After 24 years long stay at home, the pampered kid steps out of home. With no prior experience of staying outside home, even for a week lands directly in Milwaukee (US). You could imagine !!!
When I came here in November, the winter had already started..it was getting colder and colder day by day. I was very proud of myself at least for a day, that I was lucky enough to get a chance to travel onsite to the US. This was dream for me to come true, from a long time inf act even before I joined my engineering. All thanks to my Project Manager Reema..
My travel to the US made me learn lot of new things...be it technical, professional or personal. I am a strong believer of this statement "Necessity is the mother of invention". When I was at home I dint realise the importance of preparing food, keeping my room clean or infact even grocery shopping :)). Let alone cooking I dint even know that we had to use cooking oil to cook most of the dishes...
For the first one month I had a colleague of mine ShriHari who had apparently become one of my good friends, staying with me. I was very to happy to stay with him because I realised that I was better than him...coz he dint even know how to cook rice!!!
By the time I could settle down and realise what work exactly was expected out of me one month flew past...Since I knew driving right from India, driving in US was really tough! Trust me you are better of not knowing to drive when you come to US...its very easy to drive a car in US since there is no gear and everybody follows the rules...but for me it took around 1 month to get set to the rules here..By this time ShriHari left for India
After 1 month of stay with him I moved to another colleagues room Abhinay and become one more additional roommate..There were 2 guys staying with him already Siva, Avik and I was the fourth guy to join. Slowly I started learning how to prepare food (not cook) being with Abhinay...he was the HOD for all house related activities including cooking. Being with Abhi I started moving around..got to know Bhuvi, Uday, Manoj and quite a few people...
All of us Avik, Abhi, Siva and me were all unique characters each one having different thinking! :) We had a blasting time in Monetary Apartment...like going out for movies, late night drives, one of them a really long drive to NY which was around 900 miles...
Each one of us lived here like kings playing loud music late night and were given warning to vacate the apartments a quite a few times...well...there were other reasons for that too, Avik had a bought a mattress from GoodWill that screwed us royally, the reason being it had bedbugs..
I guess none of us knew about bedbugs when in India and here in the US we had a Pest inspection done on our apartment all of a sudden and fined 300$ for having bedbugs...Welcome to US!!!
Everybody were nearing the end of their assignment by now, as the days progressed. Avik was the first guy to vacate the room to go to India. There were 2 long weekends in between and I managed to squeeze a trip to my cousin's home in California and NY. My trip to California was just awesome..i would need to write a new blog for it..
The second guy to move was Siva, we used to call him maama since he was lucky enough to have the maximum number of speeding tickets...
I never had problems making friends and made quite a few friends... The summer time had started by then and I started playing cricket played a couple of tournament matches as well..I would go to Bhuvi's house almost all Friday evenings for dinner, shamelessly :) He cooks awesome food...
Uday and Lori also would host a party quite often and I would go there also even if he had not invited me :). I enjoyed their company..he has an amazing house with 2 pretty cats, 2 dogs, a fire place in the garden....We used to sit by the fire in open air in garden with pets moving around....it was just awesome...somebody like me could not have asked for anything more...
The time just kept moving...
Abhi also left for India, and I had to find a new place to live...Luckily/ Unluckily I came across a guy who was very new to US...direct from some village in Andhra :) who apparently become my roommate.
Well now this is the time when I started learning how to prepare food... this guy dint even know cooking and was fully dependent on me to cook. If I dint cook he would eat plain rice with some powders that he had got from Andhra!
I started making some south Indian dishes like vangibath, puliogare, rasam etc reading the directions written at the back :)... It was not tasty but it was better than eating rice with some powder!!!
I had a cousin of mine Prashanth visit me from Connecticut and we moved around Chicago/Niagara and quite a few places...I enjoyed his company too...also did the skydive with him... a lifetime experience one...
The time just kept moving...I have made good friends here...have known to tackle problems...be all by myself...when I am all set now and confident that I can survive in US independently..its time for me to go back.. I have started shopping gifts for all my relatives and friends...I have a mixed feeling to go back to India
Well..I guess I would get this opportunity again, but it looks like the chances are bleak..
The next time I land in US, i think it is going to be a different chapter again :)
I hope I dint bore you with this blog..This is my first blog and all comments are welcome!
Bye
Vinu
