31-year-old Cat Le-Huy, Head of Technology at Endemol UK, was detained and arrested during a tourist visit to Dubai for carrying melatonin, an over-the-counter jet lag aid. Though once in custody Le-Huy tested negative for drugs and his melatonin was cleared by officials, he is still in Dubai jail with no charges and no release date.

Full story can be found on the Truth about Dubai page. All of his family and friends (myself included) are shocked and worried.

Please take the time to sign the petition set up to help secure his release and spread the word around that Dubai is NOT a safe place for Western tourists, regardless of what their advertising campaigns say.

More information about this and other similarly horrible cases can be found on the BBC news site.

We opted for a GPS unit, which has so far proven to be a bit of a pain in the ass, losing reception at awkward times (like when we left the rental place and needed some guidance so as to not end up in Inglewood, i.e. giant ghettoville) and sending us down motorways miles out of our way for no obvious reason.

LA drivers are far less chilled than most London drivers and some of the tactics are beginning to get on my tits. We drove around Mulholland drive today and Beverly Hills (and some random unwanted motorways) so I got some time to get used to driving my temporary baby among other road users. I used to be pretty good at combat driving (you have to, to get anywhere in Israel) so sooner or later they’ll all get their comeuppance.

We had a pizza party for Xmas and between that and my joyful rediscovery of cinnamon rolls, I think I’ve gained all the weight I’ve lost during my 2 weeks in SF. It was bound to happen.

I decided to avoid walking the mile to the train station with my 2 heavy bags so picked up the flat phone to ring for a cab. Only apparently I’d not put it back in its base very well so it had run out of charge. Ok, not a problem, I can use my mobile (and pay like 2 quid a minute or something). Only I ring up and get Mr. Indian Call Centre. OK, so he’s based in Mountain View, but he may as well be in Mumbai. It took almost 5 minutes (tenner) to explain why I don’t have a local number to give, why there is no cross street where I am (it’s between 2 of them and fucked if I know or care about their names) and that the cab arriving in “between 15 to 20 minutes” is no good. I had actually given up and told him to forget it when he suddenly was gripped with an understanding of the english language, took my UK mobile number and said the cab will be there within 5 minutes. It actually was and the train cameand I actually got on it.

Took forever and a half as usual to get to Millbrae where I had to change to the BART to get to the airport. Missed one train, but luckily the next one was there in 5…. but left after about 15.

When I got to the airport, the real fun started, because I remembered my e ticket saying I fly out from Terminal 3 but the train said the airline I’m on leaves from Terminal 1. So I went to terminal 1. My flight wasn’t listed so I thought oh shit and went to terminal 3, where nobody knew what I was on about.

So back to terminal one, speak to the airline, who tell me I have to go to…..you guessed it, terminal 3, as the flight is operated by another airline. So off I go again and (with some effort) manage to check in and then rush through the joys of security. … and then had to board while I was writing this.

Am in LAX now waiting for my bags. The toilet door didn’t lock and kept opening, there was no paper and when I flushed the toilet overflowed and soaked my laptop bag. I kicked it out of the way before any real damage happened.

There are bastard screaming kids everywhere and trolleys cost $3

On Weds I had lunch at the Google complex. It was a beautiful sunny so my host, Adam and I sat in the sun, after he gave me the grand tour. The Googleplex is mad. Totally the other side of corporate from what I’m used to. Back when the Evil Empire bought the company I worked for, I got a glimpse of what it’s like to work for a shitty corporation that treats its employees like they owe it something for having employed them for the pitiful wages it gets away with paying them. Employees are expected to sell their soul and get fuck all in return. Google, on the other hand,has 17 cafes where employees can eat 3 times a day for free, plus heaps of free snacks (the ice cream freezers were a particularly nice touch), fruit smoothies and 3 gyms to work it all off. Everything is bright and sunny and they have game rooms, a swimming pool and free bicycles. People take their laptops to the cafes and do work from there when they want. They even have free washing machines for staff, which basically means that if you’re a recent graduate joining Google from out of town, you’d never leave. Who needs mom cooking and cleaning for you till you’re 40 when mother Google can do it for you? Seriously, it was like being back in Vegas at one of the nicer buffets, only this time it was FREE!

If I was ever gonna go corporate, that’s the sort of place I’d like to work, though I don’t see that ever happening. I like my long holidays.

