Niagara

          What are the things you look at before you conclude that you can visit a place? You check for companion, cash, duration of the trip, whether you can take off of your work/school, if there is a holiday that you can combine with the casual leaves so that you can make the longest vacation out of it, does the place interest you etc. After thinking and checking all these you make the necessary arrangements. We had an additional step of getting the visa this time because we planned to see The Niagara Falls from Canada side. Our friend Harish was the one to encourage us to apply for the Canadian and I want to thank him for the fantastic road trip albeit being too tiring. I took the responsibility for completing all the documentation and applying for the Canadian visa for Bharath and myself.

          Plan was to drive to Detroit, and then pick our friends and drive to Canada. It was a gang of 5 members' was very excited because it was my first time crossing an international border on-road. I imagined that a double walled fence separates United States from Canada spotlighting the borders. I also thought that I would see American Flag on our side and Maple leaf flag across the fence that I imagined. If you are thinking that I might have imagined armed soldiers on either sides you are wrong because I didn't go that far in my imagination. Except for stops for toll and immigration it look more like driving from one state to another. My imagination went overboard because I hadn't considered the fact that there were no border disputes between United States and Canada.

          It took us 6 hours to reach Niagara including an hour spent at immigration and another hour having breakfast. There are two part to Niagara Falls. One is the Horseshoe Falls and the other part is further divided into American Falls and Bridal Veil falls. I saw the latter and my first reaction was "is it all there is?” Not that it wasn't beautiful but I just thought it wasn't doing justice to the hype. Then Bharath showed me the other part. The joy inside me rushed out as tears from eyes. The place is mesmerizing beyond words can rightly articulate. I don't have to explicitly mention that it is next to impossible to survive if you fall. Even though it is the killing face of nature, it is divine. 

          We all zeroed on two activities that interested us the most. One was undoubtedly the Horn blower cruise and the other was Journey behind the Falls. We got the tickets and hopped on to the cruise. The path was to fly by the American falls and Bridal Veil Falls, go into the Horseshoe Falls and then return. We were given a red poncho (you will get a blue poncho if you catch the cruise form United States). The force with which water rushes below and unites with the river creates a mist that gets carried further by the wind. As the cruise got closer to the horseshoe it felt like someone with a biggest spray bottle ever and with unlimited supply of water was spraying right onto my face. I couldn't open my eyes, camera couldn't focus because of the water droplets on the lens. I tried wearing my sunglass, but need I say there was not luck. Somehow I tried to squint my eyes and get the glimpse of the incredible place. I enjoyed it more than getting drenched in the rain. When seen from the top one might feel that it is dangerous (I felt it was cool), but trust me it is one of those things that makes you forget everything and makes you want to go again. I really wanted to stay there longer.

          Journey behind the falls was an activity where you the Horseshoe Falls can be viewed from its lower right corner. One can see the thickness of the false and also get a better sense of energy that it carries.  Also there are caves which leads behind the Horseshoe Falls. This was as if you are seeing some white liquid with perfect amount of hue and saturation falling outside the opening of the cave. Well, that wasn't as impressive.

          I will let the pictures do the talking about the beauty of Niagara. But before I conclude I have to put forth my opinion about the view of Niagara from Canada versus United States. It is true that you get the front view of Niagara from Canada but I am sure it is equally beautiful in its own way from the United States side. Also the cruises from both the sides take you almost along the same path and inside the Horseshoe Falls. I would love to see Niagara from the Unites States side. In fact I can't wait to see. Nature is beautiful from every angle. Funny thing is that I got my At&t network when I hopped on the cruise.

Just before the border

Immigration at the Canadian Border

American and Bridal Veil Falls

Horseshoe Falls

Complete view of the Horseshoe Falls

Can you spot the people in yellow poncho on the stairs ? #relativesize

Below the American Falls

Just another angle

This is when I thought "is this all there is?"

Can you see the rainbow ?

Do yo see how deep into the Horseshoe the cruise gets ? beyond that you would actually disappear!

My favorite picture and it is because of  the rainbow

I thought I had to post this one!

From the "journey behind the falls" imagine the amount of  energy there is.

