"I'm cranky!!!!"

...is what I whined to Stella this morning, prompted by absolutely nothing.
I have a beautiful relationship with sleep, better than a lot of people, I think. I can fall asleep anytime, anywhere, on a moment's notice- and I stay there as long as I need to. I'm spoiled rotten when it comes to sleep; therefore, when sleep doesn't come when I want it or I can't stay asleep, I am a whiney cranky nightmare. Which makes Stella a saint.
Saint's are patient and kind and so is Stella. If she is annoyed by me being annoying she's totally good at covering it up. Used to dealing with small children and babies, Stella handles me perfectly.
"I'm SO tired," I whine.
"Take a nap in my bed, its super comfy!" she answers.
"I don't wannaaa, " I whine.
"Let's work out!" she geniuses. We do.
"I'm COLD." I pout.
"If you put your towel in the dryer while you're in the shower, its super warm by the time you get out!" she enthuses.
"Oooooo!!!" I finally come around.
If you have the means, send her presents. She deserves them.
I discovered this morning that Australians are pragmatic monsters. Beautiful, lovely, generous souls with wonderful senses of humor, but also pragmatic monsters and this is how I discovered it:
I was running on the treadmill in the gym watching some reality TV crime show, a la Cops, without the sound. I'm half paying attention, until I see a beautiful dog in the middle of the highway.
Now, my run should be ending soon, but I keep going because I'm waiting for the happy ending. I'm American. I need a happy ending. I keep running- even as the cop picks up the rag doll body of this poor gorgeous animal. I keep running- even as I watch all the witnesses, one of whom has to be the owner, give pleasent silent testimonials. I wait for crying- nothing. In fact, most of the people are half smiling? The presumed owner shows off a tattoo of her dog on her forearm without looking the least bit upset. I run harder, getting pissed that no one is crying over this dead-looking dog, that I know can't really be dead because WHO PUTS THAT ON TV?
I'm still running- and hyperventilating now because I'm crying as I watch to the bitter end of the segment which DOES NOT INCLUDE ANYTHING RESEMBLING A HAPPY ENDING. Rather, the segment ends on a shot of the dead dog in a ditch and the cop shaking his head, because he actually has a heart and remorse unlike all his witnesses, the people who filmed and edited the segment, and the channel who aired the show.
I'm all for not coddling the children and telling them straight up what's what, but come on.
Okay, off to put my towel in the dryer and actually see some of Sydney for real so you guys don't have to keep reading about my impressions of the inside of Stella's hotel.

"AAAaaaaahhh!!!!!!!"

