Perfume Factory

It saddens Norwegians that America still honors the Italian Columbus, who arrived late in the New World and by accident, who wasn’t even interested in New Worlds but only in spices. Out on a spin in search of curry powder and hot peppers- a man on a voyage to the grocery- he stumbled onto the land of heroic Vikings and proceeded to get the credit for it. And then to name it ‘America’ after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian who never saw the New World but only sat in Italy and drew incredibly inaccurate maps of it. By rights, it should be called Erica, after Eric the Red, who did the work five hundred years earlier. The United States of Erica, Erica the Beautiful, The Erican League.

Long long ago.. in the land  of twitterville, some bunch of guys were discussing on how a person changes his turkut/ tacetook profile location when he moves to another country and puts something on how he misses India and and and how he uploads new place pics.

Most of them being sarcastic.. I would say, in a southpark isshtyle, screw you guys !!!

The man, a social rascal, finds it very tough to leave everything that he has been with for past 20 years and stay away in a good land’s devils country.

How shall I tell how much I miss infybus, 1.5 hours commute, blore traffic, listening to music through headphones, a lovely nap and mostly importantly thinking of everything in every possible minute.

Here, commute ends before it begins. I will be in office in about ten minutes time.

Lazily lazy as I am, I never had prepared a cup of tea let alone cooking. I used to ask my mom even for a glass of water while lazing infront of tv or internet. Now I maintain whole flat here including cleaning of utensils, cooking, bringing vegetables for food, groceries, cleaning the house and hell lot  of such daily routine things. Well cooking is no big deal.. but cleaning all utensils that were used for cooking.. it is pain. I never cared about my things while I was in India. Here, everyday before I leave to outside, I have to make sure that all windows & doors are locked.. all gas points are off.. all lights are off.. AC is off.. all water points are off.. fridge door is closed.. there is  nothing cooking in microwave/oven.. and finally I will also have to make sure that main door is properly locked by pushing it twice just to make sure that it is locked..huh

Once  I come back from office, there is no one  to talk at home.. no family.. no friends.. there will be only two things to talk to.. the wall and myself.

Individualism is so high here.. that people either stay alone or stay with dog. They either stay in home or stay in car. For people like us who used to with spending time in groups.. it will be quite difficult.

You will either find cheese or pork in most of dishes you order. So here you will find mainly two types of people.. one who is very fat ( so fatty that he/she may explode anytime ) and other who is fit/slim ( fit because that person maintained it ).

People drink more beer/coke than water. A glass full of Coke / water will have half full of ice cubes in it.

Few good things.. you learn to greet a lot ( infact you will start to say hi even to strangers who come across you ), respect people irrespective of their positions, will really know what the work-life balance is.. there is a clear cut solid boundary between work and life.

Few bad things.. “Me first”, “No love.. all sex”, “eat beer.. pee beer” and many such worse things.

People start to work in IT companies after 30 years ( thats the age when they become little serious about  life ). So in a office, you can expect either uncles or aunties. Now need I tell how much I miss Blore DC that too on fridays ?

Traffic Signal is your GOD. Follow it else you are dead. Cars see nothing but signals. People never horn.. rarely honk. They honk when you really piss them off .

It is buddaas and buddiees who enjoy the life to the maximum extent here. They pour all pension money into a luxury car and a very luxurious bike. If you see a BMW bike on the road, I bet rider will be someone’s grandpa with someone’s grandma at the back seat.

The Erican League saga will continue.. America is modern India !!!

PS: Watched love aaj kal.. can be watched once.. deepika looks better.. saif asusual rocks.. This is second hindi movie and four in total in 1.5 months

Life has taken a little twist. It has  been a week since I have landed here.  Yes, I am in Uncle Sam’s land. It took almost 27 hours to travel 15000 kms. I had to change two flights one at Paris and other at New york.  Both are very huge airports. I have to travel through train and buses to change terminals at both airports. Although I had traveled through air before, but hadn’t got opportunity to travel on daytime. It was nice to see the land and ocean well above the clouds

Well talking about the city where I stay.. it is calm.. infact very very calm.. full of greenery and very well organized. People are seen hardly on roads. In bangalore, if you throw a stone it either hits dog or SE. But here, if you throw a stone, it either hits a car or another car. Public transport is pathetic. Life becomes tough without car. One must have car. Kansas City has spread across two states Missouri and Kansas. There is one state line road that divides these two. I work in Kansas City of Missouri state and I stay in Kansas City of Kansas.

