1. You may be as much in the right as it is possible to be, but the customer is the customer. You don't have the right to tell her she's irrational, unprofessional or mediocre. You don't have the right to grab her lapels and shake her into comprehension. You don't have the right to scream and shout and kick her shins, even when she's beating her fists on the floor and throwing tantrums about your being unable to resolve her mistakes, even when she offers no gratitude for the help you offer. Yours but to offer the assistance you can, keep your temper and know when to walk away from games of "who blinks first".
2. Hope dies eternal. Walking away is difficult. You always think, around this next bend will be a solution for us both.
3. Serenity prayer.
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Learnings
1. Hyperbole is usually a substitute for any real knowledge.
2. Technical information should still be readable English, but often - mostly, almost always - isn't.
3. You would think that there is a limit to the number of times the words "extensive experience" and "strong expertise" could be repeated in a 40-page document. You would be wrong.
4. Clearly, Very Few People are taught the Secret Code of using Capital Letters in Sentences.
5. If you're the only person trying to control quality, it's hard not to just give up at some point.
6. Especially if it's 11:30 p.m.
7. Drat.
2. Technical information should still be readable English, but often - mostly, almost always - isn't.
3. You would think that there is a limit to the number of times the words "extensive experience" and "strong expertise" could be repeated in a 40-page document. You would be wrong.
4. Clearly, Very Few People are taught the Secret Code of using Capital Letters in Sentences.
5. If you're the only person trying to control quality, it's hard not to just give up at some point.
6. Especially if it's 11:30 p.m.
7. Drat.
Friday, June 30, 2006
This Blog Does Not Encourage Behaviour Modification
I just realised that I have, several times, told readers to "watch this space" for follow-ups. And never followed through. Hmmm... food for thought.
Not, of course, that I'm going to do anything about it.
Not, of course, that I'm going to do anything about it.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Learnings
1. I'm not yet old enough to not secretly enjoy my birthday.
2. I miss having someone turn up at my doorstep with cake at midnight.
3. Finding one's way around using mapquest directions ain't so scary after all. Except when it's dark and rainy and nothing looks the way it does during the day.
4. Quietly, sneakily, my house is taking on the feeling of a home. Things have Their Own Places, cabinets Contain Things, the boiler's hum-and-gurgle routine has become Only Background for my pottering around, or reading, and has ceased to annoy.
5. I used to love twilight, once. Dusk once stood for the reluctant close to a happy afternoon of play and stories, coming home and skolling half a bottle of cold water straight out of the fridge, bath, homework, dinner, TV, reading. Or perhaps it stood for coming home. But yesterday, as I watched the sun set over dull brown rooftops, and my room turn from gold to ink and shadows lengthen, I felt mopey.
2. I miss having someone turn up at my doorstep with cake at midnight.
3. Finding one's way around using mapquest directions ain't so scary after all. Except when it's dark and rainy and nothing looks the way it does during the day.
4. Quietly, sneakily, my house is taking on the feeling of a home. Things have Their Own Places, cabinets Contain Things, the boiler's hum-and-gurgle routine has become Only Background for my pottering around, or reading, and has ceased to annoy.
5. I used to love twilight, once. Dusk once stood for the reluctant close to a happy afternoon of play and stories, coming home and skolling half a bottle of cold water straight out of the fridge, bath, homework, dinner, TV, reading. Or perhaps it stood for coming home. But yesterday, as I watched the sun set over dull brown rooftops, and my room turn from gold to ink and shadows lengthen, I felt mopey.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Learnings
a. If affection is to be judged by the volume of email one gets from someone, then the only people who truly love me are someone-Volkswagen, something-or-other-Honda, la-la-la-Toyota and whoop-de-do-Kia.
b. It is strangely liberating to watch a movie on one's own at a theatre. No worrying about your sweaty palms or someone else's. No interruption from someone leaning over and asking you to explain something. No distraction in the form of frissons of pleasure from your knee touching someone else's. Nada. Just you and the big screen. Everyone else fades into oblivion and you sink into the movie.