...is what Stella and I did when we ran into each other at the elevator, seeing one another for the first time in over two months. Lemme back up--
So in my stupor yesterday I never mentioned anything about my flight, and I actually had some things worth mentioning: it was jam-packed, my overhead light didn't work therefore I couldn't read or do the hours of leftover work I still had (have? ahem.) to do , I sat next to a chatty lady (sigh.), we had to maneuver around some thunderstorms which made me very nervous because I watched every single episode of Lost and frankly I wasn't in the mood to work so hard to survive, and TIME STOPPED.
I swear to God. We took off from LA in the pitch black night. I watched a movie (What to Expect While You're Expecting. Stop judging me.). I ate dinner. I dozed off- the little flight status thing read: 12 hrs remaining. I woke up-11 hrs remaining...
I did this between every 15 - 55 min for about 4 hours before I gave up and watched another movie (Snow White & the Huntsman. Kristen Stewart, eh. I don't buy it.) I kept falling asleep and having to rewind so the 2 hour movie took at least 3. Not to be tedious, but my point in chronicling everything is to show that at least 9 hours had passed since we departed LA and in all that time, there was not a single glimmer of light in the sky. NO SUN AT ALL.
Having to face the pitch black sky out my window every time I opened my eyes forever totally messed with my head, like 30 Days of Night. I got restless and agitated which made me more tired, but I was too agitated to sleep. ("Why didn't you take a sleeping pill?!" asked Stella. "Because I'M AN IDIOT," answered Bianca.) I re-wrapped myself in my blanket and tried Sleep Position #67: body shrunken into a tight ball, pillow jammed under the jawbone, scarf and overshirt balled into a pillow against the window. I shoved my head into the pillow and willed myself asleep... no. I opened my eyes and stared into the black on the other side of my window- and I lost my breath.
I hadn't noticed before, but it wasn't pitch black outside. Instead, there were more stars than I had ever seen. My first thought was, "I wonder if we're in outer space." Out of habit, I reached for my iPhone before my mind caught up. I would never be able to see the stars in the photo, only the black hole that had haunted me since take-off would register. I left the phone alone. Instead I stared out into the crowded sky and attempted to burn the picture, and the peace and spaciousness that came with it, in my mind. I had an emotional moment, just me and the stars, and when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, they finally slid closed into a deep and dreamy 2 hour sleep. It felt incredible.
The rest of it flew by: another movie (Five Year Engagement. Harmless.), breakfast, and the first act of Fast Five (LOVE.) before I landed and stumbled through my first day. I accomplished my gym/food/nap plan (GFN?), squealed & hugged Stella, and little else.
Today I started my writing routine. I'm in love with it. After, I wandered the area gradually making my way to my friend's offices in Darlinghurst just up the road from Haymarket where Stella lives. I'm in heaven as I walk the streets, Korean BBQ joint after Korean BBQ joint beckon me inside. I think we're officially in Koreatown, but Chinatown is super nearby. Asian markets seem to equal the number of regular grocery markets, there's tons of Japanese, Thai and Chinese food places in between yogurt shops. Basically, I'm always hungry once I leave the apt.
At my friend's office, we walked onto the rooftop porch to take in the sunset view- a horrific caw rang out and seemed to echo over Sydney. "What the hell was that?" I asked my friend. He pointed out a pretty white cockatoo in a tree not to far away. I couldn't believe such a huge sound could come from such a pretty little thing-
Until it opened its wings into an impressive stretch and lurched out another call. Imagine James Earl Jones' voice coming out of Nicole Kidman- it wasn't exactly like that, but it wasn't exactly not like that either. My friend also told me about the fruit bats that fly through town, and now I'm obsessed. Austin has quaint cute little bats at dusk, and Sydney has these massive flying animals that careen through town looking for fruit and nuts. I'm now determined to find one. In the meanwhile, check this out...

I want, I want, I want...

my new writing den = my happy place

I have an old friend named John West!
So I bought his tuna!

G'day!

Where to begin? Ok, let's start with I'M EXHAUSTED. And I'll back up from there.
This blog was supposed to chronicle my misadventures, etc of being on location with this amazing job I got 15 months ago (hence the name). Well, it turns out I worked so much I had only a little time to do incredible, fantastic, amazingly fun and envy-inspiring things, and once I did them I was WAY too tired to write about them. So I Facebooked everything instead of writing much of ANYTHING, and everyone thought everything was very awesome, which it was, so I guess: Mission Accomplished.
But the point was to write. Actually, my entire point in my life is to write. Which lead me to the ultimate decision to quit my amazing job - because amazing or not, if I'm not doing what I was made to do, why do anything? (...and then Bianca puts on a beret and a scarf, lights a cigarette and stares out the window for 4 days. Deep... like I said, I'm exhausted. And that can make me sorta weird and filterless. Enjoy!)
It wasn't that dramatic. But you can only have so many moments of clarity before you start to feel like a grand idiot to stay in a situation that, though very lovely, comfortable and secure, does not work for you anymore. So I left my steady paycheck, brilliant and supportive boss, and the comforts of home to do this:
Everything I've always wanted to do.
And when I put it out there like that and get both excited and choked-up at the same time, I have no doubt I made the perfect decision.
All of the above landed me in Sydney two hours ago. And now here I sit in my best friend Stella's apartment, writing and eating an entire package of her sweet biscuits (think cookies) while she works all day.
Australia has been a travel fantasy ever since I got my first passport. When Stella booked a movie here, we had the whole "You should totally come!" "Yes, I'm totally visiting!!" conversation that always happens when a friend gets a cool location, but this time it resonated. A free place to stay with my very best friend in a city I've been dying to travel to for 15 years is hard to pass up- but what about my job that I had no intention of leaving until I had put in two solid years because two years sounds better than one? (Please re-read previous paragraphs for answer if necessary.)
I'm so happy to be here for so many reasons- some glaringly obvious (I heard the dudes are awesome.), some incredibly personal (so I'm not saying what they are)- and I'm committed to honoring my decision to create the life I want by making every moment worthwhile; I'm thrilled to have the opportunity once again to share those moments with all of you.
This afternoon those moments- Jesus. It's not even 10am here...
Today, those moments will probably amount to not much more than finding a grocery store to replace Stella's biscuits, napping, and maybe hitting the gym. After 15 months of being on-call non-stop for work and getting no more than 12 hrs of sleep in the 4 days leading up to my trip, the wall that I've slammed into is a dense, unforgiving concrete and has knocked me on my ass. It may not sound like much because these are chores most of us do pretty often, but right now its everything I want to do.
So again: Mission Accomplished.

