There are very few things I know for certain in this world. I know that as soon as I make myself comfortable on the sofa in front of Ugly Betty (I know, I know), that my cat will take it upon herself to select that moment to announce that she wishes to re-enter the house. I know that my painful search for a non-mass marketed t-shirt with witty and insightful slogan will end in me finding said t-shirt in every size but the one I want. I know that every girl driving about with a Playboy bunny sticker in the rear window of her car has as much chance of spending the evening in the Hefner mansion as I do of auditioning for Aussie Thunder.
And just like Baz Luhrmann’s conviction about the use of sunscreen, there is one single piece of advice that I can pass on with absolute authority: never, ever go to LA airport. There are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ here, not even a ‘maybe’, just avoid LA airport like it were a festering tramp who has been sleeping in his own urine for the past three days and is now standing out in front of you with his hand outstretched at about 1pm on the hottest day of the year.
I’ve climbed off the plane at about 7am after a twelve hour flight to find that I’ve arrived in America before I left Australia. I have no idea how that works, and I’ve read Bill Bryson’s comments on it a hundred times, but all I know is that April 14th 2007, I did twice. I also know that November 5th 2003, when I travelled in the other direction, I didn’t exist. This could deliver mouth-watering possibilities when it comes to thoughts of high-level international espionage but instead gives me sleepless nights as I try to desperately work out where I was on that day.
After dismissing thoughts of trying to ring myself to see how I was, I wander into the main customs area of LA airport.
Now, bear in mind these planes arrive at this airport every day, and short of major mechanical faults, they all arrive at the same time on that day, one has to ask oneself why with four jumbo jets full of weary passengers, does the customs roster only allow for three customs officials to be on duty?
With several thousand people to queue-up, be suspiciously eyed up and down, spoken down to, have a retina scan, two thumb-prints and be rectally-probed, three officers is clearly not enough to satisfy demand.
But of course, this is a world post-9/11. You can’t complain. You can’t question the authority of the ‘Greatest Nation In The World’ © unless you’re a Jewish comic dressed as a Kazakh reporter and backed by a TV crew and a significant legal team. You just have to stand there and be herded into three lines, each moving slower than the last, and be spoken to as if you were back at primary school and you were waiting for your lunch. You get the feeling that if you broke ranks, grabbed your little wheelie hand luggage and made a dash through the flimsy rope barriers, that sirens would sound, lights would cut, Alsatians would start barking and from out of nowhere two massive guard towers would open fire at you.
So you don’t make that dash for freedom. You conform. You do as they say until you reach the front, vowing with every minute that you wait that’ll you’ll make a stand when you reach the desk – take it upon yourself to express your disgust with the system on the behalf of the rest of the bedraggled passengers of flight QF-something or other.
Either I have no backbone or the fact that my partner kicked me in the shins made me reluctantly back down in my protest. I’m not a Vietnamese Monk in mid-1960s Saigon – I’m just on my way to New York for a wedding. Two significantly different things.
I even called the customs official ‘sir’ at least seven times when he was processing my visa. I said thank you at the end of it.
Not wanting to be a total walk-over, I muttered a half-hearted comment about the bullyboy tactics as I departed. He paused processing the next passenger and glared at me. I scurried off to get my suitcase before he asked me to repeat myself.
Footnote: I made the bit up about being rectally-probed when you enter the USA, but once you’ve spent two weeks there and given them your hard-earned dollars to invest in their economy, the only feeling you can equate to the drama of getting through their customs is being bent over and investigated internally by a PVC-coated finger.