c. Of course, when it comes time to get pop-corn or a drink, it's more fun when someone else is there.
d. Even when it's not snowing, it can be @#)!%$* cold outside.
e. Speaking of which, feeling cold is partly psycho-somatic. 15 degrees F doesn't sound too bad, until you do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and realise it means MINUS 8 degrees C. That's when you really begin to freeze.
f. Nothing tastes better on these freezing nights than green chillies, added by the pound to everything you cook. Of course, the chillies rather drown out the taste of other masala you put in, but that's sort of the point.
g. There are few things as wonderful as hearing friends' voices from across the oceans, even when you can also hear the sounds of their morning ablutions over the sounds of your laughter. Happy birthday, T. :)
h. It is possible to get really tired of listening to "jingle bell rock". Really, really tired. Claw-out-the-damn-radio-and-throw-it-out-of-the-window tired, because every%!_)*! channel is playing it.
i. Procrastination is bliss.
j. Russell Peters rocks.
b. It is strangely liberating to watch a movie on one's own at a theatre. No worrying about your sweaty palms or someone else's. No interruption from someone leaning over and asking you to explain something. No distraction in the form of frissons of pleasure from your knee touching someone else's. Nada. Just you and the big screen. Everyone else fades into oblivion and you sink into the movie.
c. Of course, when it comes time to get pop-corn or a drink, it's more fun when someone else is there.
d. Even when it's not snowing, it can be @#)!%$* cold outside.
e. Speaking of which, feeling cold is partly psycho-somatic. 15 degrees F doesn't sound too bad, until you do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and realise it means MINUS 8 degrees C. That's when you really begin to freeze.
f. Nothing tastes better on these freezing nights than green chillies, added by the pound to everything you cook. Of course, the chillies rather drown out the taste of other masala you put in, but that's sort of the point.
g. There are few things as wonderful as hearing friends' voices from across the oceans, even when you can also hear the sounds of their morning ablutions over the sounds of your laughter. Happy birthday, T. :)
h. It is possible to get really tired of listening to "jingle bell rock". Really, really tired. Claw-out-the-damn-radio-and-throw-it-out-of-the-window tired, because every%!_)*! channel is playing it.
i. Procrastination is bliss.
j. Russell Peters rocks.
Friday, December 02, 2005
So This is Hell
On a hypothetical Friday evening in the hypothetical month of December, a mythical woman sits at her desk at the office, poring over an 80 page document that she must - MUST - (hypothetically, of course) clean up and send out to her hypothetical client.
On page what-feels-like-three-hundred-and-seventeen-and-a-half (hypothetical documents being allowed to have "half" page numbers - though undoubtedly, imaginary numbers might suit them better), she reads the following:
"Hypothetical-company-name follows the above mentioned methodology in general for all application developments and can be further tailor made to suite the specific client requirement, whatever it is. One of such tailored execution approach is depicted below"
Incorrect. What's below is my hypothetical head after I put it through the shredder.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Update
Packing my stuff - to leave behind, to carry back home and bring back again - takes a few hours. As I'm sorting through stuff and trying to fit it into bags, I'm suddenly tired. I feel as though I've been packing all my life, all my life, packing, packing, fitting things into bags, getting on trains and planes and buses and into cars, leaving. Suddenly, I can't face packing any more. Instead, I go downstairs and stand outside the hotel and look up into the night sky. No Mars, but some stars and a sickle moon and clear air flood my head with my earliest star-gazing memories - on trips and treks, sitting outside in the cold cold air and breathing in the calm fullness of the place.
******************************************************************
My Air India flight to Bombay via Paris takes off 1 whole hour late - apparently all systems at Newark have shut down. I imagine skynet or whatever it was in the Terminator movies, or the whole Matrix phenomenon. Machines taking over the planet and deciding to shut down un unison. Incoming flights frozen in the void, temporarily bullied out of existence by Newark's IT failure... else reduced to circling the airport endlessly.
