Tonight is gonna be a hell of a night.

Tonight is the stag night / bachelor party for one of my colleagues. Obviously with our current visa situation being the way it is, desperate times call for desperate measures, and within minutes of our visa ’situation’ beginning this guy had proposed to his American girlfriend.

Am I being cynical?

Regardless, tonight our plan is to leave work early, then go to Hooters again (yes, that Hooters) for some ‘food’, then at 7pm our carriage will arrive. We have booked out a stretched limo for 8 hours to take us from Hooters up to Spearmint Rhino and then onto some clubs down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The theme for the evening is drinking jackets. All 8 of us attending this evening have spent the week searching all the thrift stores in Orange county looking for tweed drinking jackets for as little cost as possible.

I won that one, picking up not one, but two classic looking drinking jackets for 14 dollars.

Are you really supposed to haggle at a charity store?

Anyway, cameras are banned for this evening, but there should be a group photo in front of the limo which may or may not be posted later this weekend.

Saturday I took myself off to get an eye exam, my first ever eye exam outside the UK. Everything started off normal, shining lights in my eyes, blowing gas in my eyes, pretty much what you`d expect.

The only difference was this time the eye exam seemed to be exactly that. Back in the UK normally you just look the board, tell the person giving the test what letters you can see, they give you a prescription and you go and get a new pair of glasses.

Not in America.

This person giving the eye exam gave me exactly that - an eye EXAM.

Firstly she seemed disgusted that I didn’t know exactly what prescription my glasses had and then she spent the whole eye test giving it:

“right … ready….. ok, really go for it this time ….. SEE IT!!!!!!!”

as if - oh yeah, I`ve not been able to see properly for nearly 30 years, but oh my god your`re right, its just because I`ve NOT BEEN TRYING HARD ENOUGH!!!!

She did this every time she put a different lens in the glasses I was using to try and read the letters off the wall.

For gods sake, you can either see something or you cant.

And invariably in this case, I couldn’t. She even refused to make the letters bigger. At one stage the ‘exam’ went like this:

her - “right now come on - SEE IT SEE IT”

me - “I cant - I CCAANNTT, make the letters bigger and I might stand a flamin’ chance of reading them".

Thats where the exam ended.

I got a pretty good deal after that though. Normally my glasses, back in the UK, cost around 400 pounds, around 800 dollars. Although on Saturday I managed to bag myself a pair of Ray Bans for 290 bucks. Sweet.

Although I`ll probably have to prove I can read a newspaper at 100 yards before the crazy eye exam woman will let me take them out the shop.

As the forecasters predicted the weekend was a scorcher with temperatures reaching 38C for most of Saturday and Sunday. There is not too much you can do when it gets that hot over here in Southern California other than go to the beach, which is exactly where I spent most of yesterday, Huntington beach actually.

It was, of course, marvelous.

It gave me the opportunity, not that I need one, to put on my skimpy red Speedos and pretend to be part of Baywatch. It was going all so well until I ran into the water and got flattened by a giant wave.

But until that happened I looked amazing

Since I came back to Southern California a couple of weeks ago the weather here has been, well, British. While back at home in Blighty the weather has been, well, Californian. Now the tide seems to have turned. This weekend the forecasters are predicting record temperatures, with the weather here today currently at 37C and set to get even higher over the weekend.

Hopefully there`ll be no fires like last year, but I`m getting my running shoes ready just in case.

On another note my visa situation looks like it on the up. Having lost all confidence in my so called lawyer I have been researching visas myself and found just the perfect fit.

I am going to apply for the P1 visa. The visa is suitable for:

Internationally recognized athletes or athletic teams entering the U.S. to participate in an event of international standing

Entertainers and entertainment companies recognized internationally as outstanding to tour the U.S. or participate in events

and the entry which makes me eligible:

Distinguished circus artists who wish to work in the U.S.

I`ll just do some cartwheels on the way through immigration.

Its a bullet proof plan.

Absolutely nothing can go wrong……

….again.

Seeing as now my visa has expired and I am still in the USA, I am currently unable to to leave the so called ‘land of the free’ unless I want to pack up all my things and never return.

So I`m trapped here, unable to leave the country.

This being the case I`ve thrown myself into Southern California culture more than ever, and southern California culture is, lets face it, Mexico.

When I left my last job one of the gifts I was given was a California guide book. The book, which was last seen at a restaurant just off the Pacific coast in San Fransisco, listed at the front 32 things you should try and do while in California. Most of which by now I have completed and one stage or another over the past year. One surprisingly simple thing left on the list as to eat ‘real Mexican food’. Fortunately for me, earlier this week the place where I work had a Mexican salsa competition where staff brought in their own salsa and were a competition held for the best salsa and also the hottest salsa.

There were about 10 entrants in all, number 9 and number 10 going head to head for the hottest salsa prize. Each had a health warning printed on A4 right next to the sauce and sample chips.

I kind of pride myself on being able to eat some pretty mean curry, but this stuff had me beaten hands down.

I, stupidly now I know, and not one to do things by half, took a big scoop of number 9 followed by a big old bite of number 10 one right after the other.

Then the screaming began.

I downed a whole pint of water in a second or two, which did practically nothing to help.

I could barely talk for half an hour and my eyes watered all afternoon.

Still, its another tick in the box.

At what cost though? I`ve been having problems since then, so much so that I still have a whole roll of toilet roll in the fridge

Just in case.