This one's mine. Lets just begin by saying I don't think I will have enough time to keep posting here every now and then given the amount of work I am gonna be given over the next..... (three years is it??) Been told that i would "hopefully" stick around for 3 yrs here. Which could mean two things a) "You won't be able to tolerate this place for 3 full yrs dude." b) "If you don't wrap up your job within 3 yrs, Phd or not, you're gonna be kicked out....... "
Given the current sequence of events, both scenarios are quite appealing to this fresh out of 5th year Dual Degree graduate, from IIT Bombay. "This country works on networking man! Build your contacts. Talk to people. Tell them about your work. Get to know about theirs" Yeah Right!
Anyway that's just the research here. Living here.... O boy! I wonder why people care to come all the way from multicolored, multivarious(that's probably not even a word) places like india to the monotony of this country. They call it the land of the big apple. (ok ok I know its just New York) But dude, you are in for a big shock! All apples here are of the same size. Wonder how they figured out which apple is bigger. Its as if they measure out each apple by a calliper before plucking it from the tree. Oh no they don't do that! They PREDICT the size of the apple that would grow on the tree before the seeds are planted. And its not just apples, its cabbages, cauliflower, onions, potatoes and truck loads of other crap.
Nothing absolutely NOTHING is left to the imagination! They predict a Hurricane Katrina. And when it hit New Orleans, they are like, hey! That shouldn't have happenned. How the hell did that go wrong. And spend a month and a few billion dollars figuring that "where did the prediction go wrong" No wonder they have very few people unemployed here.
You're not a meat eater? The first thing you gotta do is kick yourself hard. Then time for introspection. Ask yourself, what is meat? I went to one of the fast food outlets here and said, tell me what you have that has NO meat and I don't care what it is, I'll have that. He was kind enough to say. "We have 4 dishes that don't have meat. You can choose from any of these. This is lettuce, onion, chicken. No meat. This is mushroom, potatoes and salmon. No meat. This is mushroom, chicken and mozarella. No meat. This is onion and fish. No meat." I hear him and stare at him. Now you tell me. What the hell do I say? I told him I don't eat meat. He understood perfectly. I promised him that I would eat whatever he gave me that doesn't have meat. He gave me FOUR options! I couldn't possibly ask for more than that. Finally I had to break my promise, say thank you very much and go hungry.
I am trying to come up with a reasonable way of expressing myself now. I learnt in IIT to not be fussy about things. I only wish I had learnt that better. For the next time, I plan to say I wan't something that has no meat, no chicken, no fish. But if this guy comes up with some wierd food item like say pipedbrocolli or something, you could only imagine what I would do......... If you are a vegetarian comitting suicide is very simple. Just stop cooking!!
We used to end 4th year valfi profiles with, "All said and done, he is a very nice guy. Extremely helpful. Very friendly. Golden heart" and all that crap. I am going to take off from that one here and just say, this is a good experience. Makes you want to not come back here ever again!