By the time we lift off, passengers' stomachs are growling so loudly that they could be doing sound effects for a whole other airplane. To prevent us from eating them, the crew hastily throws packets of chips at us. As they put dinner together, the smell of fragrantly spiced mutton curry almost drives me crazy.
After dinner, I try to sleep. But a stewardess has other ideas. Each time I start nodding off, she jumps to my window and snaps the shade shut. The sound wakes me. I open the shade again, send unpleasant thoughts and quelling looks-that-kill in her direction and try to drift off into dreamland again. (Repeat from beginning of paragraph for 4 hours to understand the true meaning of endless night.)
We're flying into daylight and into timezones ahead of ours, so dinner, breakfast and lunch all take place in the span of 9 hours. Part of the time, I read Tears of the Giraffe - the second book in Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series - set in Botswana, and highly recommended. But mostly, I'm just jumping in my seat with anticipation, can't wait to land in Bombay.
And when we finally do, I can see rain beating against the sides of the plane, and I think, "shit." So much for the anticipation, the anxiousness to be back.
Immigration, baggage claim, and out the door. The humidity hits me like a solid wall. The rain is a snivelling drizzle - the type I hate most. A is nowhere to be seen (turns out later he's waiting at the wrong terminal). I've lost my phone and can't call or message. Welcome home.
******************************************************************
After a warm, cozy weekend, I leave Bombay on a sticky grey Monday morning. A sees me off at the airport and a grey sheen hangs over the city and our goodbye. My flight breaks through the cloud cover and Bombay suddenly vanishes, just like that. No long last looks over one's shoulder. Perhaps that's as it should be.
******************************************************************
Bangalore sucks.
******************************************************************
My Air India flight to Bombay via Paris takes off 1 whole hour late - apparently all systems at Newark have shut down. I imagine skynet or whatever it was in the Terminator movies, or the whole Matrix phenomenon. Machines taking over the planet and deciding to shut down un unison. Incoming flights frozen in the void, temporarily bullied out of existence by Newark's IT failure... else reduced to circling the airport endlessly.
By the time we lift off, passengers' stomachs are growling so loudly that they could be doing sound effects for a whole other airplane. To prevent us from eating them, the crew hastily throws packets of chips at us. As they put dinner together, the smell of fragrantly spiced mutton curry almost drives me crazy.
After dinner, I try to sleep. But a stewardess has other ideas. Each time I start nodding off, she jumps to my window and snaps the shade shut. The sound wakes me. I open the shade again, send unpleasant thoughts and quelling looks-that-kill in her direction and try to drift off into dreamland again. (Repeat from beginning of paragraph for 4 hours to understand the true meaning of endless night.)
We're flying into daylight and into timezones ahead of ours, so dinner, breakfast and lunch all take place in the span of 9 hours. Part of the time, I read Tears of the Giraffe - the second book in Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series - set in Botswana, and highly recommended. But mostly, I'm just jumping in my seat with anticipation, can't wait to land in Bombay.
And when we finally do, I can see rain beating against the sides of the plane, and I think, "shit." So much for the anticipation, the anxiousness to be back.
Immigration, baggage claim, and out the door. The humidity hits me like a solid wall. The rain is a snivelling drizzle - the type I hate most. A is nowhere to be seen (turns out later he's waiting at the wrong terminal). I've lost my phone and can't call or message. Welcome home.
******************************************************************
After a warm, cozy weekend, I leave Bombay on a sticky grey Monday morning. A sees me off at the airport and a grey sheen hangs over the city and our goodbye. My flight breaks through the cloud cover and Bombay suddenly vanishes, just like that. No long last looks over one's shoulder. Perhaps that's as it should be.
******************************************************************
Bangalore sucks.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Learnings
1. Toilet paper can scratch your ass raw.
2. Seasons change real quick. One day there's bright sunlight, the next, you remember old geography lessons as you watch the morning light slant across the park.
