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Friday night I was due to hook up with a few people from work at a place called the Baja Beach Club. Here was the invite I received:

Baja Beach Club, Riverfront. Upstairs, just past the movie theater. 3 for 1 from 6-10, with full dinner buffet. Come on out, and bring anyone you can.

I hadn’t been to Fort Lauderdale yet, but this sounded as good an excuse as any to go. Because I was uber prepared, I decided to do a quick internet search to find out where this place was, just in case. No problemo, I had an address and I said I’d try to arrive at around 8pm.

I headed out after work but could not for the life of me find this damn place. I spent a good 2 hours driving around Fort Lauderdale, in what seemed like peak-hour traffic, to no avail. The address I got off the internet was just plain wrong. Shit. What was I to do? I was down and depressed. Luckily I found a Krispy Kreme store and I bought a few donuts from there. Mmmmm, sacrilicious. I never thought that food could pick me up so well. I asked the guy who served me whereabouts the Baja beach club was. His directions sounded ok, but after another 1/2 hour of driving around I decided to cut my losses and head back home. Five minutes into my journey home one of my Aussie mates called and so I went to pick him up and, feeling reinvigorated, we headed back to Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t believe it, I found the place and there was no way in hell I would have found it by driving around. Of course I found it 4 hours later than anticpated. Oh well.

There were stacks and stacks of people everywhere. It is at this point in the story I’d like to say something to all those people who, once I told them I was going to Florida, said: “Isn’t that where old people go to retire?” Ummm, yeah. You’ve been watching too much Seinfeld. Take the clientele of the Savvy bar in good ol’ Adelaide. Multiply that by, ooh, 50. Empty them on the streets of Fort Lauderdale. Got the picture?

Actually truth be known, the Baja Club is very much like the New York Bar and Grill in Adelaide. Think popular RnB music with a smattering of dance music and there you go. It probably would’ve been a lot better earlier on but I wasn’t going to hang around much longer. A couple of the other clubs we went to were like those in Adelaide. There were slight differences, but not enough to invoke a “wow!” Actually, the biggest difference I found was in the toilets – there are guys who wait next to the hand basin who offer to wash your hands for you, for a tip of course. Yeah, right! I couldn’t believe it. I said “no thanks” and proceeded to wash my hands myself like I have for most of my life. Because I felt like being a bit cheeky, I washed my hands again. I can’t believe there are people who would hang around in the Men’s toilets (of all places) all night for tips!

It was about 3:30am that I was in this club with my mate and he said that he was going to the toilet. He didn’t come back for ages. I went looking for him and saw him standing outside – I tried calling out to him to ask what the hell he was doing but he couldn’t see nor hear me so I headed outside. What I saw was both funny and shocking at the same time – some guy had punched him in the face. He couldn’t remember exactly what provoked the attack apart from him accidentally bumping into some guy, but he had a nice black eye brewing. He was very drunk too so I decided to call it quits for my Friday night out and drop him home.

Wowsers, I think I just had the hugest weekend in a while – my first real weekend in the United States. I’m going to have to break it into several posts I think. I made it into work this morning, so that’s a good start I guess.

I thought Adelaide drivers were supposed to be bad! Things I’ve noticed:

1. The indicator is just a novelty item and rarely gets used.
2. If a person driving in an adjacent lane notices that their vehicle will fit in the gap between you and the car in front of you, then they’ll take that gap. Refer to (1).
3. There is no such thing as a safe distance between cars. If you can count “1001, 1002” you’re too far away from the car in front of you. Refer to (2).
4. Don’t expect anyone to safely let you in even if you have your indicator on. You’ll have to barge your way in. Refer to (2)
5. Stop signs are red and octagon shaped. That’s about all people notice about them though.
   

Then there are some other things I’ve noticed – like the number of crashes between my residence and work (a 5 minute drive). I’ve seen the result of three crashes so far, and the one this morning was a doozie. It looked like an SUV had rolled a couple of times and was lying on its side – and that was in a 45mph zone!

Also, the location of places is given as the intersection of streets, not actual street numbers. This is probably better than using street numbers as you rarely see street numbers anywhere.

I nearly made a fool of myself on my first day of driving because I was going to tell someone their brake lights weren’t working properly. Then I realised a lot of cars had the same problem. Then I realised the brake lights over here doubled as indicator lights in a lot of car models. But then again, I dont’ see this very often – refer to (1) above.

Especially if I want to spend a couple of days in Miami, I’ve been informed. Ok, so learning Spanish is probably not essential, but it would probably help to know a bit more than just “Yo quiero taco bell”.

I met a guy today who works here, Omar, who is in a band called “Santos Renuentes”. If you go to their website you’ll see pics of the whole band. I’ve listened to a couple of their tracks and it really can be best described as Spanish alternative rock. There are a couple of links to their tracks on their website, and it sounds like really cool stuff. Apart from being the bass player of the band, Omar does the mixing too. That then got us to discussing all things Reason, Cubase, Logic and VST plugins. He is also involved in a trip-hop band (think music that sounds like Morcheeba). Actually, I just had a quick look at the Morcheeba site – they actually mention the Adelaide show that got cancelled just over a year ago. This is what they had to say:

Morcheeba would like to apologise for having to cancel their show in Adelaide on the 12th April. All other shows are 100% confirmed. They look forward to seeing you all there.

“Much apologies to those in Adelaide for the cancelled show. We hope to be back as we LOVE it there.” Ross Godfrey

Well, that’s just weird. I’ve still got the four tickets that myself and a few other slightly disappointed fans had for the night.

Anyways, I’m going to see if I can make it to the Santos Renuentes performance at Tobacco Road in Miami next week. Here’s hoping 🙂

One thing I’m missing the most is my guitar. I really, really hope it arrives soon – I’ve got a funny feeling that it may have arrived today, hopefully with the rest of my luggage. That also reminds me that I have a list of things to buy whilst I’m over here:

Kawai ES-3 Digital Piano
Nikon D-70 Digital SLR camera
iPod 40GB rev 4

I think after purchasing all that I’ll be pretty satisfied.