Arrival in US

Finally after a LONG journey, with no sense of time nor date, i reached Chicago. Things were not smooth as one expects when they reach US. The visitors have to stand in the never-ending line at the immigration office just to get their passports sealed and check their baggage. While i went through this process, i realised how serious Americans are regarding other country food items entering their country. They question you as to how a particular sweet is prepared and what items have gone into it. They are paranoid about "our foods" spoiling their crops!

Finally, upon reaching Dallas, harish gave me and aunty a super surprise. He had bought a car! From there my US experience starts. While returning from Airport to Harish's house i noticed that the traffic in US is organised! No one honked on the roads, everyone waited for the others to move ahead and most importantly there were no potholes and autos on the road! Its a bliss for this Bangalorean to know that roads without potholes and autos exist in the world :D

The next day we headed to the Indian hotel called Udupi Restaurant. When i saw my Mysore Masala Dosa all dead with no spice i learnt an important lesson in US - the desi people cannot expect the same food which they are used to back home even in an Indian restaurant! Then we headed to the Taj Indian grocery store where the desis get all the Indian items. The grocery store reminded me of the American movies where they show these desi stores which are in a sorry state. It was shocking to see that our Aashiwaad aata and Annapurna aata were repacked to Taj grocery store bags which did not have any manufacturing date or info. And i was shocked to pick up few Hajmola candies which had way passed their manufacturer dates.

Then we headed to the Plano Ganapathi Temple to do the vahan puja for harish's car. I was surprised (shocked) to see a house converted to a temple where most of the gods and goddesses were housed. While entering the temple i was conscious of my dress, as it would have never gone down well if i had worn it in India. The priest clearly did not recite the correct hymns for the vahan puja nor did he do it correctly. But, hey what can one say other than keeping quiet as there are no other pujaris around.

After that we headed to Allen street for the shopping arcade. Any girl can go mad seeing the number of sales going on in the high end designer stores. Hence i burnt a hole in my pocket by splurging on some serious retail therapy.

The place: Allen street

The store: Aldo

Splurge item: $50 bag and a clutch!

Then we headed to a "mediocre theater" (as termed by the localites) to catch the late night movie Thor in original 3D. The theater looked like our normal Inox or Fun Cinemas theater and it was fun watching the movie in original 3D. After watching the movie i understood that the 3D which one gets to see in India are not as good as the ones they get here. My night didn't end there as i insisted Harish's friend to take us out for a drive as i wanted to experience his maniacal driving. Apart from few places where i got scared, the rest of the time it felt like sitting behind an auto guy in Bangalore!

The next day started off pretty lazy. After talking to family people on skype and a brunch we headed out around 4pm to Starbucks coffee shop. I had heard so much about Starbucks that i was dying to taste their coffee. As the weather outside could kill anyone with heat stroke, i decided to taste their cold coffee instead of their hot one. This coffee frapachinno from Starbucks almost killed my liking for good coffee and i badly wanted to head back to my good old Coffee Day outlet to taste a tropical iceburg or masala chai. After i told the Starbucks person to change my drink to a strawberry one, they obliged. The thing which i like about America is that the shops vie for customer satisfaction!

After Starbucks, we headed to see Harish's university - Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The campus was huge with trees lined along the roads and plush homes for the teachers in their campus. The buildings were huge, which had a touch of renaissance period to it. I suddenly got thinking about how Socrates or Aristotle or even Rabindranath Tagore would have felt coming to this university to study! After a trip to SMU, i noticed that the sun had not set even when it was 8 PM!

Due to my jet lag, i had promptly slept off in the car and couldn't see where we were headed. Upon opening my eyes i saw a HUGE building which had the famous trademark - Walmart. The store is as big as the Bangalore Metro store, but this is open to public. They had unlimited choices for every product and one can easily get lost in the store!

Thus ended my day 2 in US. Looking forward to more memories and experiences in this land.