Ten good things

1. Calling to India is cheap and it gives a great feeling.
2. The internet simply rocks; you never have to wait for streaming.
3. Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream rocks, I am going to buy all the flavors in the next 2 years.
4. Cooking is a lot of fun, at least the initial few days.
5. Weekends are totally worth the hype.
6. University is a whole town in itself.
7. Laptop, Ipod and everything electronic is cheap.
8. Girls are good
9. Pedestrian crossing is more valued than car crossing
10. Everyone you meet has a smile on their face.

From the Observation desk...

This post is about various people I’ve met in last 10 days in US. I like to observe people and how they go about the doing thing.

The one thing I liked the most about people working in US is that they have a smile on their face, have a cheerful attitude even if they actually don’t like the job that they do. They are eager to help you. A simple thing like opening a bank account, which is a boring task in India given the amount of paperwork is such a fun task here. They treat the customer as a friend and talk very freely.

Now, a little bit about the Indians I met here. I came to this place with a bit of prejudice about my peers and seniors whom I would meet. But things are not the same as I pictured them to be. Our seniors are extremely helpful. I expected there to be some ragging, but there wasn’t any. Infact, all of us freshers had someone to pick up at the airport.

I live temporarily with 4 Bengali phd students who prepared food for me for the first day and brought food packets for me for that would last 10 days till I find a permanent apartment. Bengali food tastes great I tell you! The Indian student bodies working here are doing a great job. They are full of enthusiastic students, there is no senior junior divide, and all of us sat together in a conference room and sketched a plan for the Indian Independence day program in the university. We played cricket and football and hopefully play that ever weekend.

Now, about the batch mates, there is a lot of variety over here. Many of them are quite diplomatic. I think that’s because most of the students who have come here carry a form of burden which will ease as time progresses. ‘When I get a safe and secure job in the university I’ll give you the information about all the other jobs available in the campus’ is the indirect message everyone around is carrying. Safety first is on everyone’s mind. There is a bit of professional touch to friendship, you help me and I help you. Give and take. I’m sure if I’d met these people in Engineering Degree College, they might have made great friends.

One thing I like about blogger more than facebook or twitter is that not many people read it! So, you can be more frank about the things you write rather than writing the edited version or the polished one.

I hope all of us here get good jobs, at least the hourly ones and things around change for the better. One more thing, a long lost friend called yesterday. I don’t know where he got my number from, but the conversation went something like this….

A: Hey Sanket, wassup, how’s life, Aaj teri bahut yaad aa rahi thi.

Me: Oh Sahi hai, good you remembered after such a long while. How’s life.

A: Life’s great, acha sun, Can you help me with one thing, actually…….

Now I know why he remembered!!

A new beginning

It has been a really long time since I’ve written something, but it’s not been long since I’ve thought about writing something.

This past month has been a crazy one for me, both in India and US. Things have slowly started to fall in the right place, I’m enjoying every bit of the journey. Uncertainty has been a major part of life. 2 days before coming to US, I didn’t know my date of departure; I was clueless what I would do in New York, how I would land in DC with all the bags all by myself. But these problems are a problem only if you see think of them as one, they eventually get solved.

Every Indian student who has come here is in kind of ‘a race’; a race to finish all the tasks in one go. Finding an apartment, buying a phone, laptop, University ID, registering for courses, making a resume, cover letter, hunting for an apartment, making departmental contacts the list goes on and on. Now I know why they call it ‘Apartment Hunting’.

There are a few things I learnt in US. Patience is the key to getting your job done and there is a way of getting things done, you just have to figure it out. Secondly, you have to be at ‘The right place at the right time’. Things change here from time to time. There have been times when we thought we were extremely close to getting an apartment right away, but minutes later, it was not to be. One moment, you think the forex card that you brought from India will handle everything, next you realize it can’t be swiped.

There is no point cribbing about such things as every Indian who goes abroad for studies faces such kind of crap. The thing is, you cannot become too excited about the fortunes that come your way or dejected by the misfortunes.

The place where we live feels like home coz of many Indian students in the vicinity. Everything that’s there in India is available, so while coming, its okay if you just bring along only a bag filled with clothes. Sometimes it’s painful to convert the dollars to rupees while buying stuff, but that conversion will stay till we start earning in dollars.

Hope that happens soon, waiting to write more, will do soon.

PS: All the people in my bloglist seem to have stopped updating!!!