Good Bye America

It’s been exactly one year since I landed in America. Due to some important personal priorities I decided to go back to India for good. A decision I took after careful thoughts and a decision I will not regret in future (I hope). But I had to do lot of explaining wherever I go as everybody wondered why I am losing out on a lifetime opportunity to get settled in US. Well… US is not that far away now… I have my visas still valid and I can be back here if I wish so in future.

The last few weeks in US were eventful. The same frustration and troubles I had faced while settling down here was repeated when I had to get myself detached from here. Starting from vacating the apartment, ending electricity, internet and phone connections to selling my car and house hold items was another kind of experience. Nobody was willing to give me back my deposit in time and I am keeping my bank account open and fingers crossed while waiting for their checks. When the person who is supposed to replace me at work here didn’t get the visa in time, I had to extend my stay for two more weeks in the last minute and stay in a hotel near by the office.

During the farewell lunch given by colleagues I was asked what I will be missing most in America once I go back. It will be the good long roads here. I thoroughly enjoyed driving nice vehicles on nice roads without any hassles (and without any Police tickets). Then it will be the varieties of food ranging from the Sirloin burger at ‘Jack in the Box’ to Asiago Chicken at ‘Apple Bees’.

Did I enjoy my one year stint in US? Yes… very much. Actually this has now become my longest stint abroad and the only place where I felt like settling down for a longer time. Good money, best infrastructure, clean environment, friendly people … reasons are many for falling in love with this country. The only problem I see is the longer waiting periods for getting the residency/citizenship or even visas for that matter. If our folks from home have to come here urgently, we will be helpless if the visa gets rejected. And it takes more than a day to reach home from here in case of emergencies.

I may come back again… but for now… good bye America!

Anniversary Again

I can’t believe it’s our third wedding anniversary today. Time is flying, and here I am still believing (or trying to believe) that I am a newly married guy! Lol!




We decided to celebrate it at one of the signature building of Dallas, Reunion Towers of Hyatt Regency Hotel. It is an easily recognizable landmark for Dallas and a dramatic addition to the evening skyline with its lighted dome and flashing light show.


The tower has a public observation deck as well as a restaurant and the Dome that rotate at the rate of one revolution every 55 minutes.


A less than two minute elevator ride propelled us 55 stories to the top of the Tower for a breathtaking 360-degree view of Dallas, while enjoying delicious food.



We reached there before the sunset and experienced the changing views of cityscape from day to night.

First Vacation From US

A trip to the home country is always much awaited and thrilling. But our first vacation to India from US happened so quickly when my brother’s wedding date got finalized. We got few weeks and spent almost every day for shopping. A camcorder was also bought in a hurry to capture some scenes from here for the loved ones at home. Guess how we spent the last days before travel…. Shooting the neighborhood and acting in the home video!

The season was busy with air travelers and I had to pay dearly for the last minute tickets. Started from Dallas on Monday (9-Jul-2007) after noon and reached Kochi through Frankfurt and Bahrain on Wednesday (11-Jul-2007) early morning. Another four hour drive from there to reach home at Manjeri was really tiring after this entire air trip.




Kerala (and also other parts of India) was hit by a rare form of viral fever known as Chikungunya causing many people to die. Besides there was the worst monsoon ever had, flooding most of the areas and affecting power distribution and transportation. Thankfully none we know were affected by this rare fever though many were sick with other kinds of fever common in monsoon. All this with the limited days for planning a not so small wedding event, made our vacation really hectic. But still, it was fun to gather will all family members again. I didn’t even notify many of my friends about my vacation as I knew there won’t be enough quality time to catch up with everyone.

Finally, the wedding event happened on 21-Jul-2007 without much hassles and the day was full of sunshine. Next day, we started our return trip completing our 15 day vacation out of which 5 days were spent for travel.

US Independence Day

It's Independence Day here in US and a holiday for us on July 4th. Different cities in Dallas FortWorth metroplex area celebrated it in style. I went to Addison first, where the celebration begain with an air show.

