Waking up next morning on a different bed, at a different place, in a different country is funny. For a split of a second I was lost, cold and stiff...but soon I pulled myself together, and was beaming at the morning that rushed in through the big window beside my bed.
I saw the clock and was amazed to see that it was just 7...tired as I was from the journey, I wondered how I got up so early! I realized that I have been woken up by a call from home. My father had inevitably forgotten the time difference and had thought it was evening. More than getting angry on being woken up so early, I laughed. It was funny the way my parents were telling what they did the whole of Saturday, and here I was sitting hundreds of miles away, still planning my first Saturday in the US. A friend had later asked me, "Are Americans a lot ahead from us in terms of education, technology etc.?" I had laughed and said, "No! they aren't ahead at all...They are 12.5 hours behind us!"
I needed some time to figure out things inside the hotel...the posh bath-tub, the tissue roll, the hot water tap, the rolled up towels, unfolding the iron table, the weird plugs-points. But I was soon ready...amazed at myself and my over-flowing enthusiasm. Who would say that I had just slept for 5 hours in the last 2 days!
Orange County is a sleepy area, that was exactly my first thought! How else do you see joggers at 11 am in the morning...and not a single person on the road even after the sun is up! I wanted to find out bus routes from the hotel receptionist, but felt quite a bit frustrated to know that no one whosoever, starting from the corporate heads to the receptionists to the sweepers take the buses much...they have cars. And considering cab fares look nice in dollars and give heart attacks when converted into Indian rupees, I didn't want to take the chance. So, I started walking. My first walk along the super clean, perfectly organized yet quite empty roads of US was something that I will always remember.
The people here have the strange habit of handing over maps whenever you ask them the way along with north, south directions measured in miles...all of which were quite gibberish to me then. I tried reaching a small eating and shopping area around my hotel called Bristol Jamboree. I asked ten different cyclers and joggers (they were the only people I could spot at a gap of every 5-10 mins) about this place. They answered in at least seven different accents, shocked by my very Indian accent and shocking me with their grammar-less, heavily accented American English. I somehow had a fair idea of the place I was supposed to go for my Saturday brunch. While crossing the street, I saw a red hand on the traffic signal. As I waited for the signal to turn un-red, I saw how nicely the cars move here...in a line, smooth and almost at the same speed. It was almost 15 minutes when I started having this weird feeling that the traffic signal might be a damaged one...it was just not turning any other color! As I fretted and looked around, I suddenly saw a button on a pole with a board saying, "Press here for crossing the road". Super elated, I pressed it, and within a couple of minutes the lights around changed, the cars stopped and the signal turned a bluish white walking man. For the first time, I crossed a US road...with a 15 mins wait, with a button pressed, with a happy feeling from this awesome discovery of crossing roads.
I ate at a rice-and-chicken place at the plaza...Hunger is the best sauce, they say...and so it is! I gobbled on a bowl of sticky rice, random sauces, saltless boiled chicken and half boiled vegetables. The place was suggested to me by the stationary shop attendant across the street. If "a friend in need, is a friend indeed", then this guy was definitely my first true friend in this strange country. He suggested sight-seeing places, he suggested eating places, shopping places...and best of all he found a bus schedule for me and the bus routes, not to forget the usual array of maps that came along with that.
I waited for the bus for 40 minutes, taking pictures of myself with my self-timed camera, resting it on the bus stand pole. I boarded the bus, which seemed a perpetually empty place. After changing two buses and asking another dozen people, I reached this place called Balboa Island. I walked along the bridge by myself, marveling at the beautiful yachts, at the cornflower blue sky, the picturesque surroundings and the colorful flowers. I took the ferry and crossed over to the other part of Balboa, the peninsula. I had an ice-cream all by myself, and walked for about an hour or so until I reached the ocean. It was fun to discover things by myself, open my shoes before walking along the beach, clipping the shoes with my bag handle, stare at the awesome waves that lashed against the sand...I was soon so close to the sea that I couldn't stop myself from touching the sea.
It's good at times to have ignorant, carefree people around you...you can do anything you feel like and yet not worry what people around you might think. So, I didn't feel too strange in rolling up my jeans and wading in the water, taking pictures and gaping at the waves, all by myself.
I guess I make friends too easily, no wonder I made friends with a cookie seller, and her friend a half clip-seller and a half air hostess. I was soon sitting beside them, chatting with them. It's good to make friends, I realized. I was saved the wait for the bus and getting lost finding the bus stand. I was dropped back at my hotel! I came back to my hotel after sunset. Jet-lag hasn't yet hit me that hard, I wondered why.