My first look at Australia from the plane at dawn...


Wrapping up in Suffolk

December 19, 2011...

Since I don't have time to do a proper blog entry before we wrap IN FOUR DAYS (wooooooop!) I thought I'd post some pics since they're worth a thousand words and all that...

Ainu

This is Ainu. She belongs to our 2nd AD and is a cat disguised as a gorgeous husky. It's been a month of me lavishing love and ear rubs on her, not to mention feeding her pounds of meat by hand, and she has graduated from ignoring me to tolerating me sometimes to finally, FINALLY approaching me for a rub. I LOVE this dog. 

My office when its not raining...

When I'm not in car - which is where I have found myself for most of this location - I work from where ever I can. Sometimes a trailer, sometimes the office, and the rest of the time perched on whatever flat semi-clean surface is available.

My office when its dark...

A NOTE TO MY READERS: To be honest, I stopped writing this blog post at this point because I was exhausted and, just now three months later, have finally regained the strength to finish posting. Ok, maybe I slacked a little in the last two and a half months but I was really super tired for a solid 2 weeks after this location.

And so now, I continue below...

My hotel on a gorgeous spooky night

I lived in a golf club. With an OUTSTANDING bar that served INCREDIBLE food. If not for that bar, I would have been a sad, sad American girl. Thankfully, the bar was nightly filled with my fellow crew members and it really was where everybody knew everybody else's name and business and favorite drinks. Unlike an American movie where all the previous information would have likely lead to more incestuous hookups than VC Andrews could dream of (Flowers in the Attic? Heaven? Ruby? My Sweet Audrina? Anyone? No one? Just me? Oh.), here it resulted in many pints bought, countless fags smoked, tons of taking the piss and mostly single sleepers. Mostly.

Sunday morning tea

So English! So pretty!!

I was endlessly fascinated how tea is SUCH a huge part of the day. As is making it for one another. Whereas in American production offices if you're thirsty you get up and grab yourself a drink, in our office whenever anyone - ANYONE, from PA to producer - got up to get a drink, they would ask the office and take orders. Then they would be back 15 minutes later with assorted teas (with milk, with milk and sugar, with lots of milk) and coffees. Then 15 minutes later the whole thing would start again. Between making tea and peeing all the time, I don't know how we got anything done. But I loved it.

"I hear those voices that will not be drowned"

This sculpture is the only thing of its kind on the shores of Aldeburgh, and I went insane when I read the message (ahh, the dramahhh). I went to this beach every weekend on my day off, and my last day there someone had left flowers and a card in the pouring rain for their deceased brother. That a person would honor their brother's silenced voice by leaving a memorial at my favorite shrine to the voice of the infinite made me cry like a baby.

In addition to crying on the beaches of Aldeburgh, I also tried to explore some of the nearby villages on my day off. Here are some pics from my hour in Dunwich...

Dunwich Sheep!! So cute!!!

Oooold Dunwich cemetery! I LOVE CEMETERIES!

Sheep IN the cemetery!! Perfection.

With all the exclamation marks in my captions, you may wonder "Why just an hour, B?" Well, I'll tell ya: That was it. Dunwich could only boast of 1 church, 1 pub, and lots of sheep. It used to be the 3rd most important city in the United Kingdom ages ago, but Dunwich sits on the shore and over time the entire town got washed out and still stands under water. You can still see part of the original grand church in the last picture is now just ruins for the sheep to wander around. You may further wander, "Why even go there, B? Its a watery ghost town." To which I answer: exactly.

Southwold, aka Heaven

The only other village I got to tour for fun was Southwold, a beach town about 45 minutes up the coast from Aldeburgh that had the GREATEST BOARDWALK EVER and an arcade full of ridiculously fun games where I ultimately won a stuffed animal.

Pet or Meat: Settle Lamb's Fate

I bested The Claw!

A common reaction when people heard I'd be in the UK for location was to talk about how much weight I would lose. Wrong.

From Aldeburgh Fish & Chips, not to be confused with The Aldeburgh Fish & Chips Shop

Don't be fooled. You may think you've eaten fish & chips before or even made them at home (you haven't), but you are wrong (see?). There are no fish & chips unless they are the fish & chips from Aldeburgh Fish & Chips at the top of High Street eaten with your hands as you walk down the beach. If you were using utensils, were eating fish & chips from the Aldeburgh Fish & Chips Shop from mid-High Street, or were anywhere in America then YOU WERE NOT EATING FISH & CHIPS. No. You weren't.

The winner & still champion!

I tried them all: Flame-Grilled Steak, Roasted Chicken & Thyme, Sweet Suffolk Chili, Thai Chili, Caramelized Onion & Cheese and at least a dozen others I didn't document with pictures. The ultimate crisps? Prawn Cocktail. Who knew?

I could go on and on (and sorta have, whatever) but that's because I LOVED SUFFOLK. The countryside was breath-taking, driving was a blast, I fell in love with the food (no, seriously), every morning looked like the last scene of Pride & Prejudice, and the crew was the BEST CREW EVER!! 

Thank you United Kingdom, and thank you Suffolk!

That's a wrap!

"Are you alright?"

Fifteen to twenty crew members ask me this with concern in their voices every morning as I run around trying to get things prepared for my boss's arrival. The first couple days I always answered with a martyr'd sounding, "Yeah, no, I'm good, thanks..." and wondered exactly how awful and freaked out I must have looked to have THAT MANY people concerned about me.

I'm not sure how it clicked, but somewhere I realized their heartfelt "Are you alright?" is the English version of my "Hey, howyadoin'?" Oh, yeah- there's English and then there's English English. I felt like a jackass for letting my drama queen answer for the first few days. Now I toss it right back:

"Hello, Bianca, are you alright?" "Hey, yeah, howyadoin'?"

Our 2nd AD is doing his best to train me away from a lifetime of American English. The trash can is a bin, my trunk is my boot, and its not WATER, its WAH-UH. I'm not very good at it. But I have adopted the long, cute British phone goodbye.

Rather than the usual, Thanks-Bye-Hang-up, I notice calls end as follows with both participants speaking in a higher and higher pitch until its kinda singy:
"Ya, alright, thanks, cheers, bye, buh-bye!" And its a call-and-response, too, so you can really get into a few rounds of the "bye, bye" section. Adorable. I can't help myself.

Furthering my transformation away from American Girl, I've pretty well mastered Right-side driving. I don't hesitate with crossing lanes to turn right, I've figured out the rhyme and reason to roundabouts (hint: KNOW where you're going and PAY ATTENTION to what lane you need to be in) and I'm now comfortable running over someone's lawn to pass. The roads are narrow- usually too narrow for two cars to pass comfortably, so both cars drive half on the grass, gutter, or embankment on either side to make it. I'm excellent at this.

I found myself so good at Right-side driving, I got relaxed enough to re-adopt some of my awful American driving habits like working while I drive- UNTIL exactly 30 seconds into writing a reminder to myself on a piece of paper when I drove onto the curb of the highway. The curb was too high for me to drive off lest I pop my tire, so I stayed on the curb/sidewalk until it disappeared for a second and I was able to steer my car back fully onto the road- and realized I had popped my tire anyway. See sheepish in the dictionary? That's me.

(What's funny is all three driving Americans had an incident of some sort on the same day. Two flat tires and a busted side-view mirror. The crew definitely had a laugh about that.)

Sun sets over The White Lion Hotel, our Thanksgiving hosts

Uncle Sam says "Eat your turkey!"

