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Just because I have nothing else to do I thought of this. I can reminisce my experience it was not great

2nd september 2001. I landed there for an exam( I still think that these exams are a great scam to rip us off our money). I landed in heathrow airport after 10 hours in the airplane. After 30 min of grilling at the airport, I finally got into the picadilly line underground. I had 1 big suitcase. I found myself a seat in the far corner of the train. Just after I sat down, a scrawny big guy sat next to me and had a large can of lager in his hand. He was drunk, and then he started using the worst kind of expletives against indians and pakis, very disparaging things. Every sentence had a dozen f words in them. The funny part was he was saying this under his breath and no one else other than me could hear them. I tried my best to ignore him. I could not take him in on, no chance.

Sometimes in life, things happen to you and your body automatically reacts to them. The combination of sleeplessness, exam stress, homesickness, financial stress(the exam fees and flight were my 6 months of savings), 8.5 months pregnant wife at home, this overt racism, just overwhelmed me and tears started rolling down my cheeks. I do believe this is the only time I cried out of helplessness. So I was staring in front trying not to react to this guy, but sensing something wrong a portly asian lady(probably pakistani), came asked me what was wrong. I did not reply, but she was smarter, she just said come with me took me by my hand. then I explained to her. She went back and threatened to call the cops on the guy.

This ordeal went on for 1 hour and finally we got to victoria station. I had to get off here and change trains. I had to pee badly and as I was about to enter the loo, there was a revolving gate that did not move. You had to put 20 p in it to move. Now the smallest change I had was a pound coin. So with a full bladder and three bags I scouted for someone to give me change. The only guy who would give me change was a desi the only hitch was he took a pound coin and gave me back 20 p. So I ran back to loo, the problem was the big bag would not make it through the revolving gate, I decided a lost bag is better than ruptured bladder so left it there and ran in. After performed my duties I came back to find out the bag was gone. I ran looked around for a guy in a green jacket(police), and said I lost a bag. He told me that they get confiscated as they are security risk, He told me there would have been a public address announcement. The only thing I heard scream inside my head was I need to pee. After 1 hour of wrangling I got my bag back. Here one of the cops was a desi he helped make things easy.

So 5 hours after landing in heathrow I reached in my friends house(well shared house really). there was some hot desi khana, so just as I was thinking life was getting better things went south. after dinner I opened my suitcase to give the "package" that my friends mother gave me, found out that the whole suitcase stank of ginger garlic paste. yes you heard right, there was ginger garlic paste in the package that my friends mother gave me to give to him. I did not care for my other clothes as much as the fact that my suit now just smelled ginger and garlic. I had an exam interview in 3 days and my suit was unwearable. So the next day I had to find a dry cleaner but most of them need 5 days. So I found a guy who could dry clean it for 75 GBP if I wanted it the same day. Even he was making a face when taking my suit. that was 75 quid out of the 300 GBP I brought from india.

I was younger then, now I would have handled them differently.

The good news. I believe there is only so much of crap that is going to happen in ones life. I believe I finished 90% of the crap quotient on the first day itself and life was much better later on.

RK

Nothing as dramatic with my first few days. A couple of incidents that stick out for me:

- I arrived for my MS in August 2001. There was a pre-requisite course I wanted to get exempted from and the prof gave a few students the exam for the course. It was a open book exam. 4 of us were sitting in the same room taking it with no one supervising. One of the guys asked me for help on one of the questions and I helped him out. Next day I was summoned and turns out that I did not clear the paper. To make it worse the prof pointed out both me and the other person got a question wrong with the exact same errors. My first brush with plagiarism. Got a lecture about ethics and the prof said that he doles this lecture out to a few students from India each year. Two thoughts kept running in my head: First: Don't throw me out. Second: I had a TA with the same prof and I was counting on it to pay my fees. I didn't want to lose it. Thankfully the lecture was all I got but it changed my way of handling myself for the next 2 years.

- Went to the SSA (Social security administration) office to apply for a SSN. Took most part of the day with getting there and getting the work done. Was there with 3 other recently arrived students. We went to a quizno's and I balked thinking about the 200Rs. sandwich (4.5$). I had been in the country for 2 days and my head was still in conversion mode. 2 of us skipped the sandwich while the other two lectured us about getting out of conversion mode. They were right but it was still a few days before I could get rs49 = 1$ out of my head.

