Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Lost in L.A.


My elementary and high school classmate from Jolo, Philippines is visiting the U.S. and is currently in Southern California after coming from Florida and New York. His aunt called me and said she was picking him up from a relative’s apartment in L.A. Since she doesn’t drive on the freeway, I looked up a route in Google Maps (both our cars were GPS-less). There were three options and I picked what I thought was the most direct one. Things were going well until we were only about a mile and a half from our destination. When we got to the hustle and bustle of downtown L.A., we somehow got misdirected between 4th and 3rd Streets. We had to stop and ask for directions thrice. The first two men we asked gave us incorrect directions, until we finally asked a woman who sent us to the correct location. What was supposed to be a 50 minute drive on surface streets ended up about an hour and a half. Even when we arrived at our destination, Google Maps gave directions to turn into a certain street which turned out to be a parking lot. Oh well, at least we found the place and were able to pick up my classmate and take him back to Long Beach. Going back, we were again misdirected but found our way much quicker. The place we were trying to find: White Memorial Hospital. Not exactly in the heart of L.A., but in the Boyle Heights area. Next time, I’ll just plug in the hospital’s name into Google Maps since the hospital’s address is on a major boulevard, instead of 1818 Michigan Street, which was the address of the apartment building.
When I told my friend’s aunt that we were going on an adventure when we left Long Beach, getting lost was something I did not expect. So I suppose the lesson we can learn from our misadventure is this: ask a woman for directions instead of a man.
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