US story!

Being in India from my incarnation into this planet , whenever you land up in a new country all together you are bound to make some comparisons. Am no different from the rest. I will just make a list of things that strike the most in US and gradually compare with one in INDIA.



As soon as I came out of LA airport , the very first thing that i did was jaywalking , it means crossing the street when there is stop signal for pedestrians , luckily there wasn't anyone to give a ticket to me . Common , you have to excuse me here , I just had a tiresome journey and expect to look into a traffic signal which I barely followed when was in Bangalore. Off course only people staying in Bangalore could have crossed that busy road :). One more close thing that I observed is that people stopped their cars 10 feet behind. So , people do give lot of respect to pedestrians as against India , where there is pedestrians manage on their own.



In US , one thing that I liked is street addressing model , the system is so efficient that even a person like me who just landed can go from one gully to other gully.Every street is straight and will be given just a single name no matter how long the street is. May be because of this Google was successfully able to map any location in US. I guess people here rely on online maps to commute to new places ,having this addressing scheme life is made even simpler for them. In India , there is no such thing , only postman understands the terms main , stage , block so that only he can decode it. So , an alien can't commute here , that's a good thing then whats the point of being a localite. That reminds me to say that , if you ask anyone any place over here , they go blind even if it is somewhere around. Startling right? In India , almost everyone will have some idea , so throw away all the Internet maps , we have maps in people we say daily.


Just imagine that you are hungry in evening and just wanna grab a bite from a nearest bakery shop or a pani puri shop , off course in US u don't find them. Here there is no such thing as a small grocery shop , even to buy smallest of things you have to go to super markets. Obviously you can't find a supermarket in each and every street , so you have to commute. Contrast this with situation in India , super markets are divided into shops who will sell their own class of products like Stationary , fruits and vegetables , ration , pharmacy etc. If you are living in city you find these shops all over the place. So in India , it is demand driven , meaning whenever you want you will get rather than shop everything and dump in fridge!.


Finally , almost every naya Desi will first start to convert dollar to rupee for each and every thing you spend on. I bought a veg burger from McDonald's once , which was just minus chicken from chicken burger. For just a bun and a sauce ended up paying 2.30$ , that's 102Rs nearly . With hundred rupees in hand , you could survive for days with healthy food in my country. No wonder why people having dollar spend so lavishly . Luckily for us , dollar has dipped a bit now. In first week almost what ever you spend on your mind will automatically convert it to rupees and feel sad. This is in a way good thing , you will become a spendthrift and be more responsible about finances. This is one good lesson that am continuing to learn. Gradually you will reduce to convert and you get accustomed to this new currency.

With these handful of instances I dint try to prove whether India is better or US. Just that things are not the same everywhere , countries have their own way of dealing with issues and we have to accept however it is . I end this with relevant quote "Be a Roman in Rome" and chill.

Home Sick!

I remember the day when i got my VISA(Student) ,was so relieved to clear all my hurdles to enter US and start a new career. I thought my life would change , will be filled up with excitement. I knew i would miss my home , coz i haven't been out of my home for study/work purpose in my life. But this was overshadowed by purpose of studying in US.

I left to Los Angeles from Bangalore on July 31st , it was raining as if rain Gods where shedding tears as though they were sad i was leaving Bangalore!.When I was leaving home , I got a weird feeling , as if am going to miss a lot. I couldn't stop shedding a tear seeing my family with whom lived. So , i left India with sadness , but worst was yet to come. I reached LA on August 1st evening , went to an apartment which we(roomies from India) had reserved from B'lore. There were 3-4 people already in that place for temporary accommodation. So , I was well received by Gururja (was living there from last year).I was very tired , and slept till around 9 PM , had dinner prepared by inmates in apartment. But couldn't sleep after 4 in the morning. So , I woke up and called up home from calling card which i bought it from airport. My grandmother took the call i said about me reaching safe and all. She couldn't stop breaking down on phone , i felt really bad at that time. Having less balance , had to cut the call short. But sickness had set in now.

