It's been a long break since my last post. Somehow I managed to overcome my laziness to write something. As usual, I am not sure as to what I am going to write so let's see whether it would make any sense.
It's been almost 2 months in USA and a whole new experience all together. The state where I am living in, Louisiana is quite different from rest of the country. Almost all the locals are crazy about food and that's why obesity is a big problem here. And by obesity, I don't mean the desi definition, i.e. a few extra pounds above the waist line. Here, it's a lot of extra pounds precariously bulging from wherever you could possibly imagine. As a part of the initial settling-in process, I attended a cross-cultural workshop where I was given some sort of a check-list to make out whether I've adapted to this place. Here are some excerpts from that list:
"You know when you've adapted to New Orleans when….
Conversations when you go out to eat are restaurant meals that you've had in the past and restaurant meals that you are going to have in the future.
You have gained 10 pounds and you don't care.
Every time you hear sirens, you think it's a parade or a wedding.
You know how long you have to run to a store, get what you need and get back to your car before you get a parking ticket …. "
Well, I must say that I am far from being fully adapted but the indoctrination is slowly but surely going on.
Another thing that's totally new for me is to prepare, eat, and most importantly, appreciate my meals. Given the fact that my resume boasted of culinary delights like maggi, tea, and coffee in the past; it was a challenge for me prepare something like a moong sabut or a masoor ki daal, which seemed to be in a completely different league of cooking all together. But thanks to my 22-year "mummy ko cook karte dekha hai" experience, I have fared well and have managed to prepare edible meals. After a terrible and traumatic paani to kaagaz transition, I've found out that there is one more thing I sincerely and truly detest. That's ironing and after all my sincere efforts, I've come to the conclusion that wasting nearly 20 minutes on ironing a shirt when it's going to get wrinkled within the first few minutes I step in my car, is not worth the effort.
It's time to sleep now. Decent comeback, if I may say so. Hopefully, the scribbler will be back soon.
