GREETINGS from Los Angeles. I’ve been here for less than 48 hours, but I can already tell you it’s a strange place.

And it’s where, as I write, a man is climbing the letter D on the Hollywood sign. He has some sort of banner. What it says, nobody can tell with the naked eye. You see, contrary to the image you may have of LA, the Hollywood sign doesn’t dominate the skyline. It’s actually about eight kilometres away from Hollywood Boulevard and while the letters are 14 metres tall, at that distance they look tiny.

Our letter-climbing friend has inspired me to pen a few thoughts about this city of 18 million people, where nothing is actually the size it seems to be.

Prices are one. Take the state sales tax here, which is supposedly levied at 7.5 per cent, but for some reason I haven’t yet been able to work out, gets whacked on at nine per cent. See? It’s not the size you’d expect it to be.

There’s more; some taxes here aren’t included in the price you see on the shelf. Meaning if you spot a can of drink in a shop fridge labelled 99 cents and grab it, you’ll be charged $1.14.

No, 99 cents plus nine per cent isn’t $1.14. They have a container deposit scheme, too. Five cents for some drink containers, 10 cents for others. But in all cases, the tax doesn’t have to be shown on the shelf.

So imagine the fun of discovering I was a penny short and had to break a $50 bill, much to the cashier’s annoyance, which made it a bit more worthwhile.

So, and I never thought I’d say this, be thankful for Australia’s GST. Or at least for how it works!

On the subject of things that work, indicators on cars here work, I’m assured, but in a lot of cases there’s no conclusive proof that they do. Changing lanes? Just move into the gap if there is one. Turning a corner? If there’s no one coming, keep a firm grip on the steering wheel with both hands and go!

Now it’s no Mumbai or Taipei, but it makes being a pedestrian crossing at a busy intersection, with all the traffic on the “wrong” side of the road, an interesting exercise.

And finally, to homelessness. I guess it’s inevitable with a population in this one urban aggregation equal to most of Australia’s that homeless people will be much more noticeable. Or at least some of them will be. Two in particular have stood out. One is such a fixture on the street our tour bus driver knew him well enough to stop next to him and have a chat about the time he (the homeless guy, not the bus driver) appeared in a Lady Ga Ga music video. Oh, he also held a sign mentioning how you could find him on Twitter.

The second was a lady begging for change outside a large high-end shopping centre in Beverly Hills. Who, as we passed, said: “If you’ve got a credit card I have a swiper.”

Yep, the high-tech world has truly reached new ground.

Chris Coleman is the 2CC drive announcer.