So, I've been in Los Angeles for what, nearly two weeks, now. I haven't talked to many of you back home, it seems, mostly because I don't really have a computer here - can't be on AIM.
My job is excellent. A lot of great people work there - quite a few fools, too, but I guess that's what keeps things interesting. The labor dynamic at work is kind of strange. Virtually everyone there - I guess 98% of the people - has a college degree. However, the management consists almost entirely of people from top 20 schools. Literally, they don't seem to hire people who don't have a good name on their degree. Hell, about 80% of the people I've met seem to have gone to either Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. It's absurd. Alongside that, a few of my coworkers seem to have taken some sort of "How To Act Like An Ivy League Elitist Prick" elective course while at school. Ah, I dunno, it's funny. I'm asked about where I've gone to school many, many times every day. Evidently the other Cornell guys are pretty popular amongst the non-management people - and Stanford people seem to be most hated. I don't, I guess, understand why the upper management makes the choices that it makes. The company's staffed by a ton of hard working, intelligent, experienced educated employees. It's managed, essentially, by a bunch of Ivy Leaguers who will leave, on average, within 2 years of joining the company. Fun stuff.
Most of the time, Los Angeles is the ugliest place I've ever been. The architecture is trashy, the streets are dirty and broken, there's that whole Grapes of Wrath sepia-toned thing going on. Haphazard street layouts, terrible, terrible drivers. I think the place was designed and built by retards. The 'nice' areas of the city are like gilded versions of the bad areas. I need to get out of the city more, I guess. Highway 1 was pretty great, so were parts of Highway 5. Santa Fe Springs, the town where I work, is horrible - it's a clean, manicured city-size industrial park. The weather is boring. Every once in a while I'll see something strikingly different, pretty, but generally the place is just unnaturally ugly. I don't understand what the attraction is. There are a ton of fast food restaurants, which was novel for about a week and now just seems kind of, I dunno, characteristic.
I can probably blame some of this on not doing much. I've eaten food I've made or fast food, nothing particularly good. Haven't gone much of anywhere, other than to a mall to buy some polo shirts. I ought to go to sleep. Goddamn.
It's strange not having a bed or a room. I like it even less than I expected. I do miss New England.
Stone