All set for the cruise

Looks like cotton candy

The town of Niagara

From Cloud Nine

          Bharath gave me two options to choose from as my 25th birthday gift and I chose SKYDIVING! We finally did it today as we didn't get the reservation sooner. And I had to, had to compose this post today itself. I have to mention that I was really very scared and excited at the same time from the moment I chose it. We had booked our slot a month ago. 'Skydiving' by itself says everything and so I didn't want to Google it and get more scared or negative about it so I left everything to my imagination. Not that I had never seen videos or head about other's experiences, but I didn't want to acknowledge to the fact that I chose to jump from a plane soon after entering the 'second quarter' of my lifetime.

          It was 9 in the morning. We were all set to leave and turned the GPS on. It showed that we had an hour and 20 minutes’ drive before we reach the diving point. We saw "The plane" in the sky as we reached and my heart did not stop pounding from that very moment.

          It was time to sign our waiver forms. We had a training session which repeated the fact that there is a fair chance that the dive can turn into a disastrous death and they are not responsible for anything. This part was scarier than the actual skydiving experience. Also the trainer said they have people who have done 9000 to 12000 dives working in there. This gave me some relief although it din't help much to get me out of the nervousness. We had to wait for a while before they announced our names. We entered the diving area through a door that said "No entry without signing waiver forms"! I saw people diligently examining and folding something. I din't pay much attention to what it was then. After the dive I saw that they were folding the parachutes and pushing into the bag for the rounds to come.

          We chose tandem skydiving and it was time to meet our tandem instructor(TI). He helped me wear all the necessary harness. I inquired him about the approximate time it takes to reach the ground. He casually told that it takes about 7 minutes. At this time my heart had broken the cage of my ribs, came close to the skin and was all set to pop out. I got inside the flight and waited for the others to enter. From the time I got my harness, Bharath and I were completed separated, and were with our own TIs. Now the flight took off.

          Our flight could hold about 20 people and had one pilot. When we were waiting for our turn I noticed that it takes off with its door open. Also the pilot landed the flight on the lawn and not runway! By seeing that I thought it is better to dive than to land like that! I am kidding. I had made up my mind to dive AT ANY COST.

          Let us get back now. As the flight gained the elevation I clenched the handle next to me harder. My TI showed me the position that I was supposed to maintain at the time of the jump. I immediately made it clear to him that there is a very good chance of me forgetting it! My harness was too tight. but I didn't complain as I had other things to worry about. For example, what if my parachute doesn't deploy? I sat silently as he hooked me to his harness. I had crossed the level of nervousness and had reached black state of mind. I realized it was about time when my TI began to check my harness and wore his helmet. I asked him about our altitude to which he replied "about 14,000 feet" looking at a gadget mounted on his wrist like a wrist watch.

          It was time and I saw few people diving off the plane as if they were jumping off a stool. At this point I made my TI explain the position I had to maintain again. I reached the tip of the flight and held the bar that was right above me. My TI pulled my hand …wait for it… and jumped. I seriously have no words to explain the feeling. As Bharath instructed me a million times, I remembered to keep my eyes open. I had read that a free falling body doesn't experience any force acting on it. The presence of gravitational force is not felt since the body doesn't  exert any counter force . I wondered how that would be. Even though I was falling it felt as if I were stationary and that only the air around is moving past me. At that altitude I couldn't even feel the relative motion with respect ground which tricked me into thinking that I was still.

          I did a couple of somersaults until my TI deployed a small umbrella attached to the parachute after which the fall was steady. During the free fall, I forgot everything. The adrenaline rush made me forget everything including Bharath. I didn't care if my parachute opens or not. I literally had nothing in my mind. I was too amazed at the view to think about anything. I couldn't hear anything other than the gush of the wind. It is rightly coined 'free fall' and there is nothing but earth's gravitation. I felt a sudden jerk as my parachute deployed. It was as if someone pulled me with all the force. I have to quote my actual word, "oh my god, it was a-ma-zing". And I never meant these words as much before. We were above the clouds when we jumped.

          I totally enjoyed the ride down. I saw Chicago skyline, Lake Michigan, Milwaukee bridge, fields, vehicles, highway etc. I looked for Bharath's parachute which I couldn't find and I decided to concentrate on the view. Vehicles on highway looked like colony of ants marching one behind the other on interstate 94, which was a perfect line. Greenery felt like the earth was covered with flawless silk carpets. The ride down got even better when my instructor turned the parachute. I moved like a wave. It was truly a thrilling moment and I couldn't resist telling him that it was birthday gift. I truly felt like a bird, especially with every turn we took. And you cannot believe how smooth the landing was. Also we landed before our flight.

