America Through My Eyes – First Steps

I had landed on Sunday and from Monday had to join office. There was a problem in public transportation out here. It seemed California was a land of rich people. Everybody had car out here. In a family there could be several cars! Two wheelers were luxury! After all, it was the land of Hurley-Davidson!

In our apartment also we had two cars. Sheikh and Dhrub were the owners of them respectively. Rest three of us got free carpool from them. First day I went to office with Sheikh. His car was also a two door jet-black coup – Nissan 200SX. It had a sleek look. I liked the car. Though automatic transmission had largely taken out the charm of good old driving, still the kid had a good hand in driving. When we reached office I was surprised to see that the parking lot is bigger that the main office building! Crazy Americans! They are taking full advantage of low population density. I heard that it was a rule or something that, a company had to keep enough parking space for all its employees. May be;  this was something that was never possible in our country.

I had to go to reception first. There Sheikh had to introduce me, and the lady gave me a visitor sticker. Now straight to third floor. One good thing I noticed, in US there was no ground floor. Rather the erstwhile ground floor was first floor. One thing at last similar to our country! Sheikh left me at Manu’s cube. After formal greeting each other Manu showed me my cube nearby. In my cube there was a surprise welcome waiting for me! In front of the pc there was a nice welcome note along with a sheet containing useful instructions for a first time user to that machine. I recalled my joining to my company. It took 15days just to get a sitting position in my office! The computer came much late and I had to run pillar to post just to configure that computer with basic things, like, mail and all. But later I came to know that this welcome was an exception. America, or at least this company, is not very different from my company in these matters.

Next Manu introduced me to rest of my team members. Cathey, Dave, Kirsten and a desi Amol. Desi literally means indigenous. But in America the slanged generalization for all the people from Indian Sub-continent were Desi. Funny! One thing I noticed Americans are a bit more animated. They showed off a little extra emotion all the time. Sometimes it feels artificial. Kirsten and the rest of the people greeted me as if I am a film star or they knew me from the day I was born and very fond of me. But later understood this is how American’s behave. It’s their culture. And they expected the same in return.

If you come across an American while walking on the side-walk and accidentally you look into the eyes of that fellow, then you have to greet him with ‘Hi’ with the warmth as if that stranger is your high school buddy! Failing so was tantamounting to rudeness. On the other hand, if we do the same to one of the desi in our own country, chances are that you might get a public beating for molestation. Strange world!!

On the very first day I experienced 3 ‘cultural shocks’. First two were in the break room. In our country this type of room had only coffee machine and drinking water tap. Here in addition to that there were microwave, coke vending machine and a huge fridge. Out of curiosity I opened the fridge. Was astonished to find it jam-packed with various foods. Methought, may be the company has provided these choices of food for all its employees. After all America is rich. A “Snickers” took my fancy. I was about to take it, then I thought otherwise. Better of me told me, this was too good to be true. Let’s first clarify my doubt. It’s just the first day in the office. So I went to the water cooler. Of all the water coolers that I had come across, all had the tap right below the hot or cold water button. So I put the paper glass right below the cold water button and pressed it. Immediately water started flowing from the side of the damn machine! It created a huge mess on the floor. I quickly wiped that out with a paper towel. First day at the office and I was doing a janitor’s work! What luck!

While I was doing so, I realized that the cooler had only one nozzle to pour both cold and warm water. And to my bad luck it was on one side of that. On my way to return to my desk, I dropped by Manu’s desk,”I noticed there were lots of goodies in the fridge. What was that for?” I queried. “It was the collective food of all, who work here. They bring it for their own consumption.” smiled Manu. Cold sweat ran down through my spine. I realized what a mistake I almost did.

Just imagine if I had taken that chocolate and started eating that. And the rightful owner of that entered the break-room and caught me red-handed! Oh my god!!

The third shock came a bit late in that fateful day. In response to nature’s call I was walking down to the bathroom, sorry, ‘restroom’. Unknowingly, I was walking through the left side of the aisle. I was a lady was coming by her right side from opposite direction towards me. Now I committed two crimes unknowingly. First, I did not greet her the usual ‘Hi-Hello’ way, meaning I was rude. Secondly, I was walking on the wrong side and directly blocking her way. This was outrageous and savage. She rightfully punished me with a stern gage. I immediately understood and quickly moved out of her way.

Lunch time! Now I was in a fix. The office compound was huge. It was not possible to walk out and look for road-side food joint. Moreover, I had noticed, there was hardly any. Only option was office canteen. I was hesitant. New place and top of that 3 shocks successfully wrecked my confidence. So first I went to Sibu, but he was going out with somebody else. I went to Kohl, sitting in the next cube. “What canteen yaar(=friend)! Let’s go out.”, he suggested. Seeing me hesitant he added,”Don’t worry, we will go in my car and the expense will be similar to that of the canteen.” On the way to the parking lot he asked,”What do you wanna eat? Chinese, Japanese, Tandoori or American?”“Anything but Tandoori”, I grumbled. “Don’t be hasty on the very first day. Let’s have rice and chicken curry just like mother’s cooking.”, smiled Kohl. I was surprised. How can we have our home style rice-chicken curry in America of all places? He took me to a Malaysian restaurant. It was nice and cozy. He ordered “Curry Chicken”. And a bowl of rice came free. Really homely cooking, only thing was that, they used coconut oil as cooking medium instead of mustard oil.

After coming back to office I started taking knowledge transfer from Manu, as am the reliever of him.

In the evening Sheikh gave me the lift to home. Slowly rest of the 5 of us came in. Dhrub straightaway went for cooking. Rests were on their own. If one was watching TV, then another was on his office laptop either for working or just surfing the net. I was trying to strike a conversation whoever I get hold of. Raju seemed a bit quite that day. He was busy with office work, talking to his offshore team and working at the same time. I learned that we all had one night allocated for cooking. 5 persons 5 working days. For the 2days of weekend arrange for your own food. Good arrangement. My turn is on Thursday.

Now the problem is I never cooked in my life – never needed to. If it was just for me then I might manage, but the problem is what am gonna cook everybody else was going to eat that. So the food had to be edible. Seeing me worried everybody tried their best to boost me up. I took no chance. Straight away went for egg. Eternal egg! So on my turn the menu was egg curry and rice. It passed fairly. I was at the top of the world at the first shot I made something edible. Raju even asked me,” Are you telling the truth that you never cooked before?”