There was a huge crowd attending this mega party... Dressed up in fancy attires...

Kids with painted faces...

and in flag colored clothes...

Some distributing flags...

kids playing with them...

and some using them in style...

the party ended with fireworks...

then I went to Las Colinas to see the Symphony Orchestra performing on stage...

Over all... it was a cool break in the middle of a week... :)

Being a victim of Credit Card Scam

When I was going through my detailed bank account statement, I noticed $10 Debit with the description 'wli*shopperdiscount'. I didn't have any clue on how I spent that money on that day, but thought may be it is just my memory issue. Later I saw this repeating every month and I decided to investigate it immediately. But as usual kept postponing till it was 5 months. A simple Google search with 'wli*shopperdiscount' pointed me to a blog post which informed that it is from a company named Web Loyalty and it is possible to get refund by contacting them.

They refunded me $50 they had taken from my account and also explained me how the whole thing happened. Those who are interested in reading this long story, go ahead...

There were hundreds of comments to that blog post, from various people explaining how they got ripped off without their knowledge. Many however mentioned that, they got their money refunded. One comment was from a VP of Web Loyalty asking everyone to contact him for an explanation.

So I wrote the following email to him:

" In my bank statement, I noticed $10 charged every month with a description WLI*SHOPPERDISCOUNT 800. One blog site (http://leblog.exuberance.com/2006/03/why_does_wlisho.html) pointed out that this is from your organization and I saw your comment saying that you will help us identify the issue and refund the money I lost.

As far as I remember I have not subscribed for this service. Like others noticed, may be some of the web site I transacted must have sold my CC info to you or must have made me click on an offer without disclosing that I will be charged every month for something that I do not want or know.

My credit card ends at XXXX and I request your immediate action to refund all the money taken from my account. I also request you to provide more information on how this happened, so that I can post those details in blogs and let my friends and families know. I am very much interested and eager to know that how you are going to explain this action as hundreds of people are complaining about this and your web site still claims that its a good business model. As evident from the blog posts, your business model has made many of us to take the decision of not shopping online from the web site from where we got trapped (may be since we didn't read all the fine prints!). "

I got an immediate response as below:

" Thank you for contacting us so that we can address your concerns. 

We are sorry if there was any misunderstanding regarding the membership as we strive to make our offers as clear as possible.   As you requested, we've cancelled the membership and issued you refunds for the 5 monthly membership charges that you incurred.     These refunds should appear shortly in your credit card account depending upon how frequently your credit card issuer posts transactions.  

I will be happy to provide you with details on how the membership was initiated so that your concerns are fully addressed.    I am in the process of collecting those details and will send them to you tomorrow in a separate email.  " 

And few days later another email with attachments showing their offer and email templates:

" As you requested, I am providing you background information on how the Shopper Discounts & Rewards membership was initiated.  

On December 25, 2006, when you completed an online transaction with www.wirefly.com, you enrolled in Shoppers Discount & Rewards by clicking on a $10 cash back award, entering your email address twice and clicking “YES” on an enrollment button. I've attached the actual page through which you joined. Please note that directly above the section for entering email addresses, the text advises that you are authorizing the secure transfer of your name, address and credit or debit card information to Shoppers Discount & Rewards for billing and benefit processing.   Immediately after accepting the membership offer you were presented with a membership acknowledgement page and within 10 minutes a membership confirmation email with details on how to use the membership was sent to your email address.  These are also attached for your review.    

We sent you seven more emails from January 2, 2007 through May 24, 2007 with details of the membership.   The one that was sent to you on January 11, 2007 informed you that your 30-day free trial would end in 14 days and that you would be billed unless you cancelled your membership.   If you would like me to send you copies of these emails, just let me know.  