          I have to say it was the best experience of my life and I feel that nothing can beat that. Everyone SHOULD try this and I assure that you won't regret. Please don’t thinking that I am very daring because it is not at all true. I just have a thing for adventures. Once I jumped off the plane I didn't have time to be scared since I was too busy seeing and absorbing the view. This was the perfect gift for my birthday and I couldn’t have asked anything better. It has been 9 hours since I completed my dive but I am still floating and my ears are still ringing! I am too excited to sleep tonight. As always, I have attached our pictures. 

Bharath's jump

My jump

Just like a bird

I did smile for the picture

Parachute Deployment

Bharath's landing

Feeling like a bird

Me in 'landing position'

Your Loss Is Your Gain

          This post is inspired by the ideas that formed a cocktail in my mind and stayed there for a really long time until today when I finally thought of giving it some shape. This post is a long time due. Not that I never made up my mind to write about but I always felt it was incomplete. But today I felt it was a bit okay if not perfect. So here it is.  

          I am sure that all of us have heard and agree with "change is the only constant". This is not a debate that argues otherwise but an effort to substantiate it through my experience. I have changed a lot in a very less time considering my reluctance to sudden change around me. There is a drastic change in my personality, like and dislikes, priorities and preferences, opinions, emotions etc. I changed from a person who never ordered anything that she didn't know about in a restaurant to someone who did not hesitate to try '5 spice duck' in a Thai restaurant, which by the way I loved. This change was possible because I resigned the introvert in me and put the carefree alter ego to work, only because Bharath asked me to do it. 

          There is a dialogue in the entertainment world that, "if a person really loves you, he should accept you without changing who you are". I am sure most of you agree with it. I strongly believed till I realized how Bharath always encourages me to change and I am really enjoying the new me. He always advocates that I try something new, especially if he enjoys doing it. It is okay if someone tries to change you, especially if it for your own good and if you are really missing something in life that you can otherwise experience. When you keep yourself in a changing pace continuously, why do you think it is bad for someone who loves you to change you if it is for your own benefit? I say you should always listen to your mind and not ego. 

          We are open to change if it benefits us. But do we welcome the change with open hands if it is for others? Why is it difficult to change if it is not self-provoked? I am not implying that you need to turn ourselves around for Someone. Also that Someone has to come halfway along if you are ready to take that path. That is how a relationship is built. Sometimes you might be skeptical if the other person is really ready to walk the way with you. But it is not up to you to control the other person. It is in your hand to take the first step and show that you are willing to change and solve the same riddle in that Someone's mind. At least you will know if it was really worth your time or not. It is okay to lose and show the special Someone that you are ready to lose but only till you are respected for that. Relationships can have different course of events if you believe "it is okay to lose". You don't have to change if it's not what you want but there is no harm in trying it, even if it is for Someone else. Relationships are about striking the balance and it is okay if you are the one to start compromising. 

          I have made legion of decisions that registered my destiny to where I stand today. Although I don't regret a good number of those, given a chance I would love to go back and do certain thing that I did a bit differently. I would have been a physicist and not an engineer if I can go back to "the 17 years old stop" of the time machine or I would have fought a little with my besties at "the 14 years old stop" or may not have chosen to go to hostel at "the 11 years old stop". Having said all these, I am proud to be an engineer, having fought with my besties and totally enjoyed the hostel life. Either ways, you can't change the past but can correct the future but making amends necessary.  

          It is no secret that we all change with time. We moved from pencils to pens, half-ticket to full-ticket, bicycles to bikes and then to cars, schools to colleges, cereals to oats, casuals to formals, desktops to laptops, handheld video games to Xbox, bedroom to master bedroom, zircon to diamond, being comfy on flats to wearing only heels and so on. But be the change that makes you happy and the ones that make your life less aggravated. It is okay to change for others and change others but for better.

Pros and Cons

          After finishing 3 grueling semesters of my masters, I have got a chance to work in United States. I successfully finishes 3 weeks. I am doing everything I love and loving everything I am doing. Basically life is great and I am doing pretty well too. But I will finish my masters in 6 months and I will officially enter the "officials" club and retire from "students" club and I most definitely want to be done and dusted with studies.  

