Close encounters of a fourth kind

Quite a long time since I rambled here… and whats worse, even the title is in english. I assure one and all that I haven’t got corrupted in any manner… not yet anyway! The gult will strike back, till then…”Air India!!! Stupid!!! Does any one travel by Air India, the air hostesses are old, the planes are supposed to have rats in them, and… maccha, get a life, and travel by some foreign airlines… in the worst case atleast you can stare at some interesting specimens in the journey.” As anyone must’ve guessed by now, these were the words of wisdom(?) imparted to me by most of my well-wishers, regarding my travel to San Diego from the capital of Gult-land. The order of arguments listed is the one that was followed by most of my advisors, and can be the subject of many articles in itself. I leave it for others to dissect/analyze/whatever they wish to do with it. As I know that most of the readers are extremely interested about my views (post-travel) about the first complaint against Air-India, I will only add that the lady in question was quite attractive and very helpful through-out the journey, she woke me up for every food+tea session, and cheerfully gave out refills for tea/coffee. I got my tea&coffee, and thats all matters to me.

Inspite of all the hype of a culture shock, USA appears to be not much different from India. Though on the surface everything appears to be more orderly than back in India, the people are not much different. Even the beggars are there by the way! May be this says a lot of how much our cities have degenerated. I did have some memorable experiences though: my most memorable one in this domain of Schwarznegger was having >10 cars wait for me to cross the road. Only area where Bush-land comprehensively beats Sonia-land! But then for all the hype about this land of everything green, I failed to find good coffee. The liquid sold by the name coffee for all kinds of exhorbitant prices is an insult to the name it goes by. For all its greatness this country can’t make good coffee. Anyone who is used to the Rs. 3.50/- ‘Cafe Ambrosia’ at IISc will empathize with me on the importance of this issue. Ok agreed that they made nukes and they made the space-shuttle, but between nukes and coffee it doesn’t need any great debate as to which is a job requiring more skill and which is more important. If you don’t agree with me on this, take the following simple test: How many times in a day do you worry about a nuke… I mean did you ever worry along the lines of, “Oh it is morning already, I need a good strong nuke”, or like, “Hey doode, why don’t we walk till the end of this road and have a nice nuke each” and last of all, “Hey do you want a nuke, I can send you some”… Summing it up about USA: ‘Less skill, more KILL’