3. It's dangerous to go within a 1 mile radius of Cheesecake Factory.
4. It's even more dangerous to get caught in a corridor with Cheesecake Factory on one side and Cold Stone Creamery on the other.
5. If you can survive the temptations of the corridor, you will, inevitably, reward yourself by giving in to temptation at the Barnes & Noble at the end of the corridor.
6. Hotel rooms are difficult to keep clean. It's not your's, so you don't care.
7. It's eminently possible to live like a slob for 2 months, washing dishes only when the fungus starts to creep out of the sink and attack books on the counter.
8. American ads really suck.
9. Speaking of which, there seem to be, broadly, 4 categories of products advertised on TV here:
2. Seasons change real quick. One day there's bright sunlight, the next, you remember old geography lessons as you watch the morning light slant across the park.
3. It's dangerous to go within a 1 mile radius of Cheesecake Factory.
4. It's even more dangerous to get caught in a corridor with Cheesecake Factory on one side and Cold Stone Creamery on the other.
5. If you can survive the temptations of the corridor, you will, inevitably, reward yourself by giving in to temptation at the Barnes & Noble at the end of the corridor.
6. Hotel rooms are difficult to keep clean. It's not your's, so you don't care.
7. It's eminently possible to live like a slob for 2 months, washing dishes only when the fungus starts to creep out of the sink and attack books on the counter.
8. American ads really suck.
9. Speaking of which, there seem to be, broadly, 4 categories of products advertised on TV here:
- Automobiles
- Telephone network providers
- Medication (mostly for penile dysfunction and post-partum depression - and you have to wonder about cause-and-effect here)
- Insurance
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Learning
The suicide rate among cold-callers must be sky-high.
Update
This from B, 25th August 05:
Why have you stopped blogging? Spending all waking hours thinking of innovative ways to commit suicide?
Update
This from B, 25th August 05:
Why have you stopped blogging? Spending all waking hours thinking of innovative ways to commit suicide?
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
On Second Thought...
The continuing saga of Christopher Columbus' daughter, many times removed.
People. Friendly, after all. So not everyone's a customs official. "How're you doing" greetings bouncing off the walls. Perhaps with fewer people than back home, it's possible to individually greet everyone whose eyes meet yours.
New Jersey. Clean, wide roads. Greenery. Woods. Backwoods, actually. Life here revolves around Route (pronounced to rhyme with "pout") 1 and Route 9, call-a-cab services, watching traffic zoom by on the highway, exits 131 and 130. And road signs. Every 5 yards. Still no people though - except, perhaps, at Metropark station, waiting for trains or cabs. Indian suburbs - filled with Kanha sarees, Dimple Fast Food, Dosa Express (muy excellente dosa) and Subzi Mandi.
New York. May-the-lord-be-praised-it's-a-city. I see land. Smelly. Noisy. Dirty. Tall buildings. Bars. People. Activity. And smack in the centre (center) - or close enough, Central Park. This is my heaven. Complete with two of my temples: 59th Street Bridge and Central Park. Fire engines passing by with shrieking sirens every 15 minutes. Confusing and chaotic - I bet this is how all non-Indians feel when confronted with an Indian city. I feel like the quintessential tourist, staring with open-mouthed wonder at the mythical monster. And recognising (recognizing) in it the family pet.
Hmmm. Yep, as long as I can get a weekly dose of The City, I think I'll make it.
People. Friendly, after all. So not everyone's a customs official. "How're you doing" greetings bouncing off the walls. Perhaps with fewer people than back home, it's possible to individually greet everyone whose eyes meet yours.
New Jersey. Clean, wide roads. Greenery. Woods. Backwoods, actually. Life here revolves around Route (pronounced to rhyme with "pout") 1 and Route 9, call-a-cab services, watching traffic zoom by on the highway, exits 131 and 130. And road signs. Every 5 yards. Still no people though - except, perhaps, at Metropark station, waiting for trains or cabs. Indian suburbs - filled with Kanha sarees, Dimple Fast Food, Dosa Express (muy excellente dosa) and Subzi Mandi.
