I visited Melbourne earlier this year and it was eye opening just seeing what else is out there (I'm very poorly traveled). They crammed my country's population into a city. The people, nightlife, things to do and the food oh man.. The food. I got lost down a side street and had never been more excited to not know where I was. I was excited to use their public transport because it.. Well. It exists! After that I kinda wanna visit other places. Just looking around PNW feels very 'me'. Like sure New York would be intense, LA would be surreal, but that whole area just screams "me".
When I first started in Hollywood I had a surreal moment where I realized that more people had listened to my mix the night before than lived in New Zealand. And then I realized that about as many people live in the suburbs of LA than live in New Zealand. And that's just like, San Fernando, San Gabriel and Ventura.
It's so easy to forget it here. The school I attended was an area school, under 500 students total, on a good year. The town I lived in that fed into that area school, has a population of 282 as of the most recent census. Flying into Sydney and Melbourne alone have been wild experiences, so many people. Tokyo might just melt me.
My first Moment of Unclean with LA was being on top of Mount Wilson and realizing that Los Angeles was to the horizon in all directions. My next Moment of Unclean with LA was driving in from the East and hitting the smog in Arizona. My third Moment of Unclean was recognizing that the freeway system through downtown is best understood as the blood supply that develops around a tumor. Albuquerque was the Big City when I grew up. We'd drive two hours just to hit a music store that had The Cure in stock. It feels like a truck stop once you've acclimated to the 10-110-101-5 nightmare.