Total recall Fall-2008

This is 2:25Am and I don't feel sleepy. It is not that I did not give it a try, but the reason is that my roommate is not snoring today. I am not only used to it, it has become the lullaby for this poor kid. Well, Pity me and read on. I had also tried watching The Bourne Triology back to back (torrent downloads - 26.4 GB 1080pixels blue ray), trust me guys it pays off to watch a good movie in high resolution; it turns you insomniac though. Moreover, There is one more reason for my writing this blog. This day, December 11 2008, is the first day when I am completely done with all my school related stuff for the Fall semester 2008.

The inscrutable Americans

I have been in America for quite some time now. I owe all the half a dozen visitors to my blog a post about this country. Those who read my last post know how affectionately Uncle Sam welcomed me to his land. Although, it was an experience in itself, I was more cautious after that when dealing with anyone. In the beginning, it was not easy for me talk to an American. I was rather opinionated that I would never understand what they say, because I never understood the dialogs in Hollywood movies without a “.srt” file. On the contrary it was not true, I got whatever they blabbered. However, even this is not truly true. There are accents here and they are as grueling as the south Indian languages to a north Indian. How on earth are you supposed to know that when someone says “Aabee der nekswee”, he is saying “I’ll be there next week”. If that was not enough, here come the slangs which are used incessantly by the African American (AA) inhabitants here. How can you imagine a person saying “Holy crap! That is so cool”. But AAs are just AAs. They are a different species altogether. If you wonder what I am talking about AA is another phrase (read: euphemism) for Black people here. Don’t you dare call them Black or you are a dead man, 999 out of 100 times (999 is not a typo here. You wet your pants 899 times when you see a group of AAs around). I doubt people call it African American Jack and not Blackjack here. Poor joke eh? However, that is what it is.

Let us talk about the money and expenses here. I have bought a lot of stuff here ranging from furniture to electronics and groceries. When it comes to shopping, in America a customer is treated as a king. Don’t you trust me? Reconsider your thoughts kiddo. I bought a thermos flask from Wal-Mart for $8.03, to carry home made tea to my University. I used it for almost a week but then I felt it was not worth the effort. I went back to Wal-Mart to return it. No questions asked and I was given my money including taxes back. Now picture this: you are going for a short vacation. Obviously, you want to capture your fun times, but you don’t own a camera. As a typical Indian (we are proud to be cheap) you would consider buying the best handy-cam and the best DSLR from any store near you. You will come back from vacation, copy the images/videos to your lappy and return the stuff to the store (with/without a feeling of guilt). The height was when we bought a pack of tortillas; we ate a few loaves but we didn’t like it. Therefore,..hehe... You've got it, haven’t you? Yes we returned the opened, used packet and got the money back. If Big Bazaar even thinks of giving Indians such liberty they won’t be able to keep their lights on.

To conclude this post, I would like to highlight one more unique thing here. It is their education system. It is so damn working. Being a lazy person, I was always worried about my dedication towards study. Nevertheless, here I always find myself intrinsically motivated to study whenever I find time. It will not be an exaggeration if I say I study almost 16 hours a day. Though I don’t do that, but what I do here everyday is equal to what I would do in India if I stabilized my booty for 16 hours.