I hope this helps to clarify how the membership was initiated and why you were charged the membership fees.   Please contact me at consumeraffairs@webloyalty.com if you have suggestions for improving our service or to further discuss this matter.  "

I verified my email archives and found this claim to be true. Now I remembered that I had clicked on some offer that appeared as harmless without actually reading the details.

By this time they had refunded my $50 as 5 different transactions of $10.

So now you know the whole story! And one of the comment to another blog post with this issue from a person claimed to be WebLoyalty employee says it all...

"WebLoyalty depends on idiots like you to NOT notice this stuff. To be blinded by the idea that you are getting something for “free”. To not look at your credit card statement so charges go through every month. Its unbelievable the amount of dummies out there that fall for this stuff. Even if you do catch the charges eventually, and get a refund they still made money off of you by collecting interest on your money when they had possession of it."

Vinodayathra

Another new Malayalam movie release here in US. Watching Vinodayathra from Fun Asia theater in Dallas this weekend was fun. Though it does not meet the earlier standards of Sathyan Anthikkad movies, it surely was entertaining and to some extend thought provoking. Sathyan throws pieces of all prevalent social issues in Kerala with an incredible humor sense. I liked Dileep in his innocent irresponsible youth who is trying to avoid the bigger responsibilities of life. Like most of us, until there is a compelling reason, we tend to live the easy life trying to turn a blind eye on issues we face daily, while discussing in detail about Iraq war and Bush Administration. Mukesh reminds us of his role in Godfather genre movies. Meera Jasmine is at her best always, but this particular role looked so repetitive.

The theater was almost full when we watched this movie. Obviously all of them must be Mallus as there was no subtitles for the movie. There was this family sitting just behind me and one of the kids (obviously born in America and speaks only English) kept on asking his dad every now and then what the characters were talking. Dad patiently translated all Malayalam dialogues for his kid to understand the movie better. It was funny, and at the same time pity to hear him say things like "She is asking him what is the cost of one pound of rice?".

Zero Gravity

I was reading a TIME article on how Professor Stephen Hawking experienced the Freedom of Weightlessness by flying in a special aircraft 'G-Force One'. That's when I knew that there are ways to experience zero gravity without going to space.

Earlier I had read news about 'Virgin Galactic'. They are the the world’s first spaceline, which is on track to offer commercial spaceflight for the public. Then there was this article in Malayalam news papers that confirmed that one of the few selected for their first flight is a Mallu (The 'Sancharam' travel TV show host).

I read all the related news then and found the idea too much tempting. A trip to the space to watch earth from top and experience zero gravity will be surely the ultimate of all trips. But the cost of $200,000 (almost 80 Laks Indian Rupees) is too high for me!

Now here is 'G-Force One' from 'Zero G'. Its a normal Boeing aircraft modified to fly a parabolic flight maneuvers that will create temporary weightlessness. And the total cost is only $3,500. Now this is really tempting!

Dust Storm

It was a sunny and clear day, when I went out for a weekend lunch buffet. Though there was a ‘High Wind Warning’ and ‘Blowing Dust Advisory’ from National Weather Service, the wind was not very strong at that time.

And what I saw when I returned home after lunch was really amazing. The wind was so strong making driving difficult. The whole sky was yellowish orange and the visibility was reduced.

When I stepped out of the car, I could feel the dust in my throat and eyes. The powerful wind storm has carried with it a massive amount of dust giving an ominous orange tint to the skyline.

Later from news sites I gathered more details about this event. The wind speed was more than 50 miles (80+ kilometers) per hour. This dust storm was first of its kind in Dallas area and has caused lots of problems across North Texas. Thousands of homes were without power and hundreds of flights were cancelled at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Luckily, everything was fine at the area where I was living, and the strong wind lasted only till night.

Am I a Gadget Guy?