Talking about the cars, one can get to drive the cars that one had never ever imagined of. People drive cars crazily. Traffic rules are always followed. Things cannot go wrong on roads and if they go.. don’t ask.

Everything is organized to the core.

Regarding the work, I am the 1oth infoscion who joined here for the client of size 500. Office environment is very good and office culture is very different from the one that we have in India. Loads of formalities, exchange of greeting s and smiles. Good thing about these people is they treat everyone with the same respect be it a CEO or a housekeeping guy. Everyone does their job and they do it properly. Working hours will be 8 hours usually from 8 to 4 or 9 to 5. People never stay in office after office hours unless required urgently. But one mentionable thing is .. if they work for 8 hours , they do only work and nothing else. Lunch break will be usually of half an hour. Most of times, people have  their lunch at their desk.  Like us, they too wait for Friday to come. There won’t be any important meetings during Fridays. People start leaving office from 3 pm. Everyone will be in weekend mood on Friday.

I am here on long term assignment. Hope, I soon get adjust with this place.

My tea-mies, Prazy and Amar, presented this before I come here ( I am still missing our daily tea sessions  )

I believe that everything happens for a reason and I hope this my new phase of life would make me better than what I am now. Onsite has  definitely a lot to learn from work perspective as well as life perspective.

Oh.. Grrr… when did I blog last time?

I apologize for such a long non-commercial break.  Where was I? I haven’t been anywhere.. I am here only in Bangalore doing well ( well ? ) .

It was not facing a blogger’s block or writer’s block or whatever.. I have been very busy for last few weeks. Well, you know, I work for a company which is 23 kms away from my home. Can you imagine that I travel 46 kms a day.  It takes 1 hour 15 mins in the morning and 1 hour 45 mins in the evening. That means I spend 3 hours daily in traveling. Thanks to the company, it provides bus facility which makes my commute easy. Otherwise, I can’t even imagine travelling such distance in such traffic in such time in bmtc bus ( well even the bus that I travel daily is also a bmtc bus for that matter but it is on contract.. so that means.. enough seats to sleep or to take rest or to listen to music or to read a book or to the whatever you want to )

You know long time back they have made a rule that every bus ( and obviously all employees who travel in buses ) should enter campus within 9. Thanks to them. Now i have my last bus at 7.30 AM !!! That means.. I have to wake up atleast 1 hour earlier. And the damn bus will be on right time and waits for none ( unlike cabs ). So most of times I endup running from home to bus stop . This is how my morning begins.

Offlate, I have rejoined the GYM ( this time .. the office gym ). Talking of gym, office gym is much much better than the one I used to go earlier nearby by my house.  Gym after office hours means… that much of delay in coming to home.  Being a lazy bum, I have started bunking gym also.. Hey wait.. not every time.. but only few times. Most of times, I bunk because of  office’s hectic schedule. Well that’s ok.. Because of all this, I reach home daily after 9 PM.

I read morning news paper with cup of tea at night.. i mean after i come from office. And after that dinner.. and some spamming on twitter ( well I do this most efficiently during commuting especially while coming back from office ) and some browsing and some chatting and some mailing. By the time, i finish all these, it will be almost 12 AM.  This is how my life is crawling. This is the reason why I am not able to blog.  Infact, I am unable to do anything. I am unable to study. I am unable to watch movies. I am unable to learn anything new. Life is just passing.. just like that. How can I organize myself in more better way? How should I manage time so that i can use that time to learn new things? Help? Pls?

I have a lot to do.. No time.. One life is definitely not enough !!!

Author: Unknown

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t know and may or may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.

You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren’t so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough to get to know better. You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while wining the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Source: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/text/quarterlifecrisis.html

More on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis