San Francisco

I'll admit it, I wasn't expecting to like the US all that much. I only went there because of my cariad, otherwise I would've chosen a country from my list of Places to Visit Before I Die instead; Newfoundland, Greenland, Norway, the Faroe Isles. Basically anywhere with restricted winter daylight hours. I think it's because I'm a Ginger.

But I loved California. Especially San Francisco, where all the buildings are painted pastel colours and all the people are at least a little bit cracked. Baby blues, salmon pinks, mint greens; you'd go crazy too, wouldn't you?

On our last day together Bjarni and I drove round the coast again, ate good food and drank nice wine under a palm tree in Napa Valley. I never realised that palm trees actually existed. I thought they were just things you saw in cartoons, like sticks of dynamite, or big black vultures with sweaty red heads.

When I (reluctantly) arrived back in Reykjavik I was devastated to see that Rabbit had suffered a terrible injury in my checked luggage. (Yes, I took him with me. You wouldn't just go off and leave your pet at home to look after himself, would you?) His battery pack—which I had carefully removed so as not to get him too excited during the flight—was smashed apart, and no amount of tender loving care could put it back together again.

It's going to be a long, cold, lonely winter in Iceland this year, I reckon.

A Shuffle of Nerds

I've never seen as many Nerds in the one place as I have at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley. There are more Nerds here than there are in Kaffi Vin on a weeknight in Reykjavik, I swear to God. Whole shuffles* of them, all keeping the world wide web in check so the likes of you and me can get on with our blonks.

I like Nerds. I think I may have been one myself in school, despite never being particularly good at science or maths, or any of the other things that Nerds are good at. But I was never any good at kissing boys either, or colour-coordinating my outfits, so I seemed to qualify by default.

Everything at Google is blue, green, yellow, and red. The sofas, the bean bags, the lava lamps, everything. I sit waiting for Bjarni to finish work so we can head up to San Fransisco for the evening, aimlessly Googling random stuff and emailing Alanis to check whether that's ironic or not.

In the lobby there's a real-time projection of all the (clean) searches that are being made across the globe right now. I stand and stare up at it, eagerly waiting for my own name to scroll by, until my neck begins to ache and I give up. The best search I see simply asks why? which I immediately search for too, but don't find any particularly conclusive answers to.

I make Bjarni take me to see the Blogger people, but I just peek at them through their window, resisting the temptation to waltz in and introduce myself, California style. I'm not allowed to disturb Googlers while they're working, apparently. Even though by the looks of it they're just sitting there on the internet like every other office worker in the world.

*Shuffle: the collective noun for Nerds.

America

God, I love it here. People keep smiling and saying hello to me.

"Hello!" says a shop assistant, startling me.

"Hello!" I say back, trying to mask my surprise, thinking of Iceland where we all completely ignore each other til we're on at least our fifth pint.

Yesterday we drove round the coast, paddled in the ocean somewhere between San Francisco and Santa Cruz; I can't be more pacific than that. The beaches were deserted. It was a gorgeous 18 degrees centigrade outside, so all the Californians were snuggled up at home keeping warm. I screamed like a girl when a vulture circled us slowly overhead. A vulture! With big black wings and a sweaty red head. I jumped around, waving my designer cowboy boots at it so it'd know I wasn't dead. Later, we ended the day with a romantic meal at an Italian restaurant, where an enthusiastic waiter introduced himself by name. I told him my name was Annie and asked for the mussels and ciabatta bread.

It's not all exotic and peculiar though. On the downside there's a Subway, a Shell, and a Starbucks on every street corner. I was half expecting things to be a little different over here, but, I am sad to report, in many ways America seems to be much the same as the rest of the world instead.

Biscuit

Bjarni is about a metre taller than I remember him to be. He must have grown in the California sunshine. He's all glowing too; white teeth and brown skin, golden and crunchy, like a biscuit.

When he's not looking I want to make a swipe for him, grab him and dunk him in my tea, gobble him all up.

Crash

My new favourite hobby—next to blogging and flossing my teeth—is recording passenger plane crashes from around the world in my diary. This means I can a) predict when the next crash might be and cunningly avoid it, and b) jot something down in my diary other than "Period Due".

I haven't been doing much partying in recent months, it has to be said, or anything particularly scandalous at all. With the exception of one crazy weekend of exhausting Irish relatives, all I've been up to is working on some new writing projects—a short film script, huzzah, and a bit of blogging for Iceland Express—and counting down the days til I go to America to see my cariad again.

Oh, but the flight over there is already beginning to trouble me. Can I really sit for 7 hours straight in the brace position? Unfortunately, the crashes I've recorded so far don't seem to be revealing any particular pattern. Although I suppose that could be because I've only managed to jot down two since my new favourite hobby began.

Well, I'm just going to have to drink copious amounts of brandy, reminding myself that Iceland–San Francisco probably isn't the most popular route for terrorists and/or a crate full of deadly, writhing snakes, after all.

15 minutes

Well, I'm glad that's over with; I won't be making a career-leap into radio just yet, I shouldn't think. I was pretty nervous. Which was only made worse when I mistook the familiar voice in my headphones to be that of the legendary John Peel.

I was kind of vague about most things (John Peel: "Has blogging helped you integrate into Icelandic society at all?" Me: "Um, yes, in a way, well, uh, no, not really"), didn't sell myself particularly well (Me: "You wouldn't find out much about Iceland reading my blog, I just bang on and on about myself, y'know, me me me"), didn't have much to say about my readers (John Peel: "So, what kind of people read your blog then?" Me: "Oh, mostly people who are bored at work, y'know?") made some random statements that I don't even believe (Me: "Meeting people through blogging is better than meeting people in the pub") and managed to get through the whole thing without mentioning my muff once or cracking a single joke (John Peel, in his own head: "Hmm, not so entertaining in real life, are you?).

I concentrated very hard on quashing my ridiculous fake South Wales accent — which made me sound even more English than usual I reckon — and then read out one of my posts in a bizarre voice that kept morphing between Jackanory and the speaking clock.

Oh, I'm not making this sound very appealing, am I? Well, I haven't heard it yet, so hopefully it went better than I remember. You can listen to the show (which is about the blogosphere as a whole, by the way, and not just "me me me") at the link below on Monday evening.

So there you go, that's my 15 minutes of fame. Although a friendly email from the producer informs me they've managed to edit it down to 2.

Eye on Wales with Peter Johnson, BBC Radio Wales, 6pm Monday 13th November

This is the BBC...

BBC Wales contacted me the other day, they'd like to do an interview with me for a radio show about blogging, would I be interested? Ooh, yes, of course I would! This is almost as good as getting on Richard and Judy.

"You're a little bit raunchy for the Beeb," warns the friendly producer. "So we may have to edit some parts out."

Raunchy? I'm not raunchy. I'm a prude! The closest my blog gets to having sex is a bit of masturbation here and there. Although, I suppose that's exactly the kind of comment they'd have to edit out.

Yesterday the phone rings again, it's the BBC office in Iceland, wanting to know what time to book the studio for.

"This is the BBC office in Iceland" says a strange, upper-class accent on the other end. "We want to know what time to book the studio for."

"10.30 will be extremely suitable," I say, in an equally strange upper-class Welsh accent that seems to come out of nowhere, seems I'm neither upper-class nor do I have a Welsh accent.

"Oh dear," says the voice. "Unfortunately we can't do 10.30. Would 10.25 also be extremely suitable?"

Hmm, this strikes me as a little odd. Five minutes' difference? I mustn't be used to all this anal scheduling stuff since moving to laid-back Iceland. I pause to gather my strange upper-class Welsh thoughts before the voice at the other end bursts into giggles.

"Annie, you twat!" says the voice. "This isn't the BBC office in Iceland, the BBC doesn't have an office in Iceland! This is Birna!"