 This week was Thanksgiving ("It's a big deal to you people, isn't it?" said my 2nd AD). Being NOT in America, we had a full day's work but afterward found a restaurant in nearby Aldeburgh (the ONLY restaurant) serving a Traditional Thanksgiving Turkey dinner. The appetizer choices were hot wings or mozzarella sticks- clearly American (?), if not traditional fare. We didn't care, we went straight for the turkey (amazing), green beans (actually yummy) and sweet potato mash (oh yeah) topped with pretzels (...what?).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pretzels, my new Tgiving tradition

                          The restaurant was bleeding red, white and blue wrapped in Forth of July decorations and we couldn't get enough. It was really very sweet- Yay, America!

Our shooting schedule has us working 6-day weeks so when you consider I worked all last weekend, this has literally registered as the longest week of my life.  I'm starting to go kind of bats. The hotel I'm in has no gym and I'm working from before dawn until well after its dark. On the suggestion of one of my set friends, I decided to try running at night after I got home. I was so restless, I was open to anything...

So it's black as pitch here at night. No streetlights. None. I knew this and decided to run anyway thinking my eyes would get used to the dark. They don't- it's THAT DARK. Thank God for my flashlight app (yeah, I'm in love with my stupid iPhone, shut up.), its the only thing that kept me from breaking my ankle on the uneven roads. Also, I don't know my way around my neighborhood- I haven't had the chance to explore anything yet- so my plan was to keep the curb on my left and I would retrace my steps... instead, I found our neighborhood pub (ANOTHER place I haven't had time to explore) and realized I just jogged a 10 min circle. I chalked the experience up to "super stupid" and made fun of myself for doing it. Until-

Cheshire Cat watches over my run.

I did it again. Hotel life is either lonely as hell or you're in the hotel bar every night. Having spent every night in the hotel bar to this point, I decided to try again. This time I was armed with a working knowledge of which street I would take and I had Rihanna's new album to keep me company. And it was pretty fantastic.

There is really NO ONE around and it is REALLY DARK so if you want to dance down the street or pretend you're running away from a hideous maniac in the dark or sing at the top of your lungs with the wind blowing your hair around like you're starring in your own music video you totally can.

I know because I did.

This was the scene as I left my hotel for my run tonight. I actually had a bit of dusk to light my way the first few minutes.

This pic has nothing to do with this post other than its what I woke up to this morning and ITS SO DAMN PRETTY!!!

thirty-five minutes...

Is the grand total of sleep-- I'm lying, I snuck in a 20 minute nap midday Sunday, so 55 minutes is the grand total of sleep I've had since I woke up at 830a Sunday morning. Its Monday night, almost 11p.

I'm pretty impressed with myself.

I haven't had a melt down, I haven't even cried. And today was one of the hardest days of location for me: Move-in day. Imagine all the stress of moving into a new house and hooking everything up, discovering the internet doesn't work, the coffee machine is too fancy to figure out and you've been frying every electronic device you've been plugging into the wall.

Oh yeah. Something about voltage and maybe watts or transformers and numbers like 220 and 110 and 13 volts floating around. THANK GOD Apple products are all yoked up and ready to work internationally. Not so much for the Radio Shack computer speakers that squeaked out one last burp when I plugged them in. So it looks like I'm going shopping for a few things.

A little warning, yall? I've heard a bazillion times I don't need to tip at a pub, but I've never heard about the all-mighty English power of electricity that is so behemoth as to literally electrocute my poor little electronic toys to death. Have I...?

The house I'm in is stupid. As in phat. Or like dope. Or along the lines of "OMFG THIS PLACE IS EFFING AMAZING!" (Became very aware of my grandma with that last sentence, yall know what I'm talking about.) Huge with lotsa bedrooms, but who cares because the ACRES OF ENGLISH GARDENS are where I want to sleep and eat and shower and live forever. I want to roll around in the herb & vegetable garden. I want to sleep in the heated pool. I want to dance in the flowers- this, I will do.

I didn't know I loved English gardens until I walked through this one and had a prettygasm. It is so damn pretty! But difficult to photograph. In fact the only picture I've taken in this place is of the best toilet in the world.

It ain't an English Garden

I like toilets. They're important. 

Hey, I should totally blog this...

...I thought while having breakfast with my cousin Brian in London.

