All things American

I thought I would do a picture essay of all things different here in the U.S.A. A picture tells a thousand words, as they say.

This is our living area, with Ros sitting at the dining room table. The TV has around 3000 channels, most of which are rubbish to watch, about half of them are in Spanish.







We are staying in what is called a "gated community", a large area of land with units behind closed gates and you must have a pass to get in and park. You have to carry gate keys all the time to get in and out of the community, or get to the rubbish dumpster, or private car parks. This is a view out our back door to the shared backyard.

Where is this ominous door leading to?

It's the communal laundry and these are the washing machines.

Here are the dryers - no washing lines here, everything goes in the dryer.

To use either the washing machine or dryer you insert this Laundry Card into a slot on the machine and choose your cycle and it automatically deducts the amount from the card.

To top up the Laundry Card with money, you insert it into one of these Add-Value Stations found in most communal laundries (fortunately ours does, Luke's does not), and add cash or credit as required. You can also buy a new laundry card from here if you don't have one or have lost your old one.

This is looking back at our unit from the laundry, ours is the middle unit, ground floor only (or as the Americans say over here, first floor only).

This is our kitchen, which doesn't get much use as we mostly eat with Luke and Michelle, just for breakfast and the occasional lunch.

This is called a faucet, not a tap. Hot water is from a communal boiler and it is a long draw to get the water to turn hot. Pressure is not that great either.

One sink always has one of these, an In-Sink-Erator or common garbage disposal. All food slops or peels are pushed down these, which grinds it up to paste and flushes it out to the sewers. Makes a hell of noise when you turn it on.

This is a power socket, note no switch they are permanently live! Only 110 volts, so not as deadly as our 240 volts over in Australia.

This is a typical wall light, Americans seem to have some aversion to having lights on the ceiling, the only ceiling lights in our unit are in the kitchen and above the dining room table. All the rest are either wall lights or lamps. To turn this light on you rotate the small projection that is sticking out  of the bottom of the light. Most lamps also have rotary controls, some you have to rotate several times before the damn thing will turn on or off!

Here is the bathroom faucet. Note the silver knob between the taps on top of the water spout. That is the plug activator. If you look at the sink, you'll see a silver cover over the plug hole. Believe it or not, that is the open position. Lifting that knob between the taps pulls that cover down, preventing the water from draining out so you can fill the sink if you wish. No more lost plugs!

Here's the bath faucet. Note the small knob in the spout - no this does not activate the plug, you can see there is a fairly standard looking plug there underneath it. No, pulling this knob upwards diverts the water flower from the faucet to the shower nozzle.

Here's the shower. All, and I mean all American showers are in the bathtub. I have never seen a separate shower cubicle like we have in Australia. Even in hotels, the shower is always over the bathtub.

The shower curtain is in two parts, one hangs outside the bathtub and one hangs inside it. The attraction between the two layers prevents the inner layer from trying to wrap around you like the good old shower curtains do back home. The plug hole is tiny and doesn't drain very fast so you often end up having a bath and a shower at the same time, if you get my drift.

In a hallway closet, you find the central heating gas heater, which pushes hot air out of vents in every room. As this is a small unit, it only has two vents, one in the loungeroom and the other in the bedroom.

And this is the thermostat which you set to the temperature you wish to keep your unit at. Believe it or not, we have not had to use it much even though it is winter here, Los Angeles is nearly always warm. Temperature settings are degrees Fahrenheit, by the way.

This is the view from our front door to the street.

And this is where we park our cars. Ours is the fifth one down. This is also the way we walk to Luke and Michelle's unit at the other end of the community.

That's it, a wrap up of how the American's live over here. Hope you enjoyed it.