Its my favo"u"rite phrase when I am speaking animatedly to any ungrateful Indian born American-aspiring person:)
One of the first things I observed (ah yes, thank you, of course I am super intelligent and very keenly observant) when I got to the US was how people let you go ahead in line, how relaxed they are when they wait for thier turn at things, how they don't push and fight for stuff. And almost immediately on the heels of this observation, there came the realization (yeah didn't I say I was intelligent;) )that they don't do the pushing and the pulling because they don't have to. One of my friends in Madison (WI) was saying to me (he had been in Madison a year by then) about how much he admired the patient waiting that people do in lines, how they never try to "snatch" your turn etc etc, and I said to him, yeah well but they know that they will eventually get their turn, eventually get that part of the pie, that they know their name is written all over.
Switch to India, "third world" country (How I HATE that term), 1/3 the area of the US, 3x the popoulation. People, no lets say women, to make it more interesting;), are waiting in line for say, water, and they know that if they are too late then they will end up with nothing at the pump. So the woman in the very end tries to push herself to the front, which annoys the other woman in the front because now she will be the loser because this other loser is going to so not be fair and snatch away her water from her. And so she starts a brawl to regain her supremacy, and so on and so forth and you know what happens after that. Imaging you are showing this on a tape to one of our desi babus in the US, I can bet 95% of them will first say that is India man, everyone fights, no one knows decency, "Decency ka naamo nishaan nahi hain logon me, brutes" etc etc, look at gora log, how decent, how patiently they wait their turn!!
Are baba, underlying cause is such, no one tries to go beyond skin deep. People, if the US did not have 6 of the 7 world's great lakes not to mention 2 HUGE oceans thrown in, AND not to even go near mentioning that abundancy of natural resources, then these gora log would fight even more shamelessly:) You beg to differ? Just try it!!! Have you ever noticed how horrible traffic is in any populated city's downtown like SFO, NYC, what are you talking about following rules!!:))Such a joke@!!
How many of the desi guys who complain about how Indian roads are pathetic (Mind you , except me and a few more intelligent ones like me, I have heard this complaint from EVERY single desi here) even stop to think how the gora logs would react if they were put in the same traffic conditions as India. I am sorry to hurt any "Ohh the US is such an amazing place, so luxurious, so orderly, so neat" sentiments, but put just one Indian city's population worth of people on any 4 lane road here and you get as many brawls and reckless drivings and breaking rules (and gunshots to add for a bonus), in the great land of opportunities.
What I always say to people who mention in front of me about how much more better the traffic in the US is, how much more sincere/honest people are when waiting turns etc, is, its all a "survival of the fittest" game in India, here there is no need to play that game, because thank god, this country has all resources in abundance. And never mind for when they fall short, there is always another country out there that they can go to war with to bring home the spoils!! And god save this country when its populace has to play survival of the fittest games. At least in India you feel a little lehaaz when you go to fight, you have some respect for elders, you give your culture some value and these kind of limit the range of how indecent you can get, in the US it is all "Don't know, don't care"!! So don't give me any of that crap about how the US is so much better than India in terms of such and such, because all I would say is, "Baby, you ain't seen nothing of the dirt yet!!" Amen.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Ford and the US
I had heard a while ago, one very, if I can call it, outrageous, statement by the President of the great United States, Mr, Bush, that the third world countries must try to control their consumption of oil, gas (petrol) and so on and so forth. At that time I was quite taken aback that he should be making such a statement, now I thought it was time to write about it.
We recently went on a road trip to Los Angeles from the Silicon Valley, probably about 1500 miles round trip. We rented a car from Avis, and we got a Ford Taurus. I was totally fearing getting a Ford as they just guzzle gas, oh my god! So this one used to go bust in like 300 miles for a full tank. If anyone has ever noticed, most cars in the US that Americans drive are American cars, so much for patriotism. So much so also that cops use Fords too. ALL of them, I haven't seen one exception to this rule so far in my 4 years driving career in the US. Its almost like a symbol of how much gas the US gulps down every passing day.
Consider also that 98%, I would dare say, of the vehicles in the US are auto gear and not manual. There goes your mileage plummeting down, boom!!!! I have seen even HUUUUUUGE trucks and heavy load container vehicles run on auto gear. How insensitive can you get about how much oil goes into driving these monsters around your highways Mr. Bush?? Also, consider that the US has either the roads or the planes. In how many non-busy cities or non-university towns can you find good public transportation?? In India I know for a fact that at least 70% of the people travel in trains and buses and other pool vehicles like the autos. We swear at them, we curse them, we wish we had a car and a vehicle of our own, even so we use mainly two-wheelers. And ALL our cars are manually geared which means we drink less petrol per person per day. Plus we don't take road trips across the country, nor does cross country in India mean 3000 miles:) And I know for a fact that if the US had a train system even one quarter as good as the one in India (which we so callously call "third world"), I would have gladly taken a train to go from revered Silicon Valley to even more revered Los Angeles.
