Okay so, yes, in America at the moment. Boston, actually.

Getting into America required filling in a special form on the interwebs, then after I’d arrived in Boston I was photographed and fingerprinted and questioned and yelled at. I was searched in Dublin but, good news, dodged the bullet of going through the electronic strip search in Manchester.

Last night I caught a special screening of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Edgar Wright, the director, was there… along with some of the cast which was nice. Suspect the film has a younger demographic in mind than Edgar’s previous films “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” and the use of the vocabulary of Nintendo games to tell a story in film form will leave many baffled… but for those that ‘get it’ this film seems to hit the spot.

America is fascinating so far, although I appreciate I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. First things first though… there’s no kettle in this hotel room. I mean, seriously? A coffee filter machine but no kettle? Even the dirtiest, nastiest, most cheapo hotel in Britain will provide you with a kettle – it may kill you, of course, but you’ll get a kettle. Here? No kettle.

It’s the little things that really freak you out.

Pandas.

They eat bamboo. They struggle to breed. The two things aren’t entirely unrelated – bamboo, it turns out, isn’t really what Pandas should be eating. They can only digest something like 10% of the bamboo which means they need to eat non-stop, all day, every day, just to basically feel completely knackered and hungry.

Why do they do it? Well bamboo is basically like a drug, and all baby Pandas are born with… I guess fetal bamboo syndrome or something.

Poor Pandas. Yet, crucially, there’s nothing anyone can do. You can’t reason with a Panda. You can’t explain that bamboo might give Mr and Mrs Panda a proper bangin’ buzz but isn’t really very healthy because Pandas have no ability to comprehend any human form of communication.

No, they’re just going to keep wanting nothing but bamboo. Forever and ever. Even if it kills them… which it seems like it will.

However, it does offer a handy new version of the cliche, “Yeah? Then I’m a monkey’s uncle” which, amusingly, is “Yeah? Then I’m a Randy Panda.”

Use at your own risk.