I have my friend here!

My boss left after three days, and there were still a lot of things to do as part of settling down here. I was lucky to have my good old college friend Sreeku in Texas. He is doing his MS in a university town called Commerce which is around one and half hours drive from Dallas. He and his friends came to my hotel room on that Friday night and of course we had a blast. Outing with him and his Mallu friends gave me the much needed comfort and we even enjoyed a Malayalam movie (Classmates) from a Dallas theatre and had masala dosas from an Indian restaurant.

Sreeku wanted to go back on Saturday and he will be busy till next weekend. So the first thing I did was shifting from my current hotel to a hotel room nearby the client’s office, so that I can go to work by walking, till I get a car. So my second week in Dallas passed without many events and without any issues too. I go to work by walk at 8 AM and come back by 06:30 or 7 PM. Food was not a major problem, as I was not yet tired of these burgers and sandwiches.

But there were a lot of other things to learn. Since here the measurement system is not the familiar British system, it always took me some time to grasp things. Miles and not kilometers, Pounds and not kilo grams, millions and billions and not lakhs and crores, and the list continue. And getting an idea of the unit was not at all easy as for example, gallon means 3.785 liters. I still don’t know how to figure out how cold is this place by looking at weather forecast by converting from degree Fahrenheit to degree Celsius!

Here in USA, they make everything possible to automatic and avoids the human touch. So from coffee brewing equipment to coin operated washing and drying machines, it was a series of discovery and learning for me with minor blunders in between. ;)
Then there are these specific words like Elevators instead of Lifts and Restrooms instead of Toilets. Then, the usual polite words that you need to exchange with every person you meet, be it your colleague or the shopkeeper or the person at toll gate who collects the road tolls. ‘hey… how you doing….?”, “Am good… how about you?”, “have a good day”, “you too…” I am getting used to all these now :) .