          Unlike the changes from high school to college there are tons, very different and drastic changes from student to work life. In school and college, the only senior member in your class will be your professor. But at work, initially you will feel that only you are the one with least knowledge of anything and everything. But then eventually the feeling vanishes as you get more acquainted with work. Also this transition gets a tiny bit more difficult if you don't have any person to match your wavelength with. For example if you are the only girl in your team. I mentioned 'tiny bit more difficult' because I have an excellent team with me who really made me feel at home. 

Since I am still in the transition from the student life to corporate life, I thought I will tabulate them and here is my table: 

Student life	Corporate life
Day begins when you wake up	You have to wake up when the day begins
Learn new stuff	Learn new stuff and work on it
Saving is crucial	You can worry a little less about that
You can entertain yourself by browsing Internet when you are bored of studies	You cannot entertain yourself at all
You can bunk classes	Should I still say what happens here?
You can get over your hardest subject in 15 weeks	Every project, easy or difficult, lasts till you solve it
You struggle to make time to watch your favorite TV show	TV show? You won't even have time to look at TV during the week
Want break from studies? Have dinner or take a nap	Dinner and nap are not what you do in your break
You don't have to worry about what you wear to school	Your morning starts with, "don't I have decent work clothes?"
You can watch a movie any day of the week	You keep it for the weekend because you want to get your 8-hours sleep everyday
There is lunch cool about saying "you are at school'	You can say "I was in a meeting" or "we are going out for a team lunch" etc.

          You may feel that I have lot of cons on the right side and jump to the conclusion that your student life was the best. But trust me, you pay cheque makes it all worth. We all come to a stage where we have to accept responsibilities and execute them, we all grow old. You can’t stop that but you can always celebrate what you have and work on becoming what you want to.

Please let me know what you feel is the best and worst part of student and corporate lives and I will make sure to add them in my table. 

The ONE

          I am the first person in my closest friend circle to get married. It almost an year now and it feels like Bharath and I got married only yesterday. I remember and enjoyed every single ritual of the wedding. I happily participated in everything even though I was very, very sleepy. Needless to say, it was one of the best days of my life and I will cherish this forever. I am sure you can connect to this if you are already married. As for my unmarried friends, you will definitely feel this on your special day. This post is not about my marriage or the wedding ritual but it is about the random questions that pop in everybody's mind before deciding who is the ONE.

          I was not at all ready to get married when I first spoke to Bharath. In fact we spoke for the first time because he had volunteered to help me come to United States to pursue my masters. We spoke over and over again, we liked each other and here we are today happily married. I never took anybody's advice on what are the qualities that I have to look for in a person before deciding he is the ONE. Neither did I have any list of my own. If I have to put it in words, I would say I felt connected to Bharath on the very first day. And even he proudly says that even he felt connected to me.

          Make a list of your very close friends. Now pick each name individually and try to remember the qualities that you like in that particular person that made you decide he or she can be your friend. I bet you will not find any because you cannot make friends based on your requirements. You just become friends and then you do all that you can to improve and maintain the bond. You will never let that person be angry on you for long, you fight and patch up immediately, you make fun of each other, you share, you care, you express, you listen, you do everything in your power to make each other's journey in life beautiful. For me, this sounds like marriage.

          One of my friends recently asked me "how will I know if a person is the one I can spend the rest of my life with?". To be honest I couldn’t answer that question initially but then I told her to look for a friend in that person and not for a husband. If you can connect with him as a friend, then he can be your life partner. This is a subjective matter but I bet this will be one in the list of many things to look in a partner, if you have many. This was the only criterion in my list and so I could think only of that.

          Marriage is spending each day, year after year with the same person. Marriage is not about finding a perfect life partner.  It is about how both can get accustomed to each other and lead a happy life. It is about finding a person who has same taste as yours, but not to the extent that it makes life boring. It is about finding someone with whom you can be your own self, with whom you can talk anything without having the fear of being judged, with whom you can feel light even with a heavy heart, with whom you can be happy even though you are sad, with whom you can gossip, with whom you can debate over futile topics for hours without effecting your mood, with whom you can grow to be a better person, with whom every single second is a new experience. When you find such ONE, by all means feel you will feel "hawaye chalne lagi hai, slow motion mein dupatta udne laga hai aur aasman mein chaand kuch zyada bada hua hai" *winks*

          Lot of us are widely influenced by the thought, "how can one decide if the he or she is the ONE by talking only for five minutes?" I say the whole idea of falling for someone is merely on how you feel about that person in the first five minutes of the meetings. Rest everything is built around it. As Confucius said, I paraphrase and quote "a journey of lifetime begins with five minutes' ". Considering that we are more than ready to take chances when it comes to the most futile things in life, we have to at least start by giving 'five minutes' when it comes to choosing the ONE.  And in my own experience, five minutes are more than enough to connect with The One. Trust me when I say I took less than that.

