I have now been in LA 4 months since moving back to the US. It’s been a real trip. Combining my old friends with my new life and my new friends with my old life. It has a very seamless transition back to the US. Within one month of arriving I landed a job that gave me 360 view of West Los Angeles from 24 floors up. I got to work on my very first social media campaign. The ad world is evolving. No longer can you slap an ad up and expect to get a response. Check it out votelahotdog.org. The coolest part about this campaign is the fact that every vote equals a pound of food donated to a LA food Bank. To date we’ve donated over 18,000 pounds of food!

During July, my first month of work, I got to house-sit at a  historical hollywood home in Whitley Heights. In the 20′s when the film industry was starting to grow in CA, Mr. Whitley, an architect, decided to build a Mediterranean-style looking village for the blooming film industry socialites.  The long narrow stairs, windy roads and homes with Italian and Spanish accents made me feel like I was in southern Italy or France on some nights while taking Fellini for a walk. Elvis, the owner, trusted me with his house and his cute little dog Fellini. The only thing that reminded me I was in LA was the 101 freeway that borders the Northwest portion of the hilly neighborhood which was also directly below the famous Hollywood sign.

Kim came out in the last part of June and we ‘did’ Vegas and toured with our Australian friends visting LA. What a blast! We took a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon along with checking out downtown Vegas and did some site seeing in LA with my virgin LA friends.

Kim unfortunately had to go back to England, with everyone else, as he still hadn’t received a visa from the US embassy. He did get to come  for another visit  in August when we moved into our brand new apartment with wet bar and stone fireplace. This place is so 70′s I’m surprised it didn’t have bell bottoms hanging in the closet. We love the location and the size of the apartment. It is a large two bed and bath with a cute bonus room off the kitchen that we plan to turn into an office. I have been enjoying the HUGE space,  as we have absolutely no furniture.  We do have a bed to sleep on and within the last two weeks we bought a table and chairs. October seems to be the month that will determine our more long-term lifestyle in LA.

We ordered a sectional couch and a really cool modern walnut bed at the beginning of September and it’s due to arrive at the end of October. I start a brand new job on October 11th just 5 days after Kim arrives for good. He has an approved Visa and is able to live and work in the US finally! The process took about a year. It feels like a really long time ago that I even lived in the UK and started that process. I am so happy the visa process, for now, is over but I do miss the UK on occasion.

For the record…

Got the job! Start Tuesday… vacation itinerary may have to change. But at least we are one step closer to actually living here. I decided to hang out with my nephew this morning and take pictures on my Mac in Photo Booth. Here’s one of our creations.

Back in SoCal

I remember the first time Kim came to visit me in LA. I wrote ‘Welcome to Sunny SoCal Kim!’ on the white board I had in my apt. He hesitated to ask at first what that meant even though he knew the message was for him. Little did I know I would be learning to all kinds of words and phrases that were written in English but had no meaning to me, at all, in England. This happened about 5 months after that white board message. Do you know what ‘full on’ means? I was trying to explain this to a friend yesterday. Wasn’t easy!

Married in June, moved to the UK in July, started a new career in Nov., traveled all over the world and now, now, I’m back in LA. Hard to believe, cliche I know, but it is really hard to believe that I am back. Los Angeles, City of Angels, Southern California, SoCal, same place different names. It is different here. No, maybe I’m different but it just feels different here.

The city feels less manic. It looks like it’s had a paint job. Small business that looked run down years ago have  new signage, a new coat of paint on the walls inside and out, and people seem even more laid back than usual. I think these types of changes do need time, generally, to happen but 3 years – that seems a really small window of time for such drastic change. There is a new president here. There has been and continues to be a recession. There are alot of people out of work and companies out of business. Yet there are loads of new business, new restaurants and people doing new types of work. A very interesting time in world history. Simply, a transition time in the Magin history.

It doesn’t feel so simple some days but it really is. Since arriving I have ticked off 50% of my list of things to do. An accomplishment, right? Phone, check, car, check, new job (almost), apartment (that comes after the job). Getting a phone proved to be easier than getting a job. Maybe I should weight the percentages differently but they are just things to do and once they’re done, like anything, you start again. New list.