Yes… Now I think, I am a GG (Gadget Guy). When I first visited Fry’s Electronics here in Dallas, I was totally amazed to realize that this big super market is just for all these electronics gadgets. My amazement doubled when I saw people moving around pushing big shopping carts and picking these gadgets as if they are doing their weekly grocery shopping. Then at my office, I saw people scanning Friday news paper ads for deals in these gadgets. Now I am afraid I am becoming one among them… the very lot whom I was amazed at first.

I started buying these items as it turned out to be necessities (the usual excuse!). First I bought an 80 GB external USB hard drive which was so slim and cute and was costing only 100 dollars. Did you notice that ‘only’ word I used? That is the problem here when you see all these shopping deals. You feel like you are getting it for such a good price.

Next was an external key board and mouse which was essential for spending extended hours with a laptop.

Now I bought my dream laptop. An Intel Core 2 Duo with preloaded Windows Vista was available from Dell with a great deal of 1000 dollars. I have all the details about it at my technical blog CT Labs and the specifications are on my website The Cool Wayfarer.

Having another laptop demanded that I should have a wireless router to setup a wireless network at home. I can connect to the broad band internet from both laptops from anywhere in my apartment. So I bought a Netgear Router, again for a deal. It was only 20 dollars.

What is the great fun if you have a wonderful laptop and no microphone to speak with your friends over net? Moreover the speech recognition system in Vista is surely worth a try as I am looking forward to having all these blogs done just by dictating it to my laptop. The Gigaware headset with noise canceling microphone was bought through another reduction sale deal that cost only 10 dollars.

I also bought another external mouse (this one was really cute as you can wind-up the cord around the mouse and pack it nicely) for the new laptop. The sad part (or the amazing part?) is that I do not see an immediate end to this gadget shopping spree as my wish list is getting longer day by day. Things like Digital SLR Camera, More memory cards, USB Flash drives etc should be bought for sure when these people are selling them with great deals… right?

Family Man

Being a family man back again is cool. Life now moves in an orderly manner. No more sleepless nights with computer and sleeping days on weekends. Week days now starts with a good break fast. Then I carry the tiffin with lunch to work. These days, the work pressure is less compared to those initial days and I can be back home in time.

Weekends are busy with shopping. We tried all shopping malls like Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Fiesta. There are lots of Desi super markets too where you get Indian grocery. The problem with most of them was that they sell expired items. Most of the packets will not even have the expiry dates displayed. Also we did lots of experiments with cooking and at times we had my friends join us for lunch.

It is not uncommon these days to meet your long lost friend from another country. Abhilash was my colleague at Soft Systems, Kochi and ever since he left Kochi for his studies in UK, we have never met. Now he is here, right here in Dallas... actually just few miles away from my apartment for a short term project from his company in Pune.

Icy Days Again!

As I had mentioned earlier, snow and chilly weather is not that common in Dallas. It usually happens just once or twice in a year. But this year, things are different.




We had long days of chilly weather and there were ice and snow showers on two days again. On both these days, we were asked not to venture out to office and hence I worked from home.

Texas Driving License

The Texas DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) web site mentioned that a license from foreign country is valid here for an year as long as that country gives the same privileges to US citizens. Since India was among that list of countries, I was driving with confidence using my Indian Driving License and keeping a copy of this statement from website. And the good thing here is that cops will never stop us and verify our papers as long as we don’t get into any troubles. However, having a Texas Driving License was important, as I am going to be here for some time.

The first step was to download the 104 pages Texas Drivers Handbook and study it properly to clear the written test. One of my friends here already had an experience of appearing for the test thinking that all you need is common sense to clear an exam. He failed miserably. I started going through the Handbook page by page and was comfortable to appear for the test until I saw some of the sample questions like "What is the maximum number of inches that you may lawfully allow an object to extend beyond the left fender of your car?", "If a child runs into the road 45 to 50 feet ahead of your car, what is the highest speed from which you can stop with good breaks without hitting him?"?", "What’s the maximum fine for driving without license?". It was not about just common sense or understanding the sign boards. I had to learn all these numbers and figures and calculations.