I Embraced A New Idea

          Like a typical girl with a smartphone, I am a camera freak. The first and the only thing that matters to me while buying a new phone is that it should have an awesome camera and a sizable memory to store all my pictures. I take pictures of everything I come across. I do it to cherish the memory of that incident, as a souvenir, to frame them, to Instagram or to send it to my parents and in-laws. To put in Bharath's words, I look for an excuse to click pictures, which is cent percent true. Not only clicking, I have the habit of seeing them whenever I find time. In fact, I make time to see them. To encourage my habit, my husband not only got me a DSLR, but never minds when I click pictures. He also makes sure I get a lot of pictures just because I like taking pictures.

          I rejoice seeing the old pictures because it gives account of how much I enjoyed that particular moment. I have heard people saying that every moment is not meant to be captured in pixels. There are moments that are to be enjoyed only by feeling them. I never quite agreed with that argument. Again, it is ones perspective. I am a kind of person that doesn’t embrace any idea without having a chance of experiencing it myself. But I have to narrate a couple of incidents that made me agree with the fact that some moments are meant to be enjoyed than pixelated.

          I was exposed to change in culture, environment, life style and pretty much everything you can name when I moved to United States, with only 20 hours of transition time that I spent changing flights and travelling. Before even I could imagine what I have to face, I was placed at the core of change. Bharath helped me to understand a lot of new systems around me. But I was the one who had to learn everything about new school. I was the only Indian in my entire department, both undergraduate and graduate school included. It is easy to adjust in a new place if you have a partner who knows how you feel and help you learn and ease the awkwardness. I did not have that privilege in my school. I had to ask each and everything form a rude advisor who was assigned to me. As days passed I got used to it and found an alternate way, which is not the issue here. After having gone through all these I had promised myself that I will do anything in my power to help a new comer to adjust without facing the difficulties I had to face.

          After one year of my masters, I finally met an Indian in my class. I can't say how relieved and happy I was because of that. As I promised myself, I taught her everything she has to know, both about school and to live in United States. I saw in her, the old me. It made me wonder how much I had changed in a year. I voluntarily made a lot of changes myself, but there are quite a few that happened without my knowledge. You know what they say, change is inevitable. 

          When I was new to United States, I thought people carry hot water flask in this cold weather. But people drank cold water out of water fountain even when the temperature outside was -35⁰C. I had a very hard time drinking cold water out of water fountain. First of all, I was not familiar with water fountain and also I was not used to drinking cold water. Half of the water that entered my mouth used to fall out before I could gulp. And the amount of water that I could hold in my mouth was cold and it hurt my teeth. But after a year now, I am so used to cold water that I can't drink warm water at all. I found the new girl facing the same difficulty. So I say "don’t worry you will get used to it" because I know she will get used to it just like me.

          Also it took me a while to get used to walk from studio apartment to school. Although it was just 15 minutes, I my jaws used to get frozen. It took me a year to get used to cold. Now when I walk out with her, I see her struggling the same way even when this year's lowest temperature is -13⁰C. I try to make her feel better that this winter is better than the last one. So I say "don’t worry you will get used to it" because I know she will get used to it just like me.

          Being with her, I remembered how I was a year ago and how I am now. I can recall everything without seeing the pictures these incidents made me realize that you don’t have to have pictures to remember each and every moments. Some moments are really meant to be felt and remembered. They should have a place in our minds and not on your computer hard disk. Having said all these, I will not stop taking pictures because it is something that defines me. It is an idea that doesn't change my life *winks*.

It is snowing outside as I am composing this piece, so the camera enthusiast in me clicked a few pictures. Here I am sharing them. Well a few of them. I tried my best to capture the snowflakes falling, let me know if you can see them.

