Trips to the US through my eyes

Well a lot of Indians and especially from AP make it to the US to pursue their higher studies or start career. My trip to USA turned out to be a professional obligation backed by good amount of push from home as well. Well I have always stayed away from the US shores for the first thing on my trip to USA for the fear of unknown.

I started rather shaky trip in the midnight. I returned back from Pune having packed everything, the return trip to Hyderabad we had no train tickets, so in the last moment we had to travel by bus with all of the luggage, the bike was sent by train though. After arriving in Hyderabad a few hours went into retrieving the bike from the luggage and then so quick bank work back home which was anything from being called quick. Reached home in the evening to quickly put together the stuff and buy anything perceived missing, then mom chucked in a lot of home made food, which made me train for the next steps. All packed left for the airport with some tummy upsets. The first learning's starts here - having used to Indian way of getting to potty this was a fast undoing of the same. So within hours its all learning and customising to US way of life. The toilets where step one, using of toilet paper was step two :)

On the Emirates flight, which I was travelling are amazing, the hostess attire and veil was awesome and classy. I believe the service and flight itself was pretty good standard and overall a pretty nice experience given that I was flying for 26 hours including the stop overs. In India our mother tongue especially Telugu is most abused and under seen language, which in most likely a dying language as the current generation, patronised by the parents and supported by the local state government is loosing its support all across, but surprise surprise, where the nationalists left the language, the language found supporters else where. Aboard the Emirates flight the bathroom fittings and call signs had been represented in Telugu in addition to few other language. I was really proud of this, but felt sad when our own guys ignore the language so so much.

Once in the USA i was in the JFK airport, I found a few sparrows flying and chirping in the air terminals where the passengers where waiting for their flights. Found it funny and surprised as back home they almost have gone extinct.

I first food item I ate was the Muffins and yummy I fell in love it, Dunkin Donuts is the place where I had and they say America lives on Dunkin. The first person I spoke when I got off the flight in the USA was an NRI who was working at the airport, in assiting people at the trolleys. Awkward for me as I thought Indians work in salaried jobs and software. Well most of the Dunkin donuts, Subways, Walmarts had Indians in it. So I was wrong, it seems like quite a few people settled and became residents far before the IT generation moved in.

In USA everyone was saying Hi, and greeting and say How are you doing and move on. Extremely friendly and expressive. They also open and hold the doors for you, back home everyone is watching their own back, not others. I find it embarrassing when an American holds the door open for me and even more startled when an Indian guy whom I know does the same.

Then there are few things which I can't communicate to good on the phone, the way we pronounce letters is entirely different to what we are used to doing. They almost on most of the occasion cant catch the pronunciation of individual words.

When I was at shopping it occurred that a typical American refuses to go beyond or think beyond what he thinks is obvious. For example when I was talking about a Full sleeve shirt and was asking for the same, but they were so unwilling to think that a Full sleeve is nothing but a long sleeve. That I felt was height of lameness, and in my view inability to think.

American food is all high calorie junk food personified, back in India everyone cribs about junk food and calories even for 40gm of Lays, here everyone is hogging 250gm and family size packs of the same with tons of smoothies and cream. America seems to be more obese than what I had in mind of Indians. The wastage of food is more unlike ever seen.

Americans are not very Green conscious unlike what they claim with n number of fundraising events and global warming gyan they to world. On an average an amount of white paper that gets wasted at office is immense, most of them print and every bit of mail or reports just to discs while coming to meetings, while every has laptops they still pile up paper. Now add the toiletries and similar expenses, immense. The mailers I get which is all promotional content is too high, every week the mail man delivers a bunch of coupons and promotional material, trust me 99% of it goes directly to the thrash. Apart from this every office use so much of plastic and disposable thermocol cups, plates and spoons. I wonder where all this is getting processed. Yeah agreed India's waste management is not the best, but we don't produce this must waste either. I feel there is lots of open spaces around that the landfill just take in all of this with some amount of processing, but still it junk. Another aspect is the pollution, I love the cruiser bikes and big cars, but the impact on environment is pretty nasty. Noise levels of Harley's is too high in decibels. The Cars are big and powerful no one really cares about Fuel, its so cheap that they burn more than necessary. Its a cheap commodity. Americans hardly care if there is famine around the world or food prices soar, they don't mind if the UV rays hit them hard when the Ozone hole increases in size, they are not bothered if the world runs out of fossil fuels. I found that a bit strange.
American consumerism is also a unique one. The Government and the people alike are high consumer driven. Increase spending means boost economy. When the economy was down the government infuses money to increase spending, while ideally I would prefer saving ahead for tough times. From my perspective there is considerable amount of import oriented products to US that having increased spending would somehow convert to increase in outflow of dollar, which could impact the country. Well it might not if they want to do it, by just printing and increase circulation through paper current which might end up devaluing the currency at a later part of the time. Tricky situation.

America is a amazing place, different culture, different experience, its as multi-cultural and multipolar as India is and probably more diverse atleast in places I have been to.

Experiments with driving

Well today is practically day 4 for me when it comes to driving on the US roads, yes after a little over 2 months of staying on driving on the American roads.
My first car to drive was a Nissan Altima a 3.5lt engine automatic, black beast.
The current car is the new sporty 2009 Hyundai Elantra automatic, carbon black car. Its sportier and compact than the Altima, but its such a smooth operator.
Interiors are great, i can directly get to play an ipod on the music system without much hassles. Over the labor day weekend I drove over 120 miles in all. Cruising at over 65 miles (110kmph) is such a passe and one doesn't even realise that they have travelled that much. An enriching experience.
Yaa there was scary lining too..today on Day 4, I got my new 2009 maps GPS, its a sleek and new GPS navigation system with 5" LCD display and features like USB charge and Bluetooth support capabilities. Well I was so mad and excited at getting it, that I couldn't wait to test it out. Went out driving and found the navigation and maps awesome, the voice was a bit too much to my comfort, loved it so much that instead of concentrating on the road I started driving through the GPS. Then it so happens that I make a blind turn, not seeing further up of the incoming traffic. Had a real close shave, with the other driver whom I cut across coming to an abrupt sudden halt in the middle of the intersection and honking, yelling at me big time. Yaa such lapses of concentration are not a pretty thing and could prove a costly mistake.
So much for my state of art gizmo I put it aside at home promptly and came back without it :)
Now who says technology doesn't kill