ExpertDabbler

Yay!, originally uploaded by expertdabbler.

There’s my home. And then there’s my native place where my maternal uncle lives where i am very comfortable which i consider very close to home. The third place which comes close to home should be my friends and their families in California.

- My friend’s brother in law makes sure i have something to eat everyday.
- There’s another friend of mine with whom i am staying currently.
- I spent two glorious days with blog friend NV’s family who made me feel as part of their own family.
- I’m in yet another friend’s place for the remaining two days(I’m taking off on Tuesday).

All this to a person like me who totally does not deserve any of this :0 Life is unfair indeed.

All in all it has been a fabulous memorial day long weekend so far.
Lots of pictures, great fun!

The work environment I face in US is a classic ‘I don’t know how to express’ problem. I am so used to having personal equations at work place in India. I see most of folks for the last three and a half years and I spend more time with them than my family. Suddenly here I am thrown into a world where nobody cares if you are dead or alive in your cubicle. Of course, they all say ‘Hi, how are you doin’ but you know they really couldn’t care less anyway. I’m writing this in an afternoon from office when all I can hear is the noise of a keyboard in the next cubicle. Even graveyards would make more noise in India. Silence at work is deafening in its own way here.

It’s been hard for me to read no matter how hard I try. I experienced the same during the last visit too. I guess it’s got to do with the lights – it’s hard to find the ‘tube light’ brightness here. And I guess when I sort of get used to the lights here, I leave the country.

Some of my friends want me to come and work here, which is quite possible if I want to. But I’m a tad reluctant. I think it’s okay for folks to come here when they are in their early twenties. But it gets harder with each passing year. One builds his or her own social roots in their place of living over time. Had it been my early twenties, I think I would’ve come no matter what. Personally, getting desperate about landing in US for a job sounds less than rational to me now.

I do agree it works in both ways. There are clearly other incentives to work in US for lot of people, especially those who have been here. Some of my friends like the freedom of being away from close family members, friends and relatives which can get too restrictive in India. I know some others who have gotten used to the US ways, they have built a social network and will not want to move out even if they make the same amount of money in India – after a point its less about money alone. They know where to go out with whom for what. Uprooting from here, going back to India means starting all over again. One Chennai native, who has been in the US for the last ten years told me, ‘When I come to Chennai, the only one person I have as a friend and who i call is you’. I will not be surprised if he chooses to be in US no matter what.

I also got a chance to witness a heated exchange between two ‘makkals’ on the immigration law passed by the Arizona government. One guy is like, “Here I am, a legal alien paying my taxes for the -nth year and waiting for my green card, and then we find illegal immigrants getting across the border, because of which this country tightens their immigration rules as a whole, how is that fair? I think its okay to bear with some inconveniences to weed out illegal immigrants”. The other party is like, “In the name of preventing illegal immigration, Arizona has passed a law which can promote racist tendencies. I do not know the answer but I know for sure this is not the solution to prevent illegal migration.” There was no Solomon Pappaya to pass a verdict but it was good to see some folks debating on things which impact them here rather than burning issues back home.

By the way ‘Old monk’ rum has got a crazy following among the tamil speaking ‘makkals’ here. Whether they come to meet long seen friends or not, they never go missing where Old monk gets served. Apparently Old Monk, the very desi version is available in some shop near Madras groceries, in W El Camino Real, Sunnyvale,CA.

http://gladwell.com/2010/2010_01_18_a_surething.html

So much for risk-taking entrepreneurs. One of the most interesting articles I read recently.

Last weekend was when I landed, and all I did was roam around to eat outs and groceries with friends then. This weekend was different. I got a chance to hang out with a bunch of blog friends – NV sir and Sundar Narayanan. We went to a place called uvas canyon county park. Name la dhaan uva , the place was damn good, complete with trails and water falls.

Sundar, being agile and quick, has already posted a few pics in flickr. I was busy with changing hotels. I need to hunt for a card reader to post pictures. I promised to post some ‘sahikable pics’. I also realized Sundar is a master story teller. Ask some random question, and he simply takes off across different time and era with vivid details. Maybe he has ‘kadha kalakshebam’ in his genes. Be it recounting his student days, or his suffering at Mumbai airport with two small kids, I could simply visualize everything he said. I wish he writes a novel or book sometime in future. All he needs to do is go around with a recorder, record his conversations, transcribe later, connect the tales together with a super tale and we should have a readable book.

NV sir, came with his cousins. Earlier, we had our lunch in NV sir’s cousin’s house. It’s kind of eerie to hear people I’m meeting for the first time say ’Blog padichirukom.’ I was about to ask ‘Oh andha appavi 4 per la neengalum oruthara…’. then stopped short.

