About an hour before landing I suddenly had an overwhelming thought, 'what the HELL am I doing?' We were mere miles from LAX and the city I'll be calling home for the next few months and I suddenly though, this is crazy.
Rewind nine hours and I was secretly grinning as I clocked British actress and professional skinny bitch, Thandie Newton in the flatbed seat behind me. I'd decided to treat myself to a bit of business class travel. My mate couldn't understand it, unable to reconcile the cost. One evening he argued, "ok, what if you bought a seat in coach and a stewardess came and said, you can upgrade to business for $1000, would you do it?'. I was distracted by the fact that he said '$1000' like a sarcastic Dr Evil and secondly, whatever. I've worked non-stop since I was 16, Mac jobs seeing me through college, never signing on, always grafting and this was my treat for all of that. A rather modest prize if you ask me and besides, you can put a price on having a celeb like Thandie Newton sat behind you, probably pouring Oil of Olay on her salad while picking at her no-egg omelette, right guys??
Anyway, I made sure I got my money's worth by pushing all the buttons I could lay my fingers on, watched heaps of movies AND I had three glasses of champagne. I'm sure that let the staff know they were dealing with a real starlet (and not someone who'd only travelled business once before).
The plane landed, I endured a painfully long immigration process. Nothing says welcome to America more than moving from one hour long queue to another making declarations, having finger prints taken and stating your intentions. At one point I wanted to just ask for my orange jumpsuit and which way to the blacked out sedan but thought better of it. The lack of humour at customs has been well documented. The night was warm, the taxi queue long. Home Jeeves. To my new apartment.
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