How to name it?

I thought I'll be blogging more with my weird American experiences. Unfortunately, I couldn't devote much time to blog. Now I realize, only three more days left and then I'll be flying back to Kuvampatti. Now, I'm having a break in my official work, so let me quickly blog abt my experiences. Here it goes:

All about Dallas

Dallas is a typical Mexican city. Actually its one of the twin cities - Dallas & Fort Worth. In the middle of these two cities is the DFW airport. For travelers in Texas and surrounding states, its a typical Madurai. One small difference is that in Madurai u can get a connecting bus to any city in the state & nearby states. Here u get a connecting flight. U can see a lot of flights around here. The area around the airport itself became a city and is now called as Dallas-Fortworth City!

The Skeleton ...

The infrastructure is very good. No dogged-up roads, no water problem, no drainage problems, no power cuts, nothing. When all those primary needs are satisfied well, people here can relaxily worry about the flea on their cats or the prescription for their dogs for weight loss or the lawn is not so greeny as their neighbor's or sue the coffee shop for not saying that the coffee is hot. They get everything at a lower cost. I can't still figure the equation of how this works. Whether its a cup of coffee or a can of milk or a can of water or a gallon of petrol - all costs the same. May be I'm very bad in maths :-(


The weather ...

Unlike India, here the season changes are more visible. When I came here, it was the end of the Winter. I didn't see much of greenery. Then the whole place changed in Spring. I open the window, I could see Tulips smiling. The same roads I travel regularly, is now surrounded with more greeny grass with lots of flowers blossomming between. The trees look good now. The weather is highly unpredictable. One day it rains heavily and the next morning, its a bright and sunny day as if nothing happened last night. The best part is u can't find the signs of the downpour anywhere. Had it been our Kuvampatti, the muddy roads reminds u the rain at least for a week. People are so obsessed with the weather changes, that there is a separate channel for weather forecasts !

Where there is a H1B ...

Compared with other states, Texas has the climates comparable with our Indian climate. Further things are cheap here. One can easily own a house here there in any other state. So you can find lot of Indians and Goltis here - don't scare at me, I've blogged exactly the same words of a Golti without any change! Well, Goltis and Indians are not alone. Lot of Mexican can be found here, mostly illegal immigrants. They share the biggest part of the Non-American population. Where ever u go, u can see the usage of Spanish. Next biggest share is by Chinese people, Chinkus - as they call. Mostly of them came here and settled down 2 generations back. Next biggest share is our Goltis and then comes Indians :-) These fellows are mostly H1B fellows and very few are Green card holders. This proves the Newton's third law of US Immigration - "Where there is a H1B, there are at least three goltis".

The problem with America is ...

In the movie 'Brave Heart', the emperor would say 'The problem with Scotland is, its full of Scotish people'. 'What else u can expect in Scotland?' - I thought. After coming here, I see that its completely other way around. 'The problem with America is its full of Non-Americans!'. I take a Cab to go to office everyday. Everyday, I find a different national - Nigerian, Chinese, Sudanian, Afgan, Paki. Finally I settled down with a Palestinian. Everyday I go in his cab. If he is busy, when I call, he used to send some of his friends to give me a drop. He is always against America and Americans. (In fact the unofficial national anthem is composed by an immigrant!) He dislikes these fellows killing women and children in Afganisthan. He start with M.F. and start using all possible combinations of the F. word against America. One day when he was in good mood, I asked him how long u've been here in this country. He said 23 years ! Our man is very orthodox. When I asked him to take me to a strip club one weekend, he said, 'No, my friend, that place is evil, and I won't take u there. If I take u then I also share the evil.' Then I've to use another cab, a friend of his, to go to Strip Clubs.

Strip Clubs

Strictly censored :-|

The People ...

This is a land of crazy people. Oru pana soothuku, oru sooru patham. I'll explain one experience. One of my teammates checked in the same hotel on a noon. Evening, I came to the hotel and asked his room number in the reception. She said, 'Sorry Sir, I can't give u the room number'.(privacy) Then she said, but 'u can talk to him. Pick up the phone, I'll transfer u to his room'. I went to the phone in the corner of the same room and picked up the receiver. She said 'now dial 0'. I did. Now she picked up the phone in her desk and looked at me and said talked to me over the phone ' Good evening Sir. How can I help you?'. Then I've to say I need to talk to my friend and then she transfered the call ! Quite a few experiences like this :-)

Podungaiya vootu ...

... namma sothu katchiya pathu. Food is something I enjoyed here as well as hated here. Breakfast is complementary in our hotel. I tasted the doughnuts and cereals for 2/3 days, but soon my habit of skipping breakfast took over. For lunch I used to go around the places visiting new restaurants everyday and tasting different food. Mostly Mexican restaurants, but I tasted Greek, Pakistan, Italian, Chinese, Indian and of course American food. I preferred Chicken, because mostly the other choices are Pepperoni and Beef. No Fanta/Miranda :-( So I had to go for Sprite/7Up. We cooked dinner in the room, if I happen to return to room before 9 or I had it in the office itself @ company's expense - which occurs mostly.

The coffee you get here is the original Columbian Coffee, which is pure and not adulterated with Chicory. Having tasted the coffee with chicory for more than two decades (Oh, I'm getting older), this coffee sucks. But now I used to this. U go to a coffee shop, you always get a black coffee. You need to mix Sweetener and Whitener (sugar and milk) yourself. There are lot of choices for both. Low-calorie, low-fat, normal, etc, etc,. These fellows care so much about health! During the dinner time in the office, every other day there is a big debate on the methods of carb cutting. (I'm a silent observer and after everything is over surely somebody will turn and look at me as if I'm a different animal from a whole new planet) You see a lot of alergy medicines, low-fat eatables, loose-40-pounds-in-30-days ads, etc, etc in the Tv.

TV Channels

Good. Nice movies, some times nice serials. I enjoy them. They don't have any cultural restrictions and there are few documentaries that I really enjoy ;;-) Some time back, I saw a documentary on HBO. It started with an American lady arrested in China. They will suspect her as a terrorist. Reason? the car that she rented for her friend had few grains of TNT in the boot. Its evident to the viewer that she is really innocent. But the Chinese guy is not ready to give the benefit of doubt to her. He will torture her both verbally and physically. They officials will not answer properly to the American ambassador. I was wondering how come Americans got the guts to tease Chinese like this. It went on like this for the first 10 minutes. Then came the twist. The scene changes. An Afgan guy will be arrested in America. The scenes are repeated again. But this time with new actors. The Americans do the same thing to that poor guy, for signing in a rental car form. Then they toggle between both the scenes with same dialogs and different actors. At the end the message is displayed. Its something like: "The first scene never happened, but the other happens very often. Its because of our in-secure feeling, we are putting lot of innocent people in trouble. Doing so will only increase the potential threats against our nation. Clear international policies are the only solution." Good HBO. You really got the guts and way of saying things. But I hope, still after viewing this 75% of Americans will want that Saddam to be executed because he is directly connected with 9/11 and a potential threat to the America's security.

Small, the next big thing

Yes, I bought an iPod. Will blog all about it later :-)

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