- I had reached out to 3 more guys going to the same university before I got there. These were to be my room-mates for the next 9 months. One of the got us together on my 10th day there and told us he found a great couch some one had left out to be grabbed. I remember marching about a mile holding one end of a very heavy couch. Not fun and still not sure if it was worth it.

My first day -

1. After my first ever aeroplane ride, I landed in August and on a particularly hot day in the US. On top of that I was wearing a suit - we were advised to a get a suit from India as its costly here :emcrook: (and somehow despite carrying 3 bags of 32 kg each and a handbag I didn't find space for it in my bags :e). To make matters worse, none of my 3 bags arrived with my flight. Not knowing what to do, I was just standing for about 1 hour at my aisle and checking other aisles to see if they arrived there. A good samaritan had been watching me standing there confused and he told me that I should go the airlines baggage office and let them know. I did that and they said they will deliver my bags within the next 48 hours to my residential address. Frankly, I was happy that they will deliver the bags as that meant that I wouldn't have to lug around those three 32 kg bags.

So there I was at the airport - a skinny brown guy of 21 years age wearing a suit that was totally out of place and waiting for some senior students to come pick me up. In hindsight I feel that that must have been some sight for Americans and others who were roaming around in shorts that day.

2. Finally the seniors arrived in a car and dropped me off at the place where I was supposed to stay temporarily till my roommates (decided before I had left India) and I find our own place. The guys with whom I was supposed to stay looked quizzicaly at me when I entered and just said Hi. I heard them talking later on and they were the kind of Bombay kids who speak exclusively in English and were used to American way of life even while in India. I can only imagine what they must have thought about me.

3. I entered my small room and decided to turn on the table fan as it was very hot. I just turned the knob once and it started whirring so fast that all the papers that were on the table flew away. I was a bit unnerved as I was in my senior's room (he had given it to me as he was in India at the time) and I had just messed up his table. I thought if this is the lowest speed what will the fan do at the highest?! Only later did I realize that fans in the US start with maximum first. :e Nevertheless, at the time I just decided that it is best to turn off the fan and just bear the heat. I turned off the fan and collected all the papers and kept them back on the table.

4. The other two guys in the house only used to eat non-Indian stuff for lunch and dinner and that meant they had only some Pasta and left-over pizza at home - both of which I frankly had no clue how to eat. So I just decided to eat some laddus from my handbag that my mom had forcibly kept despite my protesting (mom knows best! :e). I went out to get some water and started looking in the fridge for water or ice. I couldn't find anything. There was no jug of water in the kitchen and there was no "Filter" that I was used to getting water from at home. I was a bit confused and asked my housemates about water. They said "Just get it from the tap". I was not sure if I had heard it right - but didn't want to ask again...So I just thought may be American water is pure and doesn't need to be filtered. I drank some water directly from the tap as the glasses were dirty and I didn't want to now ask my roommates for cleaning supplies. :e

5. I was feeling a bit out-of-place and my housemates made no effort to even talk to me. They were busy watching some English movie and laughing/talking among themselves. So I thought it might be best to go back to my room, which I did. I started thinking about my parents and all my cousins who had come to drop me to the airport. It was a party of ~ 15 and my dad had hired a mini-bus to take all of us to the airport. I remembered my mom's face when she waived my goodbye. I remembered how all my family was looking through the glass and following me as I was doing my check-in and immigration at the Mumbai airport...It felt wierd to know that I am now alone and won't see my parents or my family till atleast anothe 1.5 years. I didn't know what to do so I decided that the best thing to do would be to sleep. I changed and slept in that small, hot room with the fan switched off! :emcrook:

So that was my first day/evening in the US. Fairly uneventful - yet life-changing.

I thought there was a thread alreday going on,
on this topic. Time to merge ?

http://www.r2iclubforums.com/forums/showthread.php/10933-Initial-days-in-US-of-A

:)

my bad so what do I do now. Just ask admin to merge them?

RK

rajradio;323262my bad so what do I do now. Just ask admin to merge them?

RK

LOL! "What do I do now" sounds like my kid on a bored Sunday afternoon. Just leave it, if we start merging all threads that are similar, there would hardly be any left! : )

My first day in the U.S. of A, I felt like a Columbini discovering America as I stepped off the plane. Couldn't have asked for a better Columbus to discover it with. :)

LOL! "What do I do now" sounds like my kid on a bored Sunday afternoon,


well isnt it a boring sunday afternoon, it is the end of the month so it is time make sure I get all my billing right. So what do I do I sit in my office and look at R2I.