New York. May-the-lord-be-praised-it's-a-city. I see land. Smelly. Noisy. Dirty. Tall buildings. Bars. People. Activity. And smack in the centre (center) - or close enough, Central Park. This is my heaven. Complete with two of my temples: 59th Street Bridge and Central Park. Fire engines passing by with shrieking sirens every 15 minutes. Confusing and chaotic - I bet this is how all non-Indians feel when confronted with an Indian city. I feel like the quintessential tourist, staring with open-mouthed wonder at the mythical monster. And recognising (recognizing) in it the family pet.
Hmmm. Yep, as long as I can get a weekly dose of The City, I think I'll make it.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Learning
1. "Funspecs" aren't fun.
2. Delivery isn't as delivery does.
3. Happiness could be a warm gun.
4. Something's turning.
5. Laundry relaxing. Soft and warm the clothes out the dryer.
Off to New York tomorrow night. Other kinds of learning. And to meet some very old friends.
2. Delivery isn't as delivery does.
3. Happiness could be a warm gun.
4. Something's turning.
5. Laundry relaxing. Soft and warm the clothes out the dryer.
Off to New York tomorrow night. Other kinds of learning. And to meet some very old friends.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
First Impressions - the epic version
Unfriendly. Unfriendly people at the customs and immigration desks, no please-thank-you no smiles though I'm smiling like an idiot. And they treat me like one, talk to me like one till I want to tell them, Listen, you schmuck, my toe-nail has a higher IQ than you so don't you talk down to me, don't you condescend to me. But instead, I smile, answer questions-meant-to-rile succinctly and clearly, wait for my visa to be stamped and walk into the wilderness.
Alone, everything new and strange seems newer and stranger. I can't understand the announcements. There's no tonality for me to pick out, no nuance, and the words, amplified by the PA system, having a booming quality in the middle of my quiet panic. I want to turn around and go home now, but I get through Customs and to the Arrival Hall.
To find that I have to pay a whopping $3 (over 120 bucks!) for a luggage trolley - something that's absolutely free in any airport in India. Con-men, I think, forking out the money, and take my trolley to the luggage carousel with a sign for AI191 and some other flight. I watch the same luggage go round and round on the carousel and mine seems to be nowhere in sight. As I begin to panic, I notice that lots of luggage has been taken off the carousel and placed neatly to the side, so I push my trolley past all these bags, round the carousel, eyeing each one hopefully, but no, my stuff's not here either. After 15 minutes of doing this, I discover that there's another carousel, also with luggage from the same 2 flights. Is it just me, or is there something really stupid about splitting up luggage from 2 flights across 2 carousels instead of dedicating one to each flight?
I pick up my luggage and head out. Find a taxi ($42 + tolls - 1600 bucks! I could go from Delhi to Bombay for 1600 bucks!) driven by a Sudanese guy who asks me if I know where Sudan is. Of course I do, I'm not American, I think, before I remember not to generalise (generalize). As we wend our way to the hotel, we make some wrong turns, and I look for people to ask directions from. But the roads are frighteningly empty of people. Cars zoom by, windows rolled up, like through a freakish ghost town. Around me, familiar names whiz by, a landscape of malls and shops - JC Penney, Home Depot, McDonalds, Buick, Pizza Hut. Familiar yet strange.
Finally, we make it to the hotel, which has to hunt for my reservation. No, they don't have an international call facility, so I'll have to go to Wal-Mart to buy a phone card. My room is lovely, inviting, and after 24 straight hours of traveling, I'm desparate to have a bath, but even more desparate to hear a known voice, to ensure that I haven't fallen off the planet into nothingness.