I can’t decide if the Google complex is scary or not. I guess it’s scary because it’s the sort of job that could turn into your family and your life and make it so that you hardly notice the fact that you’re giving your whole life to your job, because everything is so pleasant. On the other hand, I know people who works there who do have a life outside of work, so I’m guessing the sort of people who’d want to just work work work would do it in any other company anyway, so at least this way it doesn’t feel like being on a slave ship.

Got my tattoo done on Friday. A star on my left big toe. It hurt less than I remember the other ones hurting so maybe the ones on the inside of the arms *do* hurt more than tattoos normally would. Those were still not too bad though.
Anyway, the new one looks totally hot

Today I wanted to go to a dance class that started at 12:15. For this, I had to be at the train station for 10:19.
There was a massive fucking spider in the bath (are there poisonous spiders in California?). It took me 5 extra minutes to remove it and then shower. I looked at the time and it was 10:10. It takes 15 minutes to walk to the train station. There is a bus that goes to SF from Palo Alto. I thought I’d walk to San Antonio shopping centre and see if they have a cab there that could take me to Palo Alto. This was a mistake. There are no cabs in suburbia. I should have rang up the local taxi place or walked over to Mountain View station where sometimes cabs hang out.

Instead I ended up walking over a mile to San Antonio and then waiting there for half an hour for the train. I hadn’t had breakfast because I’d still entertained the silly notion I might actually get to my class. I even went as far as getting off at Millbrae, which connects to BART, thinking it could get me into Mission quicker. Maybe it would have if I didn’t MISS THE BART TRAIN by 10 seconds. The doors closed as I was running towards it. Bang! Now you wait 20 minutes. I thought BART was faster than Caltrain, I was wrong. By the time I got to Mission it was practically time for the NEXT class I was taking. In hindsight, maybe it was good I didn’t do the first one cause I’d have had to run 6 big blocks in less than 15 minutes to get to the second class and the second class was Afro-Haitian dance which is apparently another term for “toughest workout you’ve ever had”.

So after that, I thought “fuck this” and booked myself into a hotel on Valencia. I’m not sure why I booked myself into a hotel there when I’m planning on ending up at the End Up, which is actually downtown but it was a hotel I’d recognised from when I was originally looking for places to stay in SF and it was like right there and not too expensive.

Then I carried on down Valencia to Black & Blue Tattoo and booked myself in for an appointment with Tiffany, who did my last tattoos. Yay.

After that I took the bus back to my fav train station: 22nd St. Which is this empty bit under a dark bridge in a place no one can hear you scream. I’d apparently missed the train by 5 minutes. I played a silly game on my phone for an hour. Yes, an hour.

I’m now in a cafe in Mountain View, across the road from the station, waiting for yet another train to take me back to SF. Nothing like taking an hour and twenty minutes long train journey, legging it down the road to a flat, throwing some stuff in a bag and some food down your throat, legging it all the way back with a bag dragging behind you and then turning a corner to see the 4th missed train of the day pulling away and heading back towards SF.

!#@@$%%#%^T%&^$&^%&

In London, the Transport for London ads make me laugh, because they actively try to discourage you from using their service (i.e they try to get you to walk and cycle places instead of taking the tube or the bus). They try to do it by going on about how much fun it is to walk and cycle and using cutsey illustrations of smiling feet and stuff. Maybe they’re going about it all wrong.

I am not sure what the point is of the SF Muni ad I saw, unless they are also trying to discourage people from using them. At least at 4am. Seems like a curious choice for advertising one’s services: telling you about a crazed lunatic endangering passengers’ lives. That’s the sort of thing you really *don’t* want people knowing about when it happens on your buses. Frankly, this seems like a much more effective way of making people think twice before getting on a bus. I mean, who wants to have to wrestle some maniac at 4am on the way home?

Maybe TFL should put up ads talking about “that time” the smelly drunk came on and kept shouting insults at himself and others and wouldn’t get off, which is practically like every single night.

I’m sure there’s some kind of better comparison gag in this somewhere, but it’s too early in the morning.

One of the Muni drivers stopped the bus at one point, got out of his cage and walked over to the back and then told a bunch of teenagers off for being too loud. They apologised and shut up. See? If people can do this in America where everyone’s supposedly armed and in a gang, why can’t the cowardly losers on TFL do the same when the gaggles of arsehole teenagers get on and give everyone an instant migraine?

