Wow. I don’t know where to begin. The United States of
America!! This place has left me spellbound. After all those Hollywood movies
and certain epic scenes from Bollywood movies, coming to the United States
fulfilled the dream of a young boy who wished to travel over the seven seas. The beginning was
definitely discouraging and horrendous given my 36 hour delay thanks to
goibibo.com-the stupidest website to book your flight tickets. It lures you
into these schemes of cheap fares and then decides to change your flight dates
without passing the correct information to you. Nevertheless, the feeling of
being in the States superseded everything else.
I went off to sleep in the empty bus. As all
the students were heading towards their home, I was heading towards the
university. Plus this was one of those bus rides where you get to change the
time zone from central to eastern. As if my jet lag wasn’t enough to confuse me
with the time. The free wifi helped me contact my professor and he reached the
Purdue memorial union (PMU) to receive me. It felt great to finally meet my
professor and have the company of someone whom I could talk to. I am not the
loner kinds. I hate travelling alone. My professor is awesome. Purdue was
bucolic and urban at the same time. It was such a picturesque and comely view
that it reminded me of my freshmen year at IIT Guwahati. My professor took me
to his place and took one of my luggage bags himself. He let me facebook on his
macbook :P and let me chill in his awesome house. I am so glad to have such an
amazing guide.
Later, he came to my accommodation to see how my room was and
spoke to my sub lessor’s friends. We peregrinated across the campus and he
showed me various marts from where I could buy cheap groceries and which places
are economical etc. Now which prof will take you on foot just so that you could
remember the routes well? I felt happier every second.
Learning the ways..
I finally understood what a block meant! The numbering
system in the US is so organized. Although I still hate the fact that the
country hasn’t adopted metric system but the street and residential areas are
so well organized. On the roads you will find one of the sides to be only odd
numbered and the other side obviously even. The house numbers increase as you
go north of the street and decrease south. On a major junction the street is
divided as north and south and from the junction the numbering restarts. The
main roads have a specific number assigned to them and it helps you identify
how long the street is. Larger the number, smaller the length. The sign boards
shape for the road number lets you know whether the road is connecting two
states or it’s a highway or just a local road. It’s amazing.
Also, the
pedestrians are given the priority. When you are on foot and you want to cross
the road (obviously via zebra crossing) there is a push button for you to
activate the walk sign. As this is manual the priority is given to the
pedestrian to walk. Obviously you have to be careful though as a drunk retard
wouldn’t care for you. Everything here
is online. One seldom uses cash. Everything’s by card. Even at the petrol pumps
(or the gas stations here -_- ) you have to manually fill petrol. No one is
waiting for you. Labour is crazy expensive here and petrol is crazy cheap. Plus
here it is gallons. Extremely irritating. Anyway getting to know new stuff is
always fun (obviously Americans don’t think so otherwise it would have been a “Kilometer”stone
in their history). Hopefully I do well. Extremely excited and I hope this
intern comes to fruition.