I kept on thinking about home all the nite , and finally woke up around 8:30 in morning. having no one to talk , started watching TV. Slowly one by one inmates in that apartment woke up and were busy with themselves like taking bath , preparing their own breakfast etc. May at this point , my home sickness shot up , i felt there is no one to think about me which i was quite used to. I felt really bad and was thinking how will i manage this change. After all inmates left , I was all alone in living room, being idle all thoughts started to pop up my head.I hate to admit , but shed tears. Now i really knew what exactly home sickness meant.


Now ,after 12 days I landed in US , I still have home sickness. I feel have spent a month now , it was that difficult to spend time here. I wonder , what is the point in leaving everything in India and come to have a sad life here.Virtually there is no social life here.I even thought of going back home. My friends who are hear from sometime now , say that's a common feeling , u will get used to after some time.I must say , feeling that i currently have now , is really awful. You will know the value of family and friends and most importantly you will miss comfort level that you had in home country. People coming over must be prepared to face this fact.

Initially i thought it should be easy to overcome homesickness , but am still struggling to be over it. When u r involved in some work , u will not feel homesick but if you remember something memorable about home , its hard to overcome the sadness of things that u miss.Hopefully , will be over once I start my MS program in full swing.

Now Listen to your Playlist From Anywhere in world!

Yes , you read the headline right , u can hear your favourite playlist from any place in world provided u have a PC and off course an Internet Connection.
It very simple to do as well. I recently came across Media Master from one of tech programs on TV. U can upload all your songs , create playlists and just enjoy to ur humming music.

You need to create an account which is absolutely free and it will allow to upload unlimited songs.Its like a media player embedded into your browser , interface is quite good am sure best is yet to come. However Drag and drop feature is helps to certain extent.

Not only u can listen to Ur playlist , even your friends can listen to them by posting widget in ur blog or creating Internet Radio. My favorite part of MediaMaster is the "Radio" feature. Dragging and dropping songs here works the same way, but instead of the output being through the web interface, MediaMaster generates a .pls file that can be used from any software client that supports it (such as Windows Media Player or winamp). From there, you can simply stream the music from your Radio playlist to any computer. you can listen to my so called radio station by clicking this link

I find this one really useful , i can easily recommend songs to my friends , my just giving my .pls link them to listen to my radio or ask them to visit my blog rather then searching and giving links to listen to them.

Only trouble is you might need to upload all your songs which could take a while especially if u have low Upload speed , but once this is done experince is really nice.

Goa Police station Visit!!!

At end of 5th semester exams , our gang decided to go to GOA. Well , this was one trip to remember especially for me. First time i had a sip of Vodka etc. Most important was that we visited Panaji Police station!



In Goa people usually get rent cars or bikes to travel around . I must say that this business is illegal .We rented 5 bikes all together and 2 of them in each .We were using illegal bikes!!. Police station incident happened on 3rd day. As usual , we will do everything unplanned. We went to Kolva beach 35Km from panaji city . nothing special about this beach , we were cursing ourselves why went all the way from panaji city to this banal beach. There was plenty of driving and we used to alternate driving turns , even bikes as well. I used to always lead the self-called race. Sachin Prabhu was a naive driver at that point of time , so he used to practice driving with all the bikes.



Around 6:00pm we reached a sunset view point called Dono Paulo. we parked our bikes in parking lot along with other bikes. Sunset point was time pass , we took some innovative pictures though.We also had a LIME SODA on the road side , importance will let you know later. While coming back , Sachin prabhu having confidence of driving , snatched a bike key from one of "Experienced" drivers and headed to get the bike and most unlikely thing happened after that. The key worked for another bike which was of same type (Splendor). ittefaq (coincidence)?? . Since we were constantly exchanging bikes , no one dared to check whether it was rite bike. We happily went to cruise there after not even realising that SAchin had created a blunder.Now we had a Duplicate Bike which no one realised.