Kim and I continue our adventures tomorrow when he arrives from the UK for two weeks. Silver Lake, Sherman Oaks, The Marina, Santa Barbara, and Vegas are all a part of our itinerary. After looking for jobs for almost three weeks now, the break is welcomed.

Moving to America

I’m sitting on my front stoop in Wallington, Surrey watching the rain come down and sipping tea. Yes – English tea – while hearing the chimes of the church bells in Beddington Park tell me it’s nearly 4PM. I have never done this before now. Why I felt compelled to do this I no idea. It could be the pending move. Kim and I finally decided on Los Angeles as a place to settle, for now. Or it could the fact that I’ve been inside all day packing my life away and needed to get away from the boxes which are piling up in every room at this point.either way it’s quite nice down here.

The birds are telling their usual story. Not sure whats it’s about but man do they have a lot to say. I’m sitting in a chair I hauled all the way down the front stairs, past bags of clothes I’m giving away,  and over piles of shoes boxes in the hallway that leads to the doorway I’m sitting in. It’s raining, well pissing rain, definitely not enough rain to warrant the need for an umbrella but you would get wet if you didn’t have one.  My feet are the only thing outside the door and if I look up from my computer screen I see our little green patch of grass outlined with rose bushes, shrubs and weeds. In American we would call it a small, a very small, yard.

Our rose bushes haven’t bloomed yet this year. I hope they do before I leave, on the 28th May, as we finally have them the way we want them. Over the past three years we have moved them to the right place in the garden and properly trimmed,them to yield an awesome amount of colourful, yellow, red, white and pink roses.

I have less than 10 days left at my current job. I am sad to go but ready for new projects and challenges. I am having a leaving ‘do’ or party on the 19th with my co-workers and then a big fat party at an old Tram Depot turned bar/dance club on the 22nd. It’ll be a blast. We have at least 10 confirmed guests so far! Our physical goods get picked up on the 24th and Kim will leave at the end of the month. He’ll staying with some really close friends of ours up the road. So nice that he won’t be by himself in this big apartment.

The bells are ringing again. It’s actually 4PM.

There are lot’s I’ll miss about living in London, one being the architecture. I am going out in an old Tram depot! How cool. I’ll miss feeling like you are a part of everyone’s lives in some way or another by taking the public transport. You may never feel like you have your own space but I give the English credit for being able to keep to themselves  and put up with the lack of space. The English aren’t rude they’re too darn polite!

I will miss my friends and meeting up with them for a pub lunch on a Sunday or a drink after work. I will miss taking drives into the country in our Mercedes. Even though they are a nuisance, I’ll miss foxes that run around our neighbourhood. One just trotted by now

I will miss my walk through Beddington Park every morning to the Hackbridge Train station. I loved watching the seasons come and go each year. Nothing ever happened at once. It all seemed to take time which is something else I learned here in England, patience. The trees shed their leaves in the fall, the rains and the wind come in the winter, seeing the new fluffy ducklings swimming in the pond and daffodils bloom, in the same spot each spring, and the finally the calm and silence the whole park has in summer due to the humidity.

I’m going back to Los Angeles but I am going back after having lived out of America for three years. I had culture shock after just 5 months away from America the last time I lived in a foreign place so it’ll be interesting to see how things have changed and how I cope with being back. I’m excited about seeing my old friends and entertaining my new friends when they come to visit, getting to hang out with my nephew when I want, getting a new job and the choosing new opportunities that LA always seems to bring me. I most excited about showing my husband around one of my favorite places in the world, as he’s my absolute favorite travel companion.

I may have been born in NY but I feel most at home in California and can’t wait to get back!!!