So effectively if I were to say that for approximately three times your population we consume 1/3 of what you consume in gas, I won't be too skewed. And then here is what the US says to the world: The third world countries must try to control their consumption of gas and fossil fuels...
......so much for the good joke and your great sense of humo"u"r (oops world affairs)..
We recently went on a road trip to Los Angeles from the Silicon Valley, probably about 1500 miles round trip. We rented a car from Avis, and we got a Ford Taurus. I was totally fearing getting a Ford as they just guzzle gas, oh my god! So this one used to go bust in like 300 miles for a full tank. If anyone has ever noticed, most cars in the US that Americans drive are American cars, so much for patriotism. So much so also that cops use Fords too. ALL of them, I haven't seen one exception to this rule so far in my 4 years driving career in the US. Its almost like a symbol of how much gas the US gulps down every passing day.
Consider also that 98%, I would dare say, of the vehicles in the US are auto gear and not manual. There goes your mileage plummeting down, boom!!!! I have seen even HUUUUUUGE trucks and heavy load container vehicles run on auto gear. How insensitive can you get about how much oil goes into driving these monsters around your highways Mr. Bush?? Also, consider that the US has either the roads or the planes. In how many non-busy cities or non-university towns can you find good public transportation?? In India I know for a fact that at least 70% of the people travel in trains and buses and other pool vehicles like the autos. We swear at them, we curse them, we wish we had a car and a vehicle of our own, even so we use mainly two-wheelers. And ALL our cars are manually geared which means we drink less petrol per person per day. Plus we don't take road trips across the country, nor does cross country in India mean 3000 miles:) And I know for a fact that if the US had a train system even one quarter as good as the one in India (which we so callously call "third world"), I would have gladly taken a train to go from revered Silicon Valley to even more revered Los Angeles.
So effectively if I were to say that for approximately three times your population we consume 1/3 of what you consume in gas, I won't be too skewed. And then here is what the US says to the world: The third world countries must try to control their consumption of gas and fossil fuels...
......so much for the good joke and your great sense of humo"u"r (oops world affairs)..
Labels:
Observations
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Daily Digest 11/30/2005
Its been a long long time since I posted anything:) I tried dabbling with some pictures, but too much HTML work, so gave up trying;)
Too many hectic days have passed since I last wrote about the Tech museum. We went on a family vacation to LA and Las Vegas. Took my folks to Disney and Universal (standard pilgrimage huuh??!!) and then to the Hindu temple in Malibu. Met up with Subhash's bro, was nice to see him. Went to Riverside and met Shruti's parents as well, and her sis, she hasn't changed one bit:) It was nice to meet them all after so long. Then headed for Vegas. Vegas was more like a "been there, done that":reached late, rushed around, watched stuff in a hurry the next morning and headed straight back home. But the drive back home, now that is a totally different horror story, hours and hours went into inching through traffic, boy the worst long distance ride for me. I just gave over the driving to Subhash and slept after I crawled through nearly 6.5 hours of traffic and making only 200 miles towards home:))
Heard about Teju's batchmate's murder, it was very sad. Just how much are we doing to make things better, zilch, zero, null. At least I haven't done one thing in my life for the upliftment, so to say, of the society, what a waste am I!!:(
Something else that made me feel most ordinary and so not-special was an article (actually two) I read about Sudha Murthy's family. If yuo don't know who she is, then may I suggest Google search for you;) But anyway, I read these articles, and her whole family is so much into achieving and dreaming and building and becoming famous, makes me feel quite useless actually:((
So goes on my life...
Too many hectic days have passed since I last wrote about the Tech museum. We went on a family vacation to LA and Las Vegas. Took my folks to Disney and Universal (standard pilgrimage huuh??!!) and then to the Hindu temple in Malibu. Met up with Subhash's bro, was nice to see him. Went to Riverside and met Shruti's parents as well, and her sis, she hasn't changed one bit:) It was nice to meet them all after so long. Then headed for Vegas. Vegas was more like a "been there, done that":reached late, rushed around, watched stuff in a hurry the next morning and headed straight back home. But the drive back home, now that is a totally different horror story, hours and hours went into inching through traffic, boy the worst long distance ride for me. I just gave over the driving to Subhash and slept after I crawled through nearly 6.5 hours of traffic and making only 200 miles towards home:))
Heard about Teju's batchmate's murder, it was very sad. Just how much are we doing to make things better, zilch, zero, null. At least I haven't done one thing in my life for the upliftment, so to say, of the society, what a waste am I!!:(
Something else that made me feel most ordinary and so not-special was an article (actually two) I read about Sudha Murthy's family. If yuo don't know who she is, then may I suggest Google search for you;) But anyway, I read these articles, and her whole family is so much into achieving and dreaming and building and becoming famous, makes me feel quite useless actually:((
So goes on my life...
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