While the main agenda was photography, it was fascinating to note the conversation patterns when a bunch of Tamil NRIs get together - Kushboo joining DMK, Mk family in future, Doctors in Chennai vis a vis Doctors in US (apparently both the docs suck. Chennai in post operative care, and US in diagnosis), the benefits of using Vonage, telecom scandal, IPL/T20 - I am too old to watch 20/10 over cricket, theru cricket, book cricket etc. and so on so I did not contribute there. But in general I was struggling to catch up with these folks over events happening in my own backyard.

What’s fascinating here is that I talk to my wife and mom back home twice a day ever since I landed here and we did not for once talk about Kushboo joining DMK, even though my mom is a regular to Kushboo’s jackpot ever since Vijay movies started to suck, which was long back. Nor do we talk about any current affairs. Not even ‘Raavan songs kettiya’, hardly anything about telecom scandal even when I was in India. For that matter, the conversation almost never goes out of home affairs. In fact it was me who informed them about Anuradha Ramanan’s death this morning.

Indians outside India are more obsessed about India, than those within India. No matter how much ever I realize this, it strikes me every time I experience this to say the least. I heard zilch about baseball/basketball, US politics, oil spill and so on in yesterday’s conversation. The most bay areaish they could get was with ‘Desi restaurants in bay area’. I spoke to another blog friend over phone this morning, and she talks about sanskrit classes. And she’s already been in the US for more than six years I think.

For resident Indians, India is family and home, and home is India. I suspect my mom reads Tamil newspaper to find out about the power cut in my area, to find about new stores coming up, i read businessline and forbes, and i guess my wife reads HINDU to know about bus commute, ads for dental clinics etc. The only conversation outside home I remember in today’s conversation was, ‘Mel veetu Maami marumagal ku US la valaikaapu, payasam kuduthanga.’
Most of the office colleagues discuss more on office politics which on any day is more colorful than Tamil Nadu politics.
Maybe is that why India can be a lot better than what it is?

The last few days experiments has yielded predictable results and threw up less interesting stuff to write. Thuvaram Paruppu came out exactly like home made paruppu. Same as the case with rasam. Yesterday evening i tried tomato Kurma + Chappathi. We bought Chappathi at INDIA CASH AND CARRY in Sunnyvale - they are very fond of Raavan songs by the way. Tomato Kurma though tasted a bit different from the one @home but surprisingly it was still very much palatable.

The previous day, we went out to watch a friend of us perform in a small theatre in Foster City. It was 9.45 when we got out. Muniyandi Vilas was the obvious choice at that hour. We reached there and found ‘Madurai Sri Muniyandi Vilas Military Hotel’ written in Thamizh and ‘Indian Chettinad Restaurant’ in English. Military Hotel = Chettinad Restaurant??
Never mind. Anything that sells is good. I had the dubious distinction of eating vegetarian food (Kal Dosa) in Muniyandi Vilas. About the Kal dosai, for sure it did not taste like the one made in Anjappars, Arasappars in Chennai. But it was not bad at all.

Aim:
To prepare Ven pongal and Sambhar.

Procedure:
Get up at 5.30 in the morning and went through a detailed ‘how to’ manual prepared by wife and mom for both Pongal and Sambhar.

Result:
The rice was alright but the Dal was not. Sambhar came out more as a curry. Should’ve added more tamarind.

Observation:
Chose the wrong Dal. I think I chose Kadalai paruppu instead of Thuvaram paruppu. My wife and mom, who had made neat labels in stickers for every other item, missed out on this one.

‘It’s good man’ my friend who ate this observed. Decent a apdiye vitrukanum
‘You really liked it?’ I asked.
‘In a desert, any water is good water’

A trip to the San Francisco bay area was not a strong possibility even ten days back. Then things happened as it could happen only in an IT company, or for that matter in a Rajini kanth movie. And I find myself writing this blog at 5.30 in the morning in my hotel in San Jose.

Initial impressions – recession or not, I could not find any apparent difference on the way from SFO to the hotel except that the Super Shuttle charged me less than it did last time.

The trip as such was very smooth – Cathay Pacific helped me save as much as three hours over Singapore Airlines.
It was a pleasant experience to find ‘pongal, vada, idly’ being served even just two hours before landing in SFO.

The major embarrassment was at the port of entry. The Visa Officer somehow did not like my face – understandable given that even I d not like my ‘2 days since last shaved’ face. He took one look at my passport photo and my face and said, ‘This photograph does not look like you at all’. I would’ve been surprised if it did, ‘cos that was taken like 9 years ago with my spectacles on. I tried a weak smile and he did not like it either,’ This is not funny’ was his response. He conveniently omitted my photograph in the visa stamping. There was no response to my ‘Hi’ and ‘thank you’. Not sure what was his problem at home that morning. He probed me a bit about my last visit and departure dates, my address and so on. Thankfully my memory helped.

I am using spokn to call back home. I am planning to cook this time around, that’s the only major difference over last time I guess. I am yet to get my mobile number.
Looking forward to catch up with all the bay area folks I know in the next six to eight weeks.