I drove home…

Yup. That’s all I did today and I felt and saw a new side of London. I really liked London tonight, allot. I normally take the bus and then the train to traverse between Wallington and Chelsea Harbour.  I passed through about five villages in traffic as you would in LA but the traffic here is more entertaining. You have amazing building from decades and centuries ago to look at. The green and bushy trees were a stark contrast to red London buses that just barely miss them as they travel down the never ending twisty roads. I saw a young guy flying a kite. There were joggers moving at a pace quick enough to not notice the drops of rains beginning to fall. I appreciated seeing the rain come down while travelling today, as normally I’m out in the elements dealing with what Mother Nature. She seems to indecisively throw wind and rain around not sure if one or both would be a good idea or not to hand weary commuters on their way home. I rolled the windows up to the howling wind to better hear the music mix coming from the speakers of my car.  The traffic slowed up again in from of a park where two Indian women. One old. One young. They sat in their sari’s on a bench. The woman in the bright yellow sari seemed to have no legs. She was sitting crossed legged almost as if giving the younger Indian woman in a red sari the secrets of meditation. Or maybe they were just discussing the latest news about the celebrities in Grazia magazine. Just on the fringes of the same park before I turned right towards Tooting Bec I saw a young girl, no more than eight pumping her little legs on an outdoor stair master. Her arms were slightly above her head while holding the cross bar just above her eye level. My music continues to play, the rain continues to dot my windshield, bikers weaved around larger more demanding cars while trying to share space on the narrow, windy, wet road. None of them phased by the rain wetting their backs and the brown mud dirtying their calves. While passing through Mitcham Junction a very large African man limped, quickly to take cover as the rain began pour.  As I got closer to home the amount of brick buildings alongside the road is replaced by longer stretches of green trees, which turn to fields and over grown weeds along fenced in industrial areas.  One last round about spat me out onto a road parallel to the train tracks I normally commute on. I like that I’m not on the train today. I like that I drove to work today. I love that I don’t have to be the pedestrian waiting for the cars to pass on the pavement (what they call sidewalks here). I am happy to be in my silver Mercedes estate (what they call station wagons here) listening to chill music while staying dry and having no more than 100 feet to walk on each end of the commute. It was like driving through a movie set, dressed for an English story line, in LA. I drove home today. Did I mention I really enjoyed it?

Two years – already?

Kim and I have now been together for two years. Our actual wedding anniversary was Monday the 8th of June but we celebrated the weekend before in Bruge, Belgium. It is lovely just as the last two years of marriage have been! To the left is a shot taken while on the river boat tour along oneof the many canals networks throughout the city center. The new blog head shot is just before we got on the boat. We specifically lined our eyes up to fit the sliver of a space at the top of the blog.

We encountered some interesting street scenes while meandering along the cobble stone streets.  These scenes and the amazing century old architecture is due to a  recession.  The main artery of the city’s port dried up leaving it without a way to import and export goods. TIme ticked on and Bruge remained the the same even when the industrial revolution was born. Also, it wasn’t desirable enough a place to fight for during the war so has subsequently kept its original charming medieval buildings and bridges. The residents are now profiting from the thousands of tourists who frequently visit to see an untouched medieval city in modern times. Patience can bring prosperity! Aren’t the dogs cute! They’re more interested in each other than the chocolate in the shop. One of Belgium’s best known commodities. Bruge specifically is known for its handmade lace.

Bruge, Belgium

Belgium beer is just as good as its chocolate.  Can you see the floating head amongst the bottles? Weird!

January 2009

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the recent happenings in the Magin’s world. I turned 35 on the 22nd of January and well…it was quite anti-climatic but fun all the same. I’m officially half way through my 30′s. Cool. I had a few dinners to celebrate. I got some really nice gifts from some very lovely people. Thank you all. This a photo of my friend Merritt and I at a fabulous restaurant in Camden Town. Very fun! That’s actually a mint tea made with real mint tea leaves on the table, not a a Mojito. We enjoyed champagne as our drink of choice that night. I used to drink real mint tea like that all the time in LA, so it was a real treat that they actually had fresh mint tea at the restaurant.

