Yes and No .....

One more of the slang expressions used frequently in here to mean "not sure" I think .

Life has smoothened a lot now .We have gotten used to the foreign faces and their styles. We now know for sure which breads to pick for our breakfast out of the given dozen varieties, got used to buckling up as soon I get in the car and various other such subtleties.

It is really difficult speaking on face in real time and making the people understand when they have such a different accent and jargon of their own. You might consider yourself a champion of english but the way they speak it in here is very different.It makes you realise that we definitely speak a lot faster than what is needed and we always tend to eat out words.The people in office usually pinpoint and ask for those particular words which you either pronounced wrongly or hurried through just may be 'cause you were not very sure of it's usage or whatever.e.g. one person said that i would be able draw the complete picture only after speaking to Mr X , my manager pointed you would do what to a picture just because he had said the words "draw a picture " a little too fast. The trick is to just speak crisp and clear and give proper pauses.There is no fuss about the accent it is about speaking clearly.

I am neck deep in work these days and it is fun to work with some added responsibility of co-ordinating with the folks back in India and passing on the status and % completion to managers and others in here.It is definitely amazing to see that those TEFRA and TAMRA are not mere imaginary frankensteins which were created to bug us , they are a bunch of real rules which actually get applied to real money and people.The death claim is not a mere transaction it means much more.

From India everything seemed so virtual as if we are playing a video game wherein our opponent sends a puzzle in the form of a new tax law or some new ruling which has to fit in somehow with the existing behemoth and we keep on playing our shots by asking queries to the client , they play back their best game by trying to complicate the puzzle more and more as the game progresses and finally in the end we are victorious when there is congratulation mail saying your puzzle is solved and is a part of the system.Stay awake and alert for the next round of the game.In here it seems a little less virtual and the game seems to yield at leat some physical output.

I appreciate it ....

This is one more of the hackneyed expressions that people in our office ( the Americans ) use .....

Here everything is so weird and foreign.Each and every expression of yours carries a different connotation than you could have imagined.I used the word white skin with a canadian girl and she pops back "Are you a racist".I can't imagine what hell would break loose if i ask for a "black" shoe polish or "white" linen.Black and white have an entirely different history and meaning in here.Talking of idiosyncracies , the Americans have named lots of commodities of daily use in their own way, Tomato Sauce is Ketchup and silencer is muffler, nothing else works.It has to be the american way only.

Life has been nauseatingly overwhelmed with different seasons of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. running on all the channels.Every channel has one episode daily at one time or the other and the weekends are FRIENDS day only.In these the characters are at different stages of their lives.Shandler and Monica had their first sexual encounter in one and in the other they are going for their interview to adopt a kid and in a third they are looking for a new appt. and all of them are nostaligically remembering all the naughty and funny days spent in the appt which monica and rachel shared intially.The advertisements ( even they are called something else in american english i don't recall though may be commercials ) are boring on American TV.They have to learn something from the indian TV.We have such a good collection of adverts produced these days that it is definitely more watching commercials than the actual programs.It seems Americans are big fans of comedy.There are many comic series running on various channels and each one is really interesting and worth the time it seems.Here they have freedom to advertise liquor and also it is mandatory on them to display and speak out the side-effects that a particular medication can cause.It is not the way that we have in India wherein they will make sure that within a span of 3 seconds they speak out a para of security risks and display in the smallest fonts the known side effects of a medication.

Yeah Americans are big shopaholics.I can not imagine how are they able to finish the amount of groceries that the people buy at one time.Customer is the real king in here.Somebody show the kiryana merchant in my city what consumerism means. He would make sure that you buy a rotten piece of bread and later on refuse to take it back citing the reason that the Company won't take it back.I can imagine what kind of mayhem it should be in here in the marketing arena.The marketing folks must be rubbing their a..... nice and strong in order to make a mark.

My lady manager recently had a slip of tongue when she said in one of our meetings about some issue that it is a real pain in the ....... ( she was quick to come up with a reprieve ) hand ....

Country Roads ...

Amitabh Bachchan is singing "Kabhi Kabhi mere dil mein khayal ataa hai ... magar yeh ho naa saka ..aur ae meri hamnfaz ab to yeh alam hai ke tu bhi nahi teri justuju bhi nahi .. " and the only familiar things around are the 4 indian souls sitting inside the Toyota Corolla rest everything is foreign , the country roads, the beautiful corn fields, the cruise bikers and the State Police cops wearing nice hats ( I had never thought that the cops we saw in hollywood movies actually existed but they do ) and lots and lots of american families . I was amazed to see that so many americans are married and have kids because the way the newspapers and websites presented the problems of americans living single lives and divorces i had thought America would be deviod of kids but yes there are kids and almost every family has on an average 4 kids .