I listened in to a conversation between two guys on my journey along Mission. One guy was a mumbling old homeless looking guy with only 2 (yellow) teeth and matted greyish-blonde dreads under a nasty-looking old wool hat and the other was a slightly overweight youngish guy who looked like a .commer nerd with Aspergers (i.e. the same as any other .commer nerd). I’d seen the old guy walk past mumbling “I know, I know about all that” to himself and didn’t figure on him having a friend or anything. Then the younger guy shouted at him from across the bus “Hey man! Do you have my book? What did you do with my book?” and then ran up to join him. Surprisingly, it was the younger guy who seemed to be following the older guy around and doing most of the talking. The older guy seemed to quietly tolerate him and, when not mumbling incoherently, actually managed to sound quite normal. The young guy was also quite eloquent in a Tarantino dialogue sort of way. In fact, it took me a few minutes to realise those two were the ones having the conversation I was hearing, seeing as they were sat behind me.
The young guy was talking about some kind of cartoon or comic book he’d seen, that’s been adapted to a Cartoon network show (and then, apparently, taken off the air).

Young guy: So do you know it or not?
Old guy: I’m sure I’ve read it but I don’t remember it.
Young guy: Well, there’s this kid, right? and he’s living with his grandparents and the parents aren’t there. I don’t know why that is. So anyway, do you know about ear piercings? That there is a gay side and a straight side?
Old guy: What side?
Young guy: You know, that if you get your right ear pierced, that’s the straight side and if you get your left ear pierced, that’s the gay side.
Old guy: uuuh I dunno what side is the gay side and what is the straight side
Young guy: Well, I’m telling you! The right side is the straight side and the left side is the gay side.
Old guy: *mumble*

Young guy: So like, one day the grandfather comes home and tells the kid, “hey kid, your grandfather’s a cool man now! I got me a piercing!” and you know what he did?
Old guy: no
Young guy: Well, he got his piercing on the gay side, cause he didn’t know did he? I mean, sometimes people get *both* their ears pierced because they know there’s a gay side and a straight side but this guy didn’t know so he got it on the right side, the gay side.
Old guy: *mumble*
Young guy: and then! and then the phone rings and the kid answers the phone and says “hey grandpa, it’s the guy from the piercing place, he wants to know if you want to have dinner with him!” cause now he thinks he’s gay! But he didn’t know did he? He just thought he’d get himself a piercing!
Old guy: *mumble*
Young guy: Yeah, I dunno what it is with the kid living with his grandparents. You see that sometimes, though, a lot of Asian kids, you know? You see a lot of Asian kids with their grandparents, and their parents aren’t there, what’s with that?

So this went on for a while, then the old guy said he was fed up of the bus so they got off. I got off a couple of stops down the line and then heard them coming up behind me, the young man still going on about something. When they walked past me I saw that he
was wearing khaki slacks and carrying one of those shoulder bags .commers use to carry documents or a laptop but he was walking a bit funny, like his hips were a bit too loose.

I wonder what the story is there.

The train dropped me off at 22nd St. station and I had some time so I thought I’d walk over to Mission, rather than hunt for a Muni line I could take down there. I started what turned out to be a half hour walk by walking up a massive hill and when I got to the top, I was hit with a view of SF’s downtown skyscrapers. It was dark by then and they were all lit up and sparkling and I just had to stop because the feeling of sheer elation I felt was actually overwhelming. This only intensified as I approached Mission and started recognising street names and then the streets themselves and then places.

Oh, San Francisco, I could have kissed your ground, if it weren’t for the dirt and broken glass and, undoubtedly, the occasional used syringe!

The difference in vibe between SF, arguably the coolest place in the US (or at least one of them) and suburbia is something you could probably measure on some kind of scale.

I mean, Mountain View is perfectly pleasant, but I’ve been sat here thinking to myself “why am I here, again?” and a single glance at the vitsa of SF’s downtown literally punched the answer into my face.

How to go from limp to keen in 2 seconds flat…. I actually had to stop myself from bursting into song.

I grew up in suburbia but it was much smaller, about 15 minutes away from the centre of town in a car. Plus, when I was a kid, living in suburbia still meant having an empty field or two to run around in, before those were also covered in people’s dream homes.

To say I didn’t hate being dependent on my mom or the crappy public transport system to get around would be an obvious lie.

American suburbia is, well, something else. It’s vast, it’s samey and it’s as pointless as anything unless you have no life outside your family, work or school. I don’t know how people do it without a car. I don’t know why anyone would choose to do it without a car. Suburbia was designed for cars and cars are the only things that could make it somewhat more tolerable (cause you can get out of it quicker).