We spent New Years with our Friends Dave and Eva eating lovely Italian food. We then went to the center of London to watch the fireworks. Well we got there a bit late and only got to see them on the TV screens that were set-up in Trafalgar Square.  We could have seen the event on our TV screen but we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of feeling the energy of the crowd,  pushing us out of the tube station onto the crowded streets of London. We would have only seen the spray of champagne we felt as the the new year rang in. We also couldn’t have so easily walked over  to the actual site of the fireworks after the show concluded just a short ten minutes later. It was a cold night but a really nice walk non the less. This is what we saw.

The week after New Years we went to the coast to do some body boarding. Well Kim did the body boarding I did the photo taking. He actually had many photos taken of him that day. There is a surfing site called magicseaweed.com and someone took photos of this very day of Kim body boarding. Here is another great body boarding shot- Well done KIM! Below are the photos I took.

The sun rising over the ocean. The clouds did actually clear as you’ll see below.

Kim body boarding his way through a tube of water about 6 feet in height. He’s shaded but we were enjoyingthe sun!

He’s happy to have gotten the chance to ride. I am happy as we’re on our way to lunch. Are you sensing a theme here? I am eating my way through 2009. Besides that I’m busy running more often as well as doing a lot of yoga and I’m beginning to teach again as well. I found a few gyms very close to our house to teach yoga at and a really great Pilates studio with the proper equipment to teach on just around the corner from my house. The weather has been a bit all over the place and the recession has slowed the process of getting anything going here, even for the already established.

This year is looking to be a year of major changes for many of us. We have a new president. The people of the world are as happy as we Americans. Much of the world is in a recession but is seeking ways to counter this. It’s like a company going bankrupt. The owner can only look at ways to rebuild and restructure in a better way. The world can only but benefit from reflecting on how it got to where it is today. What better a time than now, in the winter, when even mother  nature is contemplating how she will regenerate herself come spring and always in a seemingly effortless manner as well. We could all learn a lesson from her process, allowing the time in which life passes and the occurances that take place during that time to be the only effort needed to make the necessary changes.

Sydney Harbor

Sydney Harbor, originally uploaded by The Magins.

Australia equals adventure. Its non- stop action sprinkled with long relaxing days swimming, beach walking and sight seeing. Kim and I really like it here and are excited about the potential move downunder. It almost seems hard to believe that we started talking about moving there less than two years ago and it could be a reality in less than a year from now!

Even though we’re here for “business” we are also here having fun. Click on the photos above for a small photo journal of our trip so far. We landed Sunday the 8th and stayed with our friends Colin and Jen and their new little baby Abbey before caravanning for 6 short days. The weather was HORRIBLE! We did have one day of sun and got some hiking in. We saw the Three Sisters and climbed what seemed to my legs like a million steps. I may walk a lot on London but it doesn’t prepare you for a hike in the mountains. I am out of shape! The rain came just in time for us to go down under, down under. The Janolan caves were only 40 minutes from the town of Katoomba where we hiked.

We saw an underwater river. Our first ever. The water was so pure and clear it didn’t look like water was even there! The cave photo that looks like a sandy looking rock actually has super clear water over it. About 1 meter.

It then rained for the rest of that night near the Janolan caves where we stayed. We woke and I felt like I was back in the UK; cold, gray, wet and rainy so I made an executive decision and we headed to the coast where the weather wasn’t much better but we found a really great beach town called Avoca and had amazing dinner inside. It was warmer on the coast too, even though it wasn’t much dryer.

The next day we drove back to Sydney and hung out with our friends Colin and Jen. They have been super accommodating. They had lent us their couch to sleep on, their GPS to get us around Oz, their car to drive around in, their yummy drinks and snacks at their house, and most importantly their great company. They are so much fun!

We took two days to hang out in Sydney. We did a few touristy things and just walked around a bit to do, well the things you do in a city, eat, shop, dodge cars and people. Sydney proper has the biggest concentration of people I’ve seen yet in Sydney. There is no traffic and really not much people dodging even on the city streets. We like it!

We have been diving. Haven’t taken any shots yet underwater, as we haven’t seen too much worth taking shots of. We did see a school of about 200 Barracuda about 2 meters below the surface today. We don’t know what they were doing so close to shore other than that they might have been chased by a big shark. We didn’t see the shark. I am so glad we didn’t. I’m not sure of I’m ready for that yet!

