Woow..wat a fortnight

Hey guys..

Dessy is back after a fortnight...And what a fortnight it has been ..

First, my train gets stuck in a tunnel and i was in there for about 2hours..in pitch black surroundings only to be "rescued" by Chicago fire department.
Then only day before yesterday, there was a bomb threat and we were again "evacuated" from the office.And if you guys think these were big disasters or bad things, i did not even inform you about the biggest disaster that has occured.
My project went live on MONDAY and without any problems and the funniest part is customers started using it. GOD BLESS!!!

Now that i have finished more than 45 days in USA., i would like to share something which i noticed about the "indians" here..Seriouslysomething gets into most of the ppl (you do have some exceptions like me) and ppl start behaving strangely.
The following observations are puuuuuuuuuurely personal, and these are some of the things that happened WITH ME..

Terms used :- "Colleague" here is an indian colleague.(More abt american colleagues..LATER)

At restaurants..I went to a restaurant with one of my colleague who has already been in USA for few days...First problem i faced was reading the menu card...Leave alone the composition, taste, ingredients, cost etc..I was not even able to pronounce 80% of the food available...And when i ask this guy what i should take, he would reply mentioning one of the remaining 20% and say only these are good and the rest are not good...CLEVER HAAN??And while we are having food, he would say..."Naa...this is not good...you see, there's a restaurant 30 miles from here, and they serve some xxxx(again something which i (and of course even he) have no clue about) which is fantaaaaaastic...you should go there some weekend(and he knows that wil never happen..AGAIN CLEVER)"..These guys are as lost as i am but they pretend..they punch shadows...

We come from cities where the minimum temperature in an year, is more than the maximum temperature here IN CHICAGO....Its tooooooooo cold...And of course we would feel it..Even the slightest rise in temperature would result in clients saying "its a great day, good weather isnt it"
And my colleague here, wears a thermal inner (top and bottom), a "thick" winter coat, gloves, ear grips and a winter scarf around the neck and says to another colleague "Hey its a great day, great weather isnt it" and only to find the other guy saying.."oh ya it is". I would be shivering and my teeth would be clattering when they ask me the same question. And I would reply "N..Nnnn...No, it , its still..c..c..ccold"...And LADIES AND GENTLEMAN here goes THE MOST COMMON REPLY AMONG ALL THE INDIANS here IN A TYPICAL MOTHER TONGUE ACCENT(TELUGU IN THIS CASE)..."HAHAHA...FOR THIS ONLY YOU ARE FEEELING THAT MUCH AAA.,WE HAVE SEEN -30 AND for this only, you are complaining means, haha.. what man...very bad "...I would only reply to them saying..."ya guys, you have seen -30, but i havent seen zero till now"..Gosh, they feel sooooooooo proud in saying,as if they have survived the world's toughest man competition.

Now about the ladies and gentlemen that get settled here, the bragadiccio never ends, except few people who are down to earth.I could find many ladies in my apartments complex, when asked a question "what did you do this weekend" would reply "We went to "xyz" movie on our "abc" car before which we did some shopping in "123" mall buying an x dollar article and y dollar watever.......". We dont need that all info mam..and im sorry i asked that question..They fail to understand that it is all part of a casual banter.Believe me that was the last time, i asked any lady what she did over the weekend.

And one striking difference that you find in desis here is that, out of nowhere a serious sense of patriotism gets into them...,not to miss, a serious desire to celebrate the indian festivals..Beleive me, i was never wished on UGADI (telugu new year) when i was back in india, even if i was wished it was just casual or even sarcastic..but here..gosh, we even had ppl roaming around with the ugadi pachadi( a dish prepared only on ugadi ).Ramnavami.., only thing i remember abt this festival is gettign a holiday for school..nothing else..But here..we have ppl getting together "again" and doing something...SOOOOOOO ARTIFICIAL...
I wil end here(its getting a bit serious isnt it)...My next blog would be abt my first days in USA...and here's a small snippet from that ;-)

It was March 10th , 2008 , my first day @ work here in chicago...I was to report to office at 9am, and my office had revolving doors. I walked upto the entrance.The doors revolve from right to left. I did not notice that and I pushed the door in the wrong direction with all my strength fromleft to right and forced my way in, making a screeching sound, only to find 4 security personnel staring at me and the crowd in the lobby coming to a standstill, just looking at me...THAT WAS MY MEGA - ENTRANCE :-)

More...in my next blog....:-)

dESSy