Arrfgh! It's my friend taking the piss. I want to strangle her down the phone line. But at least it's given me the chance to keeps tabs on this strange accent thing I have going on, which I'll now do my best to avoid at all costs during the interview.

Anyway, genuine studio is now booked with genuine BBC person, and all I have to do is select a couple of blog exerts to read out for them and answer their questions. Oh, what to choose, what to choose? All suggestions welcome, non-raunchy BBC Radio Wales listeners in mind.

The Kids in America

I'm going to America in a couple of weeks, which I am very, very excited about. I've wanted to go there ever since hearing Kim Wilde's classic pop hit "The Kids in America" when I was eight years old, after sending off for a mix-cassette tape with four tokens from a Weetabix box. After that you could often find me staring sulkily out of my bedroom window, imagining that "down below the cars in the city go rushing by". They didn't, of course, seems I grew up in the middle of the Snowdonia National Park, nothing below my bedroom window but a pleasant green meadow.

I'm going to visit Bjarni, who's all the way over in Cali (as I've taken to calling it, in a casual, overly-familiar kind of way) learning how to be a proper nerd at Google. I'm hoping that by the time I get there he'll have sold them one of his nerdy-enterprises for roughly 1.6 billion dollars, and we can spend the week lounging around on his luxury yacht, or posting gleeful videos on YouTube, or whatever it is that nerds do after striking it rich.

Hmm, he's already getting a little bit bling bling without me, by the sounds of it. According to his blonk he's been zooming around San Fransico bay in a private jet. Or something. Oh, I hope he doesn't go off me. Maybe I'll get there only to find he's traded me in for a blingier model, like Paris Hilton, perhaps. But then again, he hasn't seen my foxy glasses/mullet combo yet, which I'm certain will reel him back in.

Kim Wilde is a gardener now, in Kent. Which just goes to show that anything can happen.

Four-eyes

I'm now of the four-eyed variety, having finally made it to a doctor for an eye test last week. Yes, I'm short-sighted, he confirmed it when I couldn't even read the top row of his Helvetica pyramid, and promptly wrote me a subscription for a pair of super-strength glasses.

It's a relief to be able to see again. And my friends are especially relieved. It means they can all stop playing that classic game "Can you read that sign over there? What about that one?" every time we go out downtown.

Even so, wearing glasses is a bit discombobulating. Everything might be in focus, but it all seems just that little bit further away. Is it really? Or is this an optical illusion? What if I wanted to touch somebody? Where would they be? This needs a test. A woman approaches me, so I reach out and--very gently--grab onto her left breast. "Ooh!" she squeals, jumping backwards a step. Hmm. Now she really is further away.

Glasses, I reckon, are going to take some getting used to.

Impotence

Well, I've finally gotten my libido back after carelessly leaving it in a Copenhagen hotel room last month by mistake. Always look under the bed before checking out! It's a relief just to have found out what had happened to it; I was genuinely beginning to worry there was something wrong with me.

"I'm impotent!" I wailed down the phone to various friends. "Nothing turns me on anymore, nothing! Not even the bathtub scene in 9 Songs, or the bit in 24 where Jack Bauer takes my knickers off and dances round the Counter Terrorist Unit with them on his head."

"You're a hypochondriac!" they wailed back, advising me that the panicking was making things worse and perhaps I should use this period of chastity to get on with some work instead.

Boyfriend is in America, I am rubbish at phone sex, and Rabbit has been as good as useless – if only because I hadn't realised it takes four batteries and not two. I just kept changing the same pair over and over again, wondering why it'd tremble pathetically for a minute or so before conking out completely. One anonymous reader thought it could be the motor overheating and suggested I keep it in the fridge instead. But, sadly, Flatmate seemed to object.

But anyway, Bunny is up and running again now, and last week a package arrived from the kind Danish hotel staff: my libido, at long last, all wrapped up in brown paper with a little note to say they hoped I'd come again.