Wal-Mart is a 10-minute walk away, but it takes me nearly 20, because I lose my way and there's nobody to ask. Finally, a woman smoking a cigarette outside a building seems me peering across the road, explorer-style, and asks me what I'm looking for. I'm new here, I tell her (to explain my solitary presence on the un-peopled road). Wal-Mart - can you tell me where the nearest one is? Right over there - she points across the highway. But you can't cross that. So she directs me around and I find my way there, constantly worried that I'll be arrested for jay-walking, crossing roads any-old-where, feeling like a character in a Kafka novel.
The idea of the fat American is clearer to me now. Wal-Mart has no carts smaller than me, and everyone walking out has a cart-full of stuff that they haul, waddling, to their cars. Nobody walks, everybody drives, and most people are humongous. I wonder about the direction of causality here.
Like pretty much everything else, Wal-Mart is huge. Like 4 football fields put together. I feel small, dwarfed. I want to disappear. But I take a cart and walk down aisle after aisle, searching for groceries (milk, juice, bread, cheese, vienna sausages, corned beef and a couple of micro-wave pasta dinners) and a phone card. There's a self-check-out counter, but I'm too scared to try that, so I queue up with all the others. $23 (for almost nothing). Walking back, through my disorientation I can feel the excitement of seeing firs - firs! - and little wooded areas, and all my white-christmas fantasies are awakened.
But the weather now is much like Bangalore weather - about 25 degrees C, cloudy, a little humid so that I'm sweating as I walk back with my bags.
Back to the room, a couple of quick calls home and to A later, I check the clock to find that it's already 8:30 p.m. (my watch is still on IST, a faint connection with the familiar). Dinner (bread, cheese, sausages and juice), a long hot bath to wash 24 hours' grime off me, phone call from home and quick chats with N and V, promising to meet over the weekend. Flip through channels (all universally boring) and turn out the lights on my disorientation, hoping the darkness and some sleep will bring relief.
And the disorientation is everywhere. It's not just about driving on the wrong side of the road. Everything is the opposite of what I'm used to. I had to fill up the INS form 4 times, because I'm used to the instruction being below the writing space, whereas on these forms, it's above. The lights turn on when you flip the switches upwards, not downwards. The flush handle is on the left side of the cistern. At 8:30 p.m., it's still light out, and at 9:00 p.m., it's dusk. When I wake up at 5:00, it's already light out. Where is the darkness?
I wake up early (3:00 a.m., 3:40 a.m., and so on) and eventually get out of bed at 5:30. Some unpacking and arranging of stuff, breakfast, and out at 7:30. A ride from X, who works with us, for Y and me, who are both staying at the same hotel. X drives like an Indian, changing lanes abruptly and taking U-turns where they're not allowed. We get to office - a grey stony building from the outside. Inside, work-spaces are large and big windows look out on the road and greenery. But I have no laptop yet, only a workspace, and the dis-orientation continues. X and Y log in and start up and get onto calls. I get a cup of hazelnut flavoured coffee and check my mail and log into the blog, waiting to see how events unfold.
Alone, everything new and strange seems newer and stranger. I can't understand the announcements. There's no tonality for me to pick out, no nuance, and the words, amplified by the PA system, having a booming quality in the middle of my quiet panic. I want to turn around and go home now, but I get through Customs and to the Arrival Hall.
To find that I have to pay a whopping $3 (over 120 bucks!) for a luggage trolley - something that's absolutely free in any airport in India. Con-men, I think, forking out the money, and take my trolley to the luggage carousel with a sign for AI191 and some other flight. I watch the same luggage go round and round on the carousel and mine seems to be nowhere in sight. As I begin to panic, I notice that lots of luggage has been taken off the carousel and placed neatly to the side, so I push my trolley past all these bags, round the carousel, eyeing each one hopefully, but no, my stuff's not here either. After 15 minutes of doing this, I discover that there's another carousel, also with luggage from the same 2 flights. Is it just me, or is there something really stupid about splitting up luggage from 2 flights across 2 carousels instead of dedicating one to each flight?