RK

rajradio and sandeepskars - your experiences brought my memories back to me. How me, my wife and my son went through our early days in USA 25 years ago. For us everything looked very strange and were missing India very much and several times we had decided to go back but we controlled ourseleves and we are still in US. sandeepskars mentioned how every one were looking through the glass and following him as he was doing his check-in and immigration at the Mumbai airport...This happend to me and my wife also couple of months ago. When my son and daughter-in-law moved to Oaklahoma for good. Me and my wife had to see them off at the airport and me and my wife had our eyes fixed on him untill he is gone out of our sight. It was my dreadful experince. He is the only kid we have and all these time he was with us for 27 years but now he had to go and leave us on our own because his wife is an engineer and her experience is in oil indutries. Therefore she has no jobs in NJ for her kind of experince. My son got his transfer from the same company he is working for a retail drug company as pharmacist. Now we may not ever live with him. This is the part of life and we have to live it with and life continues. Allthough it is a bitter truth and nothing any body can do about it. I miss him a lot and love him very much.

Nice post, doc! Brought back memories of sorts!

Ok, I've got this 'crappy luck' when it comes to air travel . . I'm not joking . . . every time I fly international, there are either weather-related delays over 24 hours, flight cancellations, security risks causing delays and what not!

It all started in November 1997 . . my very first trip to the US . . . the Land of Dreams as it was often referred! My first client engagement was to be in Jacksonville, FL and I was told that I should be lucky to get to go to sunny Florida where the weather is always warm and the people always friendly! My flight from Chennai was to leave past midnight, so my dad came to the airport, bade farewell and left at around 10:00 PM just as it started to rain. Soon, it turned into a heavy downpour . . I called my sister's house from within the airport to confirm that my dad was back home safe and was waiting in line for the departure formalities. The board that displays flight status inside the terminal soon started showing delays for one flight after the other and soon the delays were turning into cancellations . . . I was hoping that since mine was an International flight, it may not be impacted . . but found out shortly that since there was a storm in Chennai, all flights were re-routed to other cities and there no flights landing or taking off from Chennai . . that is when I started to panic! Here I was, waiting to reach America to start a new job and a new life and I couldn't even take off to start!

Eventually, they announced the cancellation of the Lufthansa flight and asked for passengers to seek alternate arrangements at the airline counter - which by then, was chaos personified! I dragged my suitcases and bags to the counter and was told that I could fly out to the US the next day, after 24 hours, but from Mumbai and not Chennai since there were only limited outbound flights from Chennai back then . . so, second panic attack! Had no clue how to navigate my way through Mumbai and didn’t even know how to get there in the first place . . it turned out that the airlines did all the arrangements and changed my booking to leave on an early-morning flight to Mumbai and after spending the entire day there, depart to the US that night . . I then made and ISD call to the HR contact person I was assigned to here in the US and informed her about the delay . . . she asked me to call her back in 30 minutes and when I did, she had called their agent in Pune and had a hotel booked for me in Mumbai to spend the day . . it was around 1AM at that time and the airlines got a bunch of us to huddle in a crowded bus along with our luggage and put is in a hotel . . a decent one that too, just to spend exactly 5 hours . . we were rounded up again at 6:30 in the morning and taken to the airport and flew to Mumbai without any other problems.

Next stop Mumbai . . never been to this place . . landed there not knowing the place, the people nor the language . . felt truly like fish out of water . . I gave the name of the hotel to a taxi driver outside the local terminal and without negotiating the fare, I just got in . . . the cab driver turned on the meter and that made me relax a bit . . all along the way, the guy was saying stuff in hindi which I just could not understand . . .all I could tell him was “hindi maloom nahi” . . but he kept on speaking and I kept on ignoring him . . all the while, keeping an eye on the meter since I had very little money in Indian currency (around Rs.2000 or so) . . within 10 or 15 minutes he brought me to the hotel and I was pleased to see the meter read “60.00” . . . with an air of generosity, I gave him Rs.100 and was about to tell him to “keep the change” . . . but to my horror, the guy threw the hundred-rupee note on the seat of the car and started shouting . . once again in hindi . . panic attack – third time . . combined with rage and embarrassment, I asked him what his problem was . . . he then put his hand out and said in English: “500 rupees” . . . I took another 4 hundred rupee notes and gave it to him and said, “here, take this and go” . . that was my first welcome in Mumbai . . went into the hotel, checked myself in and did not leave my room until the end of the day . . around lunchtime, I went to the restaurant downstairs and showed to waiter what I wanted from the menu . . without speaking a word and made everyone who saw me that day, imagine me to be dumb or unable to speak . . which is exactly how I felt that day . . finally at around 8PM, I checked out of the hotel and asked the receptionist if they could help me get a cab to the airport . . fortunately, they had an “airport shuttle” that gave me a free ride to the international terminal which was probably less than a couple of miles away.