Finally, on 2006 November 29th I went to the DMV office, applied for Driving License and Identity Card (This Photo Card, will be issued immediately, and can be used for identification purposes till I get license.). Cleared the vision test by identifying the traffic signal colors and reading those small letters. The examination was computerized and I passed it with 80% marks.
I was already comfortable in appearing for the driving test, but I had to wait until one my friends was available to come along with me on a working day to DMV office, as they required that another person with valid license should accompany. On 2007 January 5, I went for the driving test and had to wait for more than an hour for my turn. A trooper first verified the car to make sure all indicators and break lights are working properly. Then she accompanied me asking me giving the driving directions. It took around 10 minutes and we went through main roads, and small testing my skills on driving, observing signals and other vehicles, changing lanes, etc. Finally there was parallel parking, and I did it well, though it was my first attempt at it. I passed the test, though I got a bad score in observing.


I got my temporary driving license issued immediately and my Photo Card will come by post within few weeks.

Dallas Mallus and Lunch Buffets

Living the life as bachelor here is not that boring as expected, thanks to my friends here. Through my engineering classmate Sreeku, now I am in good friends with most of his friends from the University here. Syam, Reno, and Biju are the other members in this newly formed Dallas Mallus gang. Weekends are fun with outings, food and movies. New Year Party was one of such events and we all really had a good time.

Sometimes we cook from my apartment or we go out for a lunch buffet. Weekend buffet means unlimited food for 8 or 9 dollars. We always make sure we eat as much as we can, and force to sleep ourselves the whole after noon.

There is one Kerala restaurant here in Dallas. The one and only Tharas! They have weekend buffet with such wonderful and nostalgic items like 'Kappa & Meen Curry', Beef Fry, Kerala Meals, etc. Then there is Mayuri where even masala dosas are served without any limits during buffet.

The Fun Asia movie theatre here shows latest movies in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Though its 10 dollars, its always fun to watch movies from theatres. If there are no good movies, we take a DVD and watch it together from my room in laptop.

Honda Passport

The wait is finally over. No more browsing through EkNazar or CraigsList web sites looking for a used car. My new friend here Syam introduced me to one of his family friends who had a car to sell. It was an SUV. A really big Honda Passport. 2000 model. It was looking really good. Hundred thousand plus miles was already recorded, but everything looked still fine. I was bit doubtful about myself in handling a big car. But the thought that this car comes at a good price, and saves me from the trouble of searching and locating another one overtook my worries. More over, here in Texas, roads are wide and parking lots are spacious! An SUV is safer and surely a better option for long trips. Then the short test drive I did proved that, it was not that hard to drive an SUV as I had thought.


The deal was made. Brought the car to my apartment and parked nicely in the parking lot. As a first step took Liability Insurance from GEICO over phone and got the documents by email immediately. The next morning, I wanted to take a long drive. I just opened the front door to get in... Alas... The door was bit heavy and before I could hold it properly, it opened fully and bumped onto the next car parked alongside. Oops! Looked around. Nobody in the vicinity. Checked on the other car to see, if anything has really happened to it. There was some paint from my car's door. Tried to remove it with hand and then looked from an angle. There was a small dent.

Meanwhile I was been watched by the owner who was living upstairs. He came angrily and asked for compensation. I calmed him down saying that I am not going to run away. Then I asked how much I will have to pay for it. He went inside his home for getting a quote online and came back saying it will cost around $450!

"Oh my God! Did I just loose $450 because I didn't hold the door of my car when I opened it?"

"Yes.... it’s a new Mercedes Benz worth $40,000!"

It took a lot of time for me to get out of that shock. I was yet to come out of the loss of $375 for running the car onto curbs. Here is another one! As my friend Ranjish said, here in America, anything you touch will cost you money!

Finally GEICO came to my rescue and they paid for the damages. I was relaxed. But I will never park my car near such costly cars again! And I will never let the door slip out of my hands again!