An eventful journey

On the auspicious day of 27th July, amid heavy downpour, I was to bid India good bye for a long time. Uncle Sam was waiting for me with his arms wide open. I was all set to start my excursion. Nevertheless, Little did I know, there was so much in store for me on that simple looking, though long, 24 hour journey.
To save every penny that I could, I tried to pack everything I could think of. It became 52 kgs which was way more than what is usually allowed (23 X 2). I called Air India customer care to confirm the baggage allowance. As if the lady luck was favoring me, I was told I could take a third bag for free with me (Education rocks you bachelors and masters). The repacking made it a total of 69 kgs in 3 bags (this additional 17 kgs was contributed by food items). That pretty much tells you that I had everything to sustain for a year in case I can't visit Walmart in Atlanta. The flight was scheduled at 700hours IST and it took off at 0830 ST ;). That was impressive enough.
My co passenger was a generous person in his mid '60s. I call him generous because he gave a can of Heineken beer to the floor may be by mistake while opening it. After it was spilled, he asked the pillow to share the beer as the floor was not taking all of it. From there, the mighty pillow rested under my seat sucking the beer to the last drop. The Uncle loved Coke (coca cola you perverts), I can tell this because he opened the can adroitly and did not let even a single drop to mix with beer. Lucky pillow hunnn.
We had a technical (scheduled) stop in Germany. We reached Frankfurt but I can't recall what time it was. After some dilly dallying we continued and reached Chicago at 1630 hours local time. Here starts the interesting part. One officer (cop) accosted me before I could join any queue at Immigration department and sternly advised me few things. It was my first interaction with someone who had an American accent, honestly speaking I did not get most part of what he wanted to convey. However, I followed the crowd and joined a never ending queue. Few familiar faces right from my flight left this queue surprisingly and became a part of O'hare International airport...God knows why. Did I tell you I had to catch a flight to Atlanta scheduled at 1900 hours? I bet if I stayed in the queue I could not make it. I started looking here and there and when my turn came I was informed that that was the queue for American residents and Green Card holders. There was hardly 2 hours and I lost all little hope of getting into next connecting flight. I cursed my agent who said Immigration will take 30 minutes at the max. However, I managed to call another cop and requested him to give me priority over others as I had a flight to catch. Here is how it went:
Me (with a fake accent): Excuse me officer, I have got a flight to catch at 1900 hours. Could you help me make my Immigration process faster?
Cop: Everyone has got a flight to catch Sir. Please go back, stand there quietly and wait for your turn.
huh..nothing could be done. But I was happy that he understood what I said. Well, I got my passport stamped at 1830 hours. I asked the immigration officer if I would be able to make it to the next flight. He said "I doubt you can, make it fast!"
I ran to collect my bags and managed to get them in 10 minutes. I rushed towards American Airlines baggage check-in, only to found that I was late. I had already missed the flight.
What to do? Can I blame someone else for it? My agent? Naah..he won't return a single rupee back..he is an indian. Hey wait a minute..the Air India flight was delayed by half an hour. It is there fault. Eurekaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
I went to their desk, Only to find out that it was closed. I knew I was screwed. I had no phone and no coins to make a call. However, I did have a toll free number of a good friend of mine named Mitul (he is known as Meet now) and I called him up. He said anyhow get any Air India employee and talk to him as if you are talking to Vodafone customer care. They will sort it out. I asked a person, who was loading luggage for American Airlines, where can I get any Air India employee. He suggested me to check it in a staff room and I caught a lady there. I scared the shit out of her and told her that I am going through this ordeal only because the flight was delayed. She got afraid of my dyeing right there and requested me to let her check if she could do anything. She came back after few minutes with a bad news (to her) that there was no flight to Atlanta that day. She said what she could do now is to put me in a hotel and book the next available flight; which was on next morning. Believe you me I was treated like a valued customer (not like a Vodafone prepaid customer) and she was thoroughly polite during entire process. These yanks charge like anything but then they give you the perfect service. As I had no other option I agreed on that. Oh boy I dint know it was going to be a five star hotel. For the first time in my life I spent a night in a five start hotel. They even paid for my dinner and breakfast. I called my parents from the hotel (Thanks to Meet for his unending support.) and told them about me staying in a five start hotel. Everything was again getting better. I had a coffee there, had a good bath (as I had to use toilet papers there) and slept on the finest bed in the world though alone.
Next morning I reached Atlanta safely, waited on the airport for 3 hours and then a beautiful Indian girl named Geetali came to pick me up. She is the president of Indian Student Association here, and she walks as if she knows what she is. She helped me get to a place reserved for me as temporary accommodation. Thank you Geetali. That is all how I reached on this land. The week after that was filled with amazing experiences. The very first advise I got about Atlanta was this:
यह अलग मिजाज़ का शहर है जरा फासलों से मिला करो......
On that note I close this post here. Will keep you updated with all hot and happening here.