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.