We have about one week left before going back to the UK. I am a bit bummed we have to leave but at least be have something really great to look forward to!

Long Day

Today I got registered with the NHS. National Health Service. It was painless and a rather pleasant experience. My doctor’s office is a five minute walk from my house. Rather convenient and clean. Always a bonus.

I’m feeling more officially a part of society here each day. Still not feeling English blood flowing through me but I do feel the English chill every once in a while.Its rained as usual today.

Really tired. Going to retire.

Caffeine Addict

I need coffee sometimes. Not want but need. Well my brain tells me I need even though I really had given up coffee for a few years prior to moving here. Funny how old habits can creep, right back, up on you without any warning. Without asking, “Hey am I welcome back in your life?” Forget about asking they sort of just tell you what their demands are for some reason.  We then just comply, until some other system in the body starts screaming…”cut it out! I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again and again stop doing that. I’m warning you, I will make you jittery and edgy!”

The passive aggressive body parts rely on rich, advertising companies to get their message across. For instance the cigarette boxes hear in London have warnings the size of a shirt tag saying “SMOKING KILLS”. Another good example is a billboard ad that has a picture of a bare chested guy, probably in his 50′s with a skin tone coloured belt around his chest squeezing it like a tourniquet. Just writing about it just made me want to take a deeper breath. If you saw it, it would make your chest feel tight. Or at least it makes mine tight. I wonder if it makes people stop eating their artery clogging fish and chips? Another favorite of mine. Back to coffee…

I feel I’m doing myself a favor by not only getting out of the office to fulfill this habit but by not drinking the awful instant coffee that offices in England tend to serve. I’m at least drinking my daily does of caffeine with a “proper” cup of coffee rather than just any old coffee flavored caffeine fix.

I get to Starbucks and I order one of the fancy holiday coffees they have, Ginger Bread latte (which by the way isn’t as good as the Toasted Almond Latte) and proceed to ask for a small or a Tall as it’s spoken in Starbuck’s language. I’ve already committed to satisfying my fix and have already agreed a small is enough when I’m not supposed to be drinking a coffee to begin with. Starbuck’s Host I of course forgets what size I ordered, between asking me and then grabbing for the size cup he needs to make my yummy treat with. Starbucks Host II pipes up and says Grande, a.k.a., medium. I was like yeah that’s fine. I said to Starbuck’s Host II you just talked me into that you know. He smiled as if he’s going to make more money for that or something. He tells me he’s been working at Starbucks for five years and he does know how to sell anyone a cup-of-joe. I was impressed with his stealth marketing tactics and his ability to be so modest when confronted. They worked on me for sure. He’s from Bangladesh and seems to love his job at Starbucks. Good, as an agro host makes for a bad cup of coffee.

I asked him when my favorite holiday drink was going to be arriving- the Eggnog Latte. He said only in December. I said I’ll be away for three weeks in December. I’m going to Australia and he says you better drink as many as you can as they don’t have Starbucks in Oz. Unreal-maybe the southern hemisphere hasn’t been blessed with such franchises yet. They are the better for it, if that’s the case. This fact of course was given to me by SH II himself with another, I know more than you about Starbuck’s smile.

So I got my coffee and sat down in Starbuck’s for a few minutes to pretend I wasn’t really on a break from work but on a fancy European vacation and with nothing better to do my 24 hours today than enjoy a cup of fresh roasted coffee. I quickly snapped out of that when I realized I had to go back around the corner to finish making calls. Maybe I should invite SH II with me. Maybe he could make me some cash with his keen selling skills.

On the way home I passed by a group of school girls. They still wear uniforms here. They looked like little proper Mary Poppins with their Navy Skirts, shirts and matching berets- very cute. Even without the coffee I was reminded that I am certainly in a foreign place. I like that.

Dependent or not on caffeine it a reliable source that brightens my day. We all can’t rely on the sun for brightening in London.