Tired of cold sandwiches and cold ham and cold drinks, I went to a Mexican joint the next day. I had a comparatively warmer lunch with tacos and beans...The coffee tasted strange from lack of sugar. Five packets of powdered sugar didn't help. Sweet-less, I concluded.
I went shopping half of Sunday, buying stuff for family and friend back home. I never found shopping this difficult ever before. For everything I saw, for every price tag that I checked, I fell aback. Dollars are a lot of money, I realized. And, money to me is rupees. Things were pretty costly here! "I am an Indian, a true one" I laughed!
In the evening, I went to see a theater at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It was a half-Spanish, half-English musical and definitely, one of the things I enjoyed most in the US. Dinners were getting boring everyday...I can never be a burger eater, for sure. I craved for real food...even Sambar would do, I thought!
Yeah I enjoyed my first weekend in the US, in all sorts of weird ways...going around the place all alone, discovering bus routes, sightseeing places and eating areas, talking to the most off-beat people in the world - a stationary shop attendant, a cookie seller, a hair-clip seller, an air hostess and a Greek food restaurant owner! Normal people here are zombies, they travel only by cars and know nothing of the buses or the routes. Ignorant Americans, I say!
For the first 22 years of my life, I had never stayed outside my home, Kolkata, never gone around anywhere alone and had only gone to not-so-far-away places for family vacations. And, then suddenly, I started seeing places! It's difficult at times, to adjust to a place outside the warm little shelter called home where you have stayed all through...but it can be a lot of fun too. And, for someone like me, who loves new cultures and languages, moving around is quite a bit of an experience.
I had stepped out of home for Hyderabad three years back. And then seen Delhi, Gurgaon and Chennai during official tours. Then, "Amrika" happened! First time out of the country, flying over the north pole, sitting in the flight for 17 hours, drinking wine with a cheers with a random person on the flight, paying $5 for a one minute phone call to home, can be weirdly exciting!
On my way to the Hyderabad Airport...I felt sort of strange. An intriguing, bone-chilling feeling, not only because of the nip in the air, bu also because of the haywire thoughts about what the next three weeks will actually be like.
After heavy words like immigration, passport, stamp, visa and "why are you going to the US", I made my way to the international terminal. I am now a confirmed traveler, with most of my belongings checked in, passport and boarding pass in hand, all set to fly.
19 hours in a plane...with a stop over at Dubai. I never imagined I could survive it, until I actually did. The black Kenya guy who sat in the next seat and wasn't at all a nice person, the friendly Dubai-settled Punjabi couple who loved Dubai more than India, and who spoke only about the dirt and dust of India, the cabin crew who tirelessly went on serving food and beverages, the endless list of movies on the TV, the warm blanket with which I cuddled off to sleep several times during the flight, the book that gave me company when I was bored of looking at the TV screen - these were all part of an elongated August day, elongated by the flight, flying over the world, taking bits and pieces of the same day from every country. I get extra time to live, I thought...I get the same day with more than just 24 hours in it!
Waiting at the SFO airport for my next flight to Irvine was tiring. By then, I no longer felt amused at anything...Jet-lagged, tired, sleepy, I just needed a bed to drop into. It's been difficult - to pass all the immigration, customs, security, to get back the luggage, to buy a calling card...search for entry to the domestic terminal, ask a hundred people on the way, everytime feeling irritated at their lack of knowledge and their inability to comprehend Indian English accent at one go. I had the first taste of American food at the airport - a cold sandwich. Going forward, I realized, how much of cold stuff these people always eat...do microwaves sell that well here?
I had an NRI helping me get a taxi from the airport. As I drove down in the taxi towards my hotel, I saw that the roads were noticeably different. Cleaner, much emptier, more greenery by the sides. Sigh! Can't India be like this too? No, I don't crave for the emptiness, but we could do with a little bit more greenery and cleanliness. As my taxi drove into the front yard of the hotel, I came out and shivered. Fall in California, more around the Orange County, is not at all supposed to be cold...but I guess Indian skins are used to more warmth.
My hotel room overlooked a breath-taking view! The back bay of the ocean was calm with a silent gushing sound and the serenity of the area that I could see from my 9th floor room's balcony was beyond imagination. I at once fell in love with the place and my room. After a subway dinner, I was soon sleeping peacefully on the eiderdown bed in my room.
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