Good goes around

Friday evening...the end of one more busy week...i was ready to pack my bags and head back to my room and unwind for the weekend. Just then, my team supervisor comes up and asks me if I'd like to volunteer for a Hurricane relief telethon. Well...I'm always up for such kinda stuff, but friday evening didnt seem a really good time to be doing that. It just happened that the office that we're doing our project at had volunteered with their customer service centre and their employees to take pledges from people on behalf of the American red cross for the Hurricane relief fund.

Well...So...I told her that I'd try to make it at 7...and went back to my hotel, put on some music and kicked back with a cool drink. Just when I thought that I'd managed to give the whole thing a slip...behold...the phone rings and yup....it's my Team manager asking me what time would I be walking in cause she was waiting for me at the designated building. Now...me being someone who's never learned all my life, how to say NO to people, dragged myself al the way back to office for the event.

Surprise...surprise! There was a whole lot of people who were in there that friday evening. The atmosphere looked really lively. After our quick briefing session with some really nice Volunteers, our group walked in and we took our designated seats. We put our headsets On and they were playing the live Concert on TV. And then..people started calling in...with their pledges...all for a good cause. First, it brought back memories of 3 years ago when I worked as a tech support associate back in India. But after I while it all evened out. The whole thing really turned out to be a realy fulfilling experience. And the whole group of enthusiastic people really lifted my spirits up that evening. And it got better when the volunteers told us that in the first hour of the concert, volunteers like us , all over the US had managed to get pledges worth 2million $, all going in to the victims of the hurricane. Kudos!

Of course, something that I wasn't really enthusiastic about initially, turned out to be a great experience eventually. On a lighter but sad note, I even had a guy who hung up on me just cause he though he could speak to Sir Paul McCartney just cause he wanted to pledge 5000$. Loser!

And that's what I call....an evening spent well !

Big Yellow Taxi!

That's me and a NYC Taxi!

Me and Team @ the Ball park

Me is all fuzzy at the back...but that's me nonetheless. Also featuring Team IBM and some Management!

American Pie!

America, to me, is all about being a huge Capitalist Nation, about NYC & LA, about F.R.I.E.N.D.S & The Sipmsons, a place where everything is huge...from groceries to trucks to buildings and finally where you can have a 1-800 number for everything...from Pizzas to Hookers(!).

And I finally got a chance to live this dream...at least a part of it when I arrived here last month on a Work trip. My first pleasant shock was when the Immigration officer at NY asked me if I was a TATA consultant and said 'Hey Welcome man!"

when I replied in the affirmative. The second was a scary shock where I had to argue with this huge cabbie in Boston to take me to my hotel...Man was I scared or what! Luckily for me I could escape to the confines of my hotel room without having to hear the worst part of his abuses. A grand welcome was at the federal office in Boston when I went to file for a SSN. The lady at the counter actually got up from her seat and bowed a 'Namaste'. Man! But also, I had a small bitter experience 3 days later when I had to go through a special security screening while flying from Boston to Richmond. Well. I’m really not complaining after what happened to these guys in 2001.

Boston really gave me the first taste of how huge these huge buildings can really get. Haven't you had the feeling of looking at all these postcard pictures of big American cities and wondering if they were for real? Well..I have. To me it seems
all artificial when I look at these wallpapers on my computer desktop. Besides I had the whole of three days to myself to enjoy moving around in Boston on the subway to see places like the MIT campus in Kendall, Harvard square, The New England Aquarium, Mass. Bay area etc. That was my first taste of being a tourist in this huge country.

New York...I had seen it in innumerable movies, heard great musicians singing odes to it...and finally my real American dream was completed when I went there last weekend. You cannot help being overawed by the first sights of the city as you enter it. Huge would be an understatement to describe it's scale. It is full of monumental structures, tourists, cabs...and filth. It is very much like Mumbai...maybe only the scale is much bigger. I'm sure I’ve had an experience of a lifetime. The only things I rue are not being able to stop to take pics of the Brooklyn bridge and not buying maybe what I think is the biggest cliché of all times...an 'I LOVE NYC' shirt!

Washington DC was totally unlike what I had expected...it's not nearly as big as what I thought it would be. But there's a whole lot of History in there. The Smithsonian Museums...and there's a whole lot of 'em.... were just superb. And I also had a chance to visit it the second time when we drove around the run-down areas.

Richmond, where I work, is picture perfect. Green, clean and filled with water bodies and fountains. It is really a pleasure to drive to work every morning and even more pleasure to get back in the evenings. And this is also where I got a taste of another American thing to do.... Watching a ball game. Our team went to see this minor league game at the local baseball stadium featuring the BRAVES...that was awesome. Baseball, beer and Hotdogs.... the ultimate combo...except for the fact that I had a burger instead of a hotdog.

Three weeks in this country and I think that these people are really lucky to have all amenities within their reach. Everything is convenient. But, I think that sometimes it gets a bit too sophisticated. They kind of miss the simplest of things. And they use way too much paper and plastics and consume way too much meat and cheese. I guess that's how they like it. But using all that paper is way too bad for the environment.... they like to keep their cities green while they eat into the resources from other nations. I'm not up for that Uncle Sam!

P.S.- I really didn't have a clue about how to begin or end this post. It's just that maybe I'm a bit too Overwhelmed right now with all the work and all the travel. And maybe cause I have way too much on my mind.... work, home, Bangalore..................