The Costly Little Mistake

I was still looking for a car to buy. Keeping the rented Pontiac till I buy a car, will be a costly affair. That's when my colleagues suggested this guy named Nazar who rents ‘not so good’ old cars for $250 a month. He gave me a very old Volvo car and I managed it for few days to commute to office. Then it started misbehaving... Sometimes not even moving! So got it replaced with another old Nissan car. Things went fine until this Monday morning. I was pretty comfortable in driving; no matter it is service road or free ways. My boss (one who gave me initial lessons on driving here) was back in town and he was too surprised to see that I was confident to pick him from his hotel for a ride to office.

On Monday, it was a long day at work. I was coming back to room through the usual roads. Instead of keeping on the usual left lane, this time I was on the right lane. Somehow I got lost in thoughts for few seconds and when I realized that, I was on a signal controlled junction. The lights have just turned to Orange. Not wanting to wait there for some more time, I rushed across the junction bit fast to beat the Red lights. Not knowing that by the time the right lane had divided into two lanes, one that goes straight and the other (which I was on) that turns to right. The road was ending there and it was a long curb after the junction. My car went over that long curb all way long, making such scary bumping sound. I didn't know what was going wrong, till the curb ended and the car landed back on the road. I stopped the car and got out to see what had happened. All the four wheels were completely damaged, thanks to the rough curb with some metal debris on it.

I really don’t want to write a big story out of this small incident, but wanted to tell you one thing. I will never be saying again that I am confident and comfortable, when it comes to driving.

I had to wait two hours on the road, in that chilly weather, with a mobile whose battery lasted just to make a call to the rental guy and my friend here. The towing guys came and returned saying that they cannot tow a car with all four wheels damaged. My friend finally got the voice message I left in his battery drained mobile, and picked me up.

Since there was no insurance, I had to pay 375$ from my pocket, for the damages. The next three days, I was without a car but my colleague helped me to commute to work.

Now I am back with this old car, driving to office through the usual roads again. And my driving is now... (no no....) just ok...!

Later on I realized that, I was not the only one who made the same stupid mistake at the same place. Even more, I was happy to realize that I lost only 375 dollars and nothing else.

Severe Weather Alert

This was another new experience. Everybody here talks a lot about weather. Even during the winter, Dallas does not expect much snow. But when it snows here, it is a big deal as the city does not have proper means to handle it. On 29th, November the discussion in the office was about this rare day that happens once or twice in an year in Dallas. I was told not to venture into office on next day without checking the roads first, as the snow turns to ice, or rather sleet here making the roads dangerous to drive.

When I came back to the apartment, there was a warning board at the front side saying "Freeze Alert!”. The notice stuck on my house door also warned about the severe weather and requested to take caution while walking and driving. It also asked to leave the water taps dripping to avoid freezing in the pipes.

All this kept me in anticipation. I was looking forward to see something big happen (so that I can brag about it and take photos! :)). But, to my disappointment, nothing much happened in the morning... so I had to go to work. After noon, things started changing and we could hear the strong windy noise even within the conference hall in the office. When I looked out, I could see snow falling. Well... it was not that beautiful snow that you see in movies. It was like a heavy rain... and then there was ice on the ground. Everyone started packing off from work and I also joined the group gladly to head to my apartment. Driving carefully, as there was ice already on the roads especially on the bridges, where it melted very slowly.

By evening, things were little more beautiful and there was some visible white snow around. I enjoyed a walk through the near by park, but there was nothing spectacular for my camera.

Thanks Giving and Commerce Visit

I didn't know much about Thanks Giving Day. All I knew was that it is a two day holiday time just before the weekend, making it a 4 day long weekend. I also knew that Turkey (the bird, not the country!) has something to do with it.

I didn't bother much to learn more about it, when I realized that my project deadlines fall near those days and I will have to work (at least from home) instead of going out to see a new place.
There was a Thanks Giving Lunch party at office on Wednesday, before everyone left for holidays. And I enjoyed the meal, especially Turkey!