The houses around here are have their designs the way we used to draw huts in landscapes in our childhood ,huts with tiled roofs and slanting on both sides. Except for the apartments the houses are mostly built on separate spacious lands contrast this with the way we have our houses built .. each house jostles for space with the other trying to pose it's own authority.That's the way we do in our public life pushing the other person aside because may be the way we have been brought up our psyche says that you need to push the person in front of you and you don't have to make way for the peson following you just keep holding your space. Here it seems there is so much individual space , you can feel free 'cause no one is going to push you down.The people are damn serious about following traffic rules and they will honk their horns as soon as you make a mistake while driving and the desis too drive with extreme caution and dedication to follow rules.I am not sure where our concious takes a dive when the same scenarios appear in our motherland. We would be honking horns shouting and turning to our destination with our free will and shamelessly flaunt a 100 rupee note if caught up in some kind of trouble.

When nature was calling I had to hold on for at least half an hour though we were driving in the countryside and it seemed most appropriate to me to give my contribution to the mother nature by watering some beautiful videshi grass but rules are rules and you are not allowed to litter on freeways in USA .For us Indians , the woods are the biggest aphrodisiacs ( for loo ) and we get the best satisfaction by relieving us on the roadside. Before leaving for a trip one makes sure that there is sufficient liquid inside one's bowels so that the roadside is not deviod of the highly nutritious supply vented out by the most sophisticated fertilizer plant made by mother nature.

I was once again amazed with the culture in which the people expect you to say hi how are you .. how are you doing .. how are you today ... to the strangest stranger you meet. It was once again confirmed that if you want a vegetarian diet served to you in an American Restaurant make sure that you say "NO BEEF NO MEAT VEGGIE" burger/pizza because a friend of ours ordered for some Cajun burger with lettuce leaves onions etc and when the dish arrived it turned out to be beef though the waitress was grateful in replacing it with a veggie pizza but the damage was almost done had we not taken proper precaution.Gotta go now and take my maiden voyage to try my hands at the coin guzzling US laundry machine !!!

In a trance ...

Am in a trance not because i've had 2 full glasses of red wine but because of the US factor .... reached EH this weekend only and am enjoying every bit of it though itz only been 2-3 days .... cooking the desi food in our appt kitchen .... the dustfree scenery ... the firangis and their slangs .. getting used to it all ... as of now there has not been any trip out of EH and hence the discovery of US is still pending ..

It is so inexplicably different that it was difficult to imagine .. it is understandable now how and why the people are so flabbergasted at the thought and sight of USA .... there are so many subtle cultural differences apart from the big ones that one can't imagine .How the americans are so polite and decent ...... you have to hold the door open for somebody coming from the front or back 'cause they always do it ..... you have to say hi howayya as soon as your eyes meet with anybody be it a stranger or one of your colleagues .

I have seen more species of cars in these 4 days than human beings , here they come in all shapes and sizes and brands ...... you won't easily see 2 same cars going side by side on the road ... they drive to the right .... why should they ??? it is so diff adjusting to this fact though am not driving myself but i tend to get the feel we are going to bump into the other car on the turn 'cause we are turning to the other right ..... also they walk to their right and as soon as i see somebody in the office coming from the front i tend to move towards left to give them a way and they too do the same 'cause they think right side is theirs , then there are quick exchanges of excuse me .... am sorry etc etc ..... and what to talk of cleanliness .... their offices are sparklingly clean but nobody seems to be attending to them .. in our office in India we have at least 50 men working on maintaining the facility cleaning each and every leaf of the decorative plants at least 4 times a day.The restrooms in our office is always crowded with at least 5 people in it at one time though only 2 of them are there for the actual purpose ..rest all are either mopping the floor or cleaning the sink ... here you feel so much scarcity of humanity that you seldom bump upon fellow beings whereas in India there is a disgusting excess of it.

The americans must never have been told to save electricity or turn off their engines on the traffic lights on the other hand we have been fed with the advertisements from DD claiming that we have to give our future generations the perfect glittering earth .. the non-renewable sources of energy are so much scarce .... here there seems to be no dearth of energy or power you have to use it and spend it all off. I know this all is based on the very small picture that I have been able to draw with this small exposure of mine to the giant America but thatz the way it is ....