Next day morning , as usual we started off to yet another beach! (GOA main aur kya hain ??:-)). Vijay , said that " this doesn't seem to be the bike that we had" , all of them shut his mouth and thought he was crazy. Actually the original bike had an headlight which was not designed for it. The bike that we had now had proper head light. We headed to Baga beach around 10:30 on the morning.Balaji vehicle ran out of Fuel on the way . So every one halted at one place. I took the the DUPLICATE bike and went to get the fuel.Even i did not notice that this was not the the original bike. When i drove back , our gang noticed that this was not the bike!. So for a moment every one was dumbfounded and really dint know what to do.

Problem here was that we dint know from where we picked up this bike. We had stopped some N places and each time exchanging bikes added to the confusion. After failing to find our original bike in couple of places we were almost tensed. I was particularly were apprehensive. I even yelled at Balaji when he carelessly said we will have a Soft drink and search!!!. Probably my friends haven't seen me before in that fashion.

So , finally we came back to that Dono Paulo. We straight away went to vendor of LIME SODA and asked him whether anyone complained about a missing Bike. Luckily the owner of the DUPLICATE bike we had given his contact number. So , we called him up and asked to come over . We thought its all over. Sadly that wasn't the case.

That owner of the bike has surrendered the bike to the Police station!. He said we have to go police and get the bike released.We being outsiders of GOA were worried to visit a police station. But we had to go!. So i volunteered along with Balaji also agreed. we thought we need to bribe them and took some 1000 bucks with us.So , we entered the police station and it was relief to have spotted out bike. there was an inspector ( i guess so ) who was writing some stuff. We told our story and asked him to release the bike. Well , no GOVT office will make your job simple!!. So , he made us to wait in front of him and he continued with some writing stuff. i think we waited for nearly an hour and he was writing as though we were not existent in front of him. Me and Bala , thought he is expecting something from us , but we were afraid to take the lead and ask him directly.

Finally he started to interrogate us and luckily that bike had all valid documents. So ,he let us go with the bike and it was moment of happiness. One surprising thing was , we dint even spend a penny for this. SO , after ruining nearly half a day we went to good restaurant and discussed the incident , what could have happen if we had really lost the bike and we are put behind the bars for theft!!
Well , those are just "COULD HAPPEN". We finally returned bikes to the owner to avoid further problems.

GOA trip was an eventful trip and it was first time i visited a police station for some problem we got entangled.

Chaotic Bangalore!

Denizens of bangalore often complain about of city traffic and infrastructure situation . Day by day we take longer time to reach home and set new lap records (off course in terms of slowness). When we find less traffic on road we are dumbfounded!! Well , who should be blamed for this? Govt? BMC? or citizens? i feel every one has there share of blame.

First in line are corrupt Politicians , who give pseudo promises and fail to do even an Iota of work. With IT boom happening , there is no question of shortage of wealth. So , what is problem? Lack of planning and foresightedness may be one of the reason. They just try to solve by providing short term solutions forget about it. Thus they will never address real problem at all. For example there was an underpass being constructed near my place , it just the shifted the Traffic jam to few metres further down the road!. They should make an extensive study to find real cause and brainstorm for solutions. Government has to outsource this work or at least have a Public-Private partner ship. Latter symbiosis will help citizens a lot.

Secondly , i feel even citizens are also responsible. First of All , people must use Mass transport. I agree that there is no proper transport , put have people tested this? If every person in city uses a 4 Wheeler as his mode of transport , then where is the space? bangalore is becoming densely populated , thus it is difficult to expand roads. one cant imagine the state when TATA rolls out its Rs 1 lakh car!. Car will be a common man's household and thus adding oil to already burning fire. Every citizen must try to minimise his private vehicle. This will reduce Pollution , saving petrol and most importantly you are reducing burden on roads. To overcome shortage of mass transport , private firms should rope in there own vehicles and make in MANDATORY for its employees. Traffic rules also must be followed , don't blame traffic policemen , probably they are the most busiest persons in bangalore today.

Government job is not just to develop Bangalore , they have entire state as a responsibility. They have to look into develop other cities , improve state of Agriculture which is backbone of the economy of country. Bangoloreans must not treat Govt as "Bangalore Developers". On the other hand , Govt must not take this as an excuse. More responsible citizens and Accountable government can save bangalore!