All problems aside, I finally board the flight onward to the US of A and reach Chicago after what seemed like an eternity . . . my then employer had provided a great handbook about how to navigate customs, baggage-claim etc. . . so I did all this with the ease of a seasoned traveler . . . I then found my way to one of the other terminals to board the flight to my final destination where my employer was headquartered - Pittsburgh . . the itinerary was to stay there for a day, attend orientation and then proceed to the client location in sunny Florida . . . my flight from Chicago left on time and I reached Pittsburgh around 5PM on that late November evening . . the first shock I had was when I looked out the window while landing, it was completely dark outside . . . I mean pitch dark . . with a few street lights here and there . . . for some reason, that was never in the handbook and I had no idea about the short days and longer nights for half the year! I step out of the plane and got the next shock of my life . . it was so bitterly cold and I could feel the bone-biting chillness inside the airport terminal . . . the problem was, while everyone wished me well on my voyage to sunny Florida . . . it must have escaped their attention to warn me that Pittsburgh was more towards the north of the country and that it could get really, really cold in late November . . and there I was with jeans and a half-sleeved T-shirt!!! J

I collected my baggage all the while, shivering from cold and excitement and proceeded to walk out to the person who would be waiting for me to take me to my hotel room! And there was the next shock – there was no “Harry” waiting with a placard with my name on it . . . panic attack number four - I looked around for any sign of a friendly person who might recognize this “Indian in distress” but nope, everybody was going about their business oblivious of the fact that this ill-clad chap was shivering in his pants, literally! I quickly went back into the warmth of the terminal and looked for a phone to make a call . . . called my HR rep to find out what was going on and there she was, driving out of town to her friend’s house since it was Thanksgiving the next day!

Now I didn’t have a problem about where or why she was going . . but I did have a problem with the fact that she failed to inform Harry that I would be arriving a day later than originally planned due to the flight delay in Chennai . . . so, Harry had come and gone the previous day and picked up others who were scheduled to arrive along with me from other cities in India . . . I happened to be the only one from Chennai who had missed the flight and arrived a day later! So, she tells me to take a cab to the hotel where I was supposed to have a confirmed reservation and if not, just to mention “the company name” and they would take care! Angry, frustrated and hungry . . I once again came out of the terminal and saw there were cabs parked outside . . at that point, I could not feel the cold due to the adrenalin effect that had triggered off all sorts of thoughts in my mind about my fate . . I asked a cop standing outside about how I might get a cab to take me to my hotel and seeing my plight he was good enough to get me on my way . . I rode the 20-minute cab ride to the hotel in anticipation of what might be in store for me . . the cabbie asked me questions about where I was from, what I was doing etc. . . and I don’t even remember if I answered him at all . . finally, reached the hotel and thankfully, my reservation was still intact . . checked in, went into my room and felt better!

And then, I was hungry as hell . . luckily, while pulling into the driveway of the hotel, I saw a McDonalds and a Burger King right outside the premises . . so I headed out in the cold once again and got something to eat and headed straight back to my hotel room to get warm again.

How I spent the next 4 days on my own, alone in the hotel room, feeling cold and lonely and eating food from McDonalds/Burger King for breakfast, lunch and dinner and my adventure to the Kohl’s store nearby to buy a sweater/jacket, is a story for another day!

This isn’t just an isolated incident about my ‘luck while traveling’! Ever since, every single time that I have traveled alone, I’ve had different kinds of weird incidents that have caused all sorts of delays/problems. Fortunately, it happens only during international travel AND when I travel alone! Maybe it’s the curse that my wife put on me to keep my eyes/mind from wandering elsewhere!!! But I always tell my close friends and family – not to book their travel on the same day/flight as mine for there is bound to be some problem or the other! I kid you not!!!