I’ve more or less given up on trying to ride the bicycle now. It totally did my back in the last time I tried to ride it, plus, having come off it several more times while trying to swerve out of the way of people, I’ve come to realise that being able to use the brakes is perhaps the most important part of being able to cycle under real life conditions. I love the fact that you can feel yourself coming off the thing and still jump up to safety. You can’t do that with my mountain bike, it’s too heavy. The trade off is, though, that I can ride my mountain bike without ever falling off. I guess I should come to terms with the fact that I shall never be a fearless bike racer and confine myself to doing the comic journey to the shops, providing free entertainment for all who walk past.

I must have inadvertedly taken a rush hour train yesterday back into SF. It was surprisingly full. I thought everyone went on their little Google shuttles and similar. It did seem to be mostly composed of cyclists though, wearing an assortment of ghastly cyclewear. I guess you have to have some cycling fanatic (make that cycling psycho) in you to want to cycle anywhere near SF
(Those hills are hard enough without having to drag a lifeless piece of metal behind you, uuh under you) and dressing the part sort of comes with the territory, but come on people. You don’t see the Mexicans cycling round wearing anything but normal clothes. In fact, just about everyone I saw on a bike in Mountain View apart from at the train station was Mexican and they all looked like normal people going about their business on a bike.

The only time I saw the congregation of cyclemanics in their fluoro finery was at the train station, which makes me wonder whether they ever cycle at all. Maybe they just dress up in their kit and ride the train to work, arriving surprisingly refreshed and unphased after what’s meant to be a 40 mile journey.

But OK, let’s assume for argument’s sake that we’re dealing with actual cyclists. I’m sure wearing the right brand of lycra superhero-wear can shave at least 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second off your record when going to work but like a. you’re on your way to work, so why would you care and b. you look like a twat.

I’m also pretty sure that dressing up like DayGlo the clown won’t counteract soccer mommy’s famed SUV blind spot, which is the spot the size of Arizona created when said soccer mom’s too busy gurgling at her overweight toddler to be looking at the road. Plus (and this is the important part) you look like a twat.

But what do I know, I only use bikes to get from A to B when the route between A and B is mostly flat, not overly long and doesn’t involve extreme weather (like, you know, rain and stuff).

I’m sure there’s a point to it, really, but I hope it’s not pulling, because no one’s ever likely to pull looking like that.

So anyway, moving on…

Things I have lost on this trip so far…

• My rather expensive (yet oddly not incredibly well-made) Karen Millen coat my great aunt bought me some years back. I left it in a Vegas cab on my way to the Palms so I could fail to get into the MSN party for the second year in a row.
• About $10 trying to replicate my astounding win at the slots (see below) plus the $3 I put in the machine before I won
• About $20 of someone else’s money (tee hee)
• A $100 bill I thought was $10 that went to a cab driver on the same night I lost my coat
• About 20 quid late fee for delivering my rental car 46 minutes late after taking the wrong highway back to Vegas from Arizona (and I do mean the WRONG highway)
• My Nationwide card which doesn’t charge me for overseas transactions. I am pretty sure I left it in a cash point somewhere. All cancelled now and hopefully I’ll get a new one before I go to Cuba. I’d been travelling for over 14 hours. I guess that’s my excuse.
• My dignity while trying to ride the touring bike that belongs to the woman in Mountain View I flat-swapped with. I am used to mountain bikes. Fuck the Mac/PC divide (or, for the seasoned among us, the VI/emac divide, always a classic) the real divide is all about mountain bikes Vs racers. I mean, seriously, how can you maintain a centre of balance in that position? So I straighten up and then I can no longer reach the brakes. I nearly killed some kid and then I kept almost hitting trees. I fell over like 10 times. Luckily the thing is so light, I managed to jump over it each time and not get hurt. I am also, unfortunately, used to girly bars so lifting my leg over to get off is a bit of an annoying ordeal.

  I decided that cycling on the verge of falling over is not fun enough on its own. So I loaded up the panniers with all my shopping and headed back home determined to kill myself and take as many innocent bystanders with me. I am still not sure how I survived and how the eggs I was carrying survived. Go figure.

• Skin. Winter has not been kind. I have some kind of freak eczema or something. I’ve never had it in my life, wtf? All that snow/heat, snow/heat stuff is no good. I practically swam in olive oil today so hopefully that’ll be the end of that.