I pick up my luggage and head out. Find a taxi ($42 + tolls - 1600 bucks! I could go from Delhi to Bombay for 1600 bucks!) driven by a Sudanese guy who asks me if I know where Sudan is. Of course I do, I'm not American, I think, before I remember not to generalise (generalize). As we wend our way to the hotel, we make some wrong turns, and I look for people to ask directions from. But the roads are frighteningly empty of people. Cars zoom by, windows rolled up, like through a freakish ghost town. Around me, familiar names whiz by, a landscape of malls and shops - JC Penney, Home Depot, McDonalds, Buick, Pizza Hut. Familiar yet strange.
Finally, we make it to the hotel, which has to hunt for my reservation. No, they don't have an international call facility, so I'll have to go to Wal-Mart to buy a phone card. My room is lovely, inviting, and after 24 straight hours of traveling, I'm desparate to have a bath, but even more desparate to hear a known voice, to ensure that I haven't fallen off the planet into nothingness.
Wal-Mart is a 10-minute walk away, but it takes me nearly 20, because I lose my way and there's nobody to ask. Finally, a woman smoking a cigarette outside a building seems me peering across the road, explorer-style, and asks me what I'm looking for. I'm new here, I tell her (to explain my solitary presence on the un-peopled road). Wal-Mart - can you tell me where the nearest one is? Right over there - she points across the highway. But you can't cross that. So she directs me around and I find my way there, constantly worried that I'll be arrested for jay-walking, crossing roads any-old-where, feeling like a character in a Kafka novel.
The idea of the fat American is clearer to me now. Wal-Mart has no carts smaller than me, and everyone walking out has a cart-full of stuff that they haul, waddling, to their cars. Nobody walks, everybody drives, and most people are humongous. I wonder about the direction of causality here.
Like pretty much everything else, Wal-Mart is huge. Like 4 football fields put together. I feel small, dwarfed. I want to disappear. But I take a cart and walk down aisle after aisle, searching for groceries (milk, juice, bread, cheese, vienna sausages, corned beef and a couple of micro-wave pasta dinners) and a phone card. There's a self-check-out counter, but I'm too scared to try that, so I queue up with all the others. $23 (for almost nothing). Walking back, through my disorientation I can feel the excitement of seeing firs - firs! - and little wooded areas, and all my white-christmas fantasies are awakened.
But the weather now is much like Bangalore weather - about 25 degrees C, cloudy, a little humid so that I'm sweating as I walk back with my bags.
Back to the room, a couple of quick calls home and to A later, I check the clock to find that it's already 8:30 p.m. (my watch is still on IST, a faint connection with the familiar). Dinner (bread, cheese, sausages and juice), a long hot bath to wash 24 hours' grime off me, phone call from home and quick chats with N and V, promising to meet over the weekend. Flip through channels (all universally boring) and turn out the lights on my disorientation, hoping the darkness and some sleep will bring relief.
And the disorientation is everywhere. It's not just about driving on the wrong side of the road. Everything is the opposite of what I'm used to. I had to fill up the INS form 4 times, because I'm used to the instruction being below the writing space, whereas on these forms, it's above. The lights turn on when you flip the switches upwards, not downwards. The flush handle is on the left side of the cistern. At 8:30 p.m., it's still light out, and at 9:00 p.m., it's dusk. When I wake up at 5:00, it's already light out. Where is the darkness?
I wake up early (3:00 a.m., 3:40 a.m., and so on) and eventually get out of bed at 5:30. Some unpacking and arranging of stuff, breakfast, and out at 7:30. A ride from X, who works with us, for Y and me, who are both staying at the same hotel. X drives like an Indian, changing lanes abruptly and taking U-turns where they're not allowed. We get to office - a grey stony building from the outside. Inside, work-spaces are large and big windows look out on the road and greenery. But I have no laptop yet, only a workspace, and the dis-orientation continues. X and Y log in and start up and get onto calls. I get a cup of hazelnut flavoured coffee and check my mail and log into the blog, waiting to see how events unfold.
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