The Capital of Capitalism

Saturday was spent training (8.5 hours - 8 hours training with two paid 10 minute breaks, half an hour unpaid lunch) to be a Courtesy Clerk at Ralphs, involving bag packing, sweeping, cart collection, and other lowly odd jobs about the mighty stores. The training had 4 principles that were drilled into our heads, almost like brain washing.

Our people are great!

Our prices are good.

You get the products you want, plus a little.

The shopping experience make you want to return.

We were told to watch how we say things and carefully guard our facial expressions when in work - I reckon George Orwell wrote 1984 after working in Ralphs for a while (and, yes, Ralphs was about when he was writing the novel). But whatever, it's instant work and not too taxing as long as I'm friendly, helpful, and informative all the time. We got about 200 pages of manauls just to make sure we don't forget...

Afterwards I tried America's no. 1 least healthy drink (a smaller size - the one mention previously was only the medium!). It was sickly sweet and so rich it stayed in my throat for a good while. I also tried the Starbucks coffee cake (delicious, but tricky to get the mouth around) and their green tea latte (sickly sweet, vibrant green foam. Just stick to the plain green tea. Seriously, these Americans must be on a constant sugar high). After driving on the wrong side of the road for a little bit, quickly corrected by my godfather (in my defense I was two lanes over to the right - would've been fine on a British motorway. These roads are huge!), I had thai food for dinner. Delicious again. I then drove to the cinema (two more slightly close brushes, but I won't talk about them. I blame the amount of sugar coursing through my poor body).

I have now seen 3 films in the states, all good. Traitor (slow burning terrorist thriller), Ghost Town (standard comedy fare, good turn by Gervais), and - last night - Eagle Eye (fast, furious, fairly easy to predict action fare).

Some quick thoughts on food in the States - lots of unhealthy things being thrust forward, food outlets everywhere, cheap, tasty. Much easier to pack on the pounds than in Britain, less of the health guilt, more of a culture of eating out all the time, shameless marketing, larger portions, larger fridges, and huge stores. In short, it tastes great but one has to really watch that they don't end up hoovering up the sugars and fat being shoved at them every day.