I've blogged all my major trips (all two of them, whatever) but it's been a long time since I traveled.  And since then, the internet has exploded into massive overshare with Facebook, Twitter, etc, of which I participate (Follow me! Friend me! Nah, you don't have to...) so it took weeks for blogging to occur to me when I found myself traveling again.

But here I am, now: a writer (who hasn't written anything in months) with a great new job (that I both love and then not-love sometimes) that gives me to opportunity to travel the world, so why not? As I sat in Brian's kitchen eating blood pudding with hammy bacon and waxing poetic on the relationship of travel to inspiration, there I was- inspired to write again! Using more than 140 characters! Nice!

A quick moment of prequel... eh, nevermind, I kinda just did that.

So anyway, because I've already spent a month working in Alaska I'll do a quick speed-through:

Anchorage, Alaska: bleak, cold, desolate, beautiful, ugly, shady as hell and easy to navigate.

Anywhere around Anchorage: raw, natural beauty. A whole spectrum of "Holy shit..." inspired landscapes. I spent so much time trying to take pictures at snow-covered mountains as I drove that my inner monologue was continuously writing and re-writing the news lead: "LA women crashes into gorgeous mountain and dies in fiery snowball" was the usual.

And I wasn't the only one- for some reason it became one of our favorite games to play on set. "Make-up artist spontaneously explodes into fiery snowball..." "Movie producer falls overboard tour boat into fiery snowball..." You could die in any way as long as you met your ultimate fate in a fiery snowball. I loved it.

I had my first two helicopter rides in Alaska, and I gotta say- if you think Alaska is pretty from the ground, it blows your damn mind from the air. Helicopters are fun, fun, fun. I always wanted to levitate, and that's what riding in a helicopter is. Both times we floated over and landed at glaciers that were so graceful and gorgeous that words are too small to describe.

Glacier Mouth... say ahhh...

I can honestly say Glacier #2 (of course every single one of these big girls have names and naturally I can't remember a single one) is the most beautiful place I have ever been to in my life. See for yourself...

No words...

If Alaska has to be so effing cold, at least its to make unreal stuff like this. And Jesus, was it cold.

The rest of my Alaska impressions are tangled in with all my badass crew members. GREATEST CREW EVER. Man, I loved those guys...

Love.

Which brings me to...

The UK! Suffolk, to be exact. Woodbridge, to be more exact. Rendlesham Forest to be ever more exact. The first time I saw the address, I got tired.  Suffolk is 2 hours from London, a county of tiny villages on the North Sea. I haven't seen any of it yet- I've been working my ass off since I got here, staying in the production office til dark, and lemme say: dark is DARK in Suffolk. It's country, yall.

A few things I'm excited about for this location...

Accents. Sweet lord, do I love British accents. I have crushes on every person I've met so far- male, female, gay, old, pot-bellied... I'm open for business. Just sayin'.

Right-hand driving. Meaning driving on the WRONG side of the rode ("RIGHT SIDE" my new accented friends jibe me) in the WRONG side of the car. The first 2 times I drove, I followed one of the guys to and from work like a duckling. The next day, when I woke up 2 hours late and 1 hour from my catching my train to London, I threw my Sat Nav in the car, roared onto the road, and made it to the office only getting lost twice. Nothing like a greater fear to overcome your other crap. (Feel free to use that nugget of brilliance in your daily mantras & affirmations.)

Aliens & ghosts. As my driver drove me into town for the first time, he informed me Rendlesham was UFO and ghost central. Despite 12 hrs of travel I perked up like it was my birthday (It was my birthday!) and got him to tell me everything he knew, which wasn't much. Still, I've quizzed everyone who will answer and its true! Rendlesham is the Area 51 of Europe. More on this as I do research, but I heard of a haunted hotel that I'm determined to spend a night in.

London. Instead of spending my first weekend in Suffolk laying groundwork for any possible future making-out, I took the train to London to work for the weekend. London is SO CLOSE I dream of dashing out to get my boss big city things I can't find in Suffolk like cute boots and cashmere sweaters- er, I mean Cuban cigars - on a weekly basis. We'll see, but getting to spend the weekend here was outstanding!

Oxford Street

Pee or call...?

LOVE a great bathroom!

One of these things is not like the other...
but all equally phenomenal!

Big fan...