The term "Black Friday" was totally new to me. Here in US, the Friday after Thanks Giving, is celebrated by merchants as "Black Friday" with sales prices hitting rock bottom. My colleague here educated me well to make me understand that this is the time to buy any stuff that I wanted to buy. All shops had special deals, but I was told that people start queuing up in front of the shop doors as early as possible (and even from midnight the day before), to make sure that they grab the limited number of low priced deal items when the shops are open. I spent quite a lot of time going through the ads in web sites and news papers, but didn’t find anything really worth. They had laptops for 300 dollars, but the configuration was too low for me to buy.

As expected, I had work to do during those four consecutive holidays. But also found time to visit my friend Sreeku at his university town Commerce. The Texas A & M University campus was set in front of a small but beautiful lake. It was interesting to see an American University for the first time. And Sreeku cooked tasty Kerala meal with all side dishes to make our Thanks Giving Day a special one.

The Great SSN

After waiting for more than 20 days, I got the message from my colleague that my Social Security Number (SSN) card has arrived at his address. Well... As I had mentioned earlier, here in US we need to have the SSN to do anything, be it taking license or getting a cable TV connection.

I didn't wait for long and started to my colleague's place which was more than 25 miles away from my place. For the first time, I am going to drive that long, without anyone for assistance. Took the printouts of the routes from Google Maps, studied the route well, and started the ride on the highways. Being there the first time, I was concentrating very hard on driving and took much care while changing lanes. There were some huge ramps to change highways and they were really scary! It was semi circular in shape... huge fly over like structures... and while driving down it, I felt as if I was descending in a giant wheel.

Everything was fine. I reached safely at destination and back to my place. Got my SSN Card. And this much awaited card was just a small piece of paper with the 9 digit number printed on it!

Cooking started...

Sandwiches, burgers and mashed potatoes…. They are no more my favorites... All I wanted was some plain rice and pickle. So I started cooking after getting all the required utensils and grocery from Walmart.

It’s always fun to note down the first cooking in a new place… I cooked rice, my usual curry with tomatoes and onions and scrambled egg. Thanks to the rice cooker, the rice got cooked perfect. As a precaution (in case if cooking becomes a flop), I had some fruits also ready with me.



But… cooking alone is not at all interesting…:(

Run… network marketing is here too…

I met this desi guy in front of a Desi Super Market. He started the conversation and soon was very friendly. Knowing that I just landed in US he invited to visit his place, to meet more desi guys. I did sense something strange in this immediate invitation, and postponed the visit to another time and gave my phone number.

Then I met another gentleman. He was so helpful and realized my problems of being alone here with settling activities. He also invited me to his friends place saying that I can meet more desi guys including people from Kerala. That was a good bait. I accepted the offer and when the day came, he started talking something about a business. So my guess was right. He said, people there will talk about some business that might not make any sense to me, but we can meet up his friends including Kerala guys after that. I agreed and joined him and ended up in an apartment on a Friday evening where there were a lot of people attending a meeting.

One guy was talking about a product that will make our body shine like the cars that was polished with wax. Wow! Then a lady came and talked about a shampoo and went into such details of hair that even I haven’t studied in any biology classes. She explained how this shampoo helped her overcome all her hair care issues. There were a lot of talks and demos including one from my friend!

I waited till the end of the show to see if indeed there are some Malayalis. There were two but both hardly spoke Malayalam as they were brought up outside Kerala. And everyone in that room was talking just about this business of making more money as a part time associate selling these products and adding more members.

I told my newly met friend that I am not at all interested in this and my tastes are totally different. He did understand that and I am sure, he will continue as a good friend without ever requiring me to join that network marketing business.

The next day, I got the call from the first guy I met. He asked when I will be free to meet more friends of him. I explained the above incident and said I am not at all interested.

So, run… this network marketing is everywhere!