Things I’ve gained so far:

• A bunch of hangovers from being drunk most of last week. Luckily, they were pretty mild, because I drink vodka. Yes, vodka. The drink everyone should love because it makes you happy and is not full of nasty crap.
• A few interesting SEO pointers from the conference. I was somewhat of a swot this time and only partied till about 2am so I could make all the sessions I wanted to go to. It paid off.
• The view from Joe Morin’s tower suite at the Wynn was pretty damn special. Those are beautiful, beautiful suites. I was staying at the Sahara (Pronounced in the same endearing way as “tomato”) so could appreciate somewhere swish that wasn’t full of cowboys and housewives. Gone are the 50s’ glamour days for the Sahara, that’s for sure.

  The cowboy thing, the rodeo was in town. There was some cowboy convention at the other end of the conference centre we were at, which I managed to totally miss. Then I came back to the hotel one evening and it was all country music and cowboy hats. It kills me how many people actually wear cowboy hats here.

• $150 at the slots on the night I lost my coat. This was afterwards at the Venetian on some stupid machine called bowling mania or bowl-a-rama or somesuch. Some of the money went towards buying me a new Guess puffy coat at the rather hideous downtown outlet centre (not nearly as nice as the south strip outlet centre where I landed a pair of levi’s for $24). It was the least hideous out of the local selection and is warm, reasonably well-made-looking and was cheap.

  The other part of the money ($100) went to the taxi driver who drove me home from the Venetian (see above).

• A pretty amazing weekend of driving around on desert roads and seeing lots and lots of snow. I got to the Grand Canyon at sunset and it was just started to snow and then snowed pretty much all night. I was dreading snow-driving but it was pretty easy, even in the park itself. Americans seem to be better at clearing the snow off the road than the Brits. I kept shouting “It’s Mr. Plow!” whenever I saw the plows coming. Drove down to Sedona in a bit of a snow storm and ended up staying at a motel that had rooms with jacuzzis and fireplaces and stuff. Had fried cactus and quaesadillas for dinner and then woke up early and climed up to Bell Rock to soak up some of the good vibes. Managed to leave just as some people were turning up. Up until then I’d had the whole place to myself and it was pretty breathtaking (literally. I’m really out of shape, apparently).

So here I am in Mountain View trying to adjust. Still not made it to SF. It feels like forever away.

Here you spend a couple of days wandering around in the rain and you just want to hang yourself. You kinda think it’s cute when you’re a tourist and the whole grey London day thing is a part of the whole London experience but fucking try living here and “enjoying” the “summer” we had this year and you’ll know what real depression feels like.

The truth is Londoners in winter are generally pale, unhealthy, miserable people with bad diets and not much energy to speak of unless it’s artificially enhanced by caffeine or booze. I’m meant to have olive skin and winter here just bleaches the life out of it. Ugh.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been painfully aware of the fact that I am going to be away from most people I care about for quite some time. I know I’ll be missing some people rather a lot, but the weather’s getting shittier, the days are getting shorter and I’m remembering why being in this country this time of year is a total and utter waste of time for me.

If everything goes well, I’ll be away for most of the next 4 months, but who knows…

I was going to register another domain so I could blog about things while I’m away and keep it separate but I don’t particularly fancy spending 3 weeks trying to bend CSS and Wordpress to my will like last time because it very nearly drove me insane. I’ll just do it here instead because I’ve not been using it for anything else and frankly I can use a break from writing about marketing or work or online dating (which hasn’t even been my job for like 6 months). I’ve realised recently that I’ve lost the will to write, simply because all the writing I’ve been doing for the last year has been about stuff that I really have to struggle to find interesting anymore and there’s only so much of that I can do.

I don’t think I’m cut out for working full days and then spending my free time writing about the same stuff as well. Not unless it’s something that really fires me up. Now that I’ve left the Evil Empire to descend into the bog of failure it deserves and have joined the ranks of the happy freelancing contractors, there’s only so much I can find that angers me enough to find writing about the industry both necessary and exciting. There are people who live and breathe this stuff and do it so much better than I ever would. For me it’s just a well-paid job that I can do well enough to give me the lifestyle that I want.

I put my hours in for the clients and then when that’s done I really want to go and do something that has absolutely nothing to do with online marketing whatsoever. The next few months should therefore be a welcome break, but first, there’s Vegas…

Argos came second followed by the Daily Heil going on about some gift giveaway. They’d win a special place in hell too, if they weren’t already there for supporting the Nazis and all that.

And so it begins….