Being a "foreigner" in a foreign land

          United States of America, the name so powerful has attracted the world towards it and I am no exception. It always kindled the urge to visit the country as a kid. The urge transformed into ambition and now I am in The United States of America. There are a tons of reason for people to get attracted to this nation, but it is the technological development that cast a spell on me. I wanted to feel the power of technological advances; the speed of 4G data, auto-pilot in Tesla, advanced space science, breakthrough in medicine, to name a few.  It has been 10 months since I moved to United States. I am writing this to commemorate my 10th month's anniversary.

          Entering to United States was like banging into a huge bump of changes. It started with the queue at the immigration, to which I wasn't used to. I meant I wasn't used to the queuing system ever, I prefer to keep reasons for myself *winks*. I got stamped at the immigration counter and proceeded to collect my baggage. Needless to say like every student coming from India to United States, both of my check-in bags weighed a slight more than the allowed 23kgs. I did not have strength to pick my heavy bags. In fact, I had to let one of my bags go for another whole round on the conveyor belt only because I was not able to pick my bulky bag. I could not inch with my bag to try and pick it since the baggage claim counter was fully packed with my co-passengers. Seeing me struggle to lift my bags in a fully packed crowd, an American offered to help me. He seemed like God to me after my 20 hours flight. I was seated next to the last, right window in the flight from Delhi to ORD, Chicago. Being a carefree person that I am, I decided not to hurry and let the people who were in hurry to go ahead and get off the plane, before me. My experience in the baggage counter made me apprehend the need of getting down the plane as soon as I can. I never made the mistake of waiting to get down at the end again.

          Bharath was there to pick me. Even though it was my first time, I felt as if I were home. I can't possibly explain how I felt in that gleeful moment. All along my journey I conjured how I might feel to enter Unite States, but it was seeing Bharath that was more exciting than being in my fantasy land. In order to protect myself from the first waves of cold weather, I got a winter jacket form Bangalore. Although it was not perfect, it really proved useful. Bharath got gloves and cap for me at the airport. The "felt-like" temperature was -35⁰C, and I had literally run to the car. If you believe that it is possible to imagine what even a 0⁰C is feels like, you are absolutely wrong. That experienced can neither be explained nor imagined.

          From the airport we directly went to my school to learn more about the new student orientation. That is the time where I actually got to see proper snow and experience the proper winter air. I wasn't aware of the fact that winters are monochromatic and that the summer is the season of colors. I love colors in everything. I crave everything around me to be beautifully laden with colors. So I found United States very different from what I imagined it to be. In fact I imagined the color code system in USA to be opposite than what is followed. I thought people color the white background of snow with crayon of colorful clothing. But in winter, the fashion is camouflaged with the nature.

          I started learning and understanding the American way of life from the very moment I entered United States. My husband made me understand the road and their naming system on the way home from airport. Out all the scientific and amazing systems that are designed and adopted in this country, my favorite one is the road system. One can find food joints and gas station almost at every highway exists. There are rest homes and lodging facilities too, which is more than a convenience. If you are traveling, you really have nothing to worry about even if you forget anything. Everything here is designed to make life as easier as it can get.

          People here have mechanism to make the execution of simplest of the things, simple. For example, in India we use knife to cut apples and eggs, but here we have apple cutter and a separate egg cutter. Of course their presence in my kitchen makes my life easier (to cut and mainly clean them) and it is not difficult to manage without them. I am still not able to really fathom the need of these separate cutters nor am I ready to say they are not needed. Being a lazy that I am, I appreciate the attempt made to reduce the human effort in cutting apples and eggs. There are many such kitchen gadgets; corn peeler, pineapple cutter, egg yolk separator etc. I am talking only about the kitchen, but there are mechanisms and gadgets to make everything easy.

Since I am talking about the changes, I thought it would be wise to make a list of those. I tried to list the major and minor changes that I noticed till date:

·         Strawberry jam comes with achene.

·         You can forget your phone but not your chap-stick when you want to go out in winter.

·         Walk and drive on the right side of the road.

·         You can actually walk in a huge city with a map that is printed on the paper, not GPS since the whole place labeled with road signs.

·         You need GPS while you drive a car because sometimes if you miss a turn, you will have to drive couple of extra miles to get back!

·         You can get your work done by just writing an e-mail. I got an on-campus job just by e-mail.

·         You can choose each and every fruit you want to buy without the shopkeeper's intervention, something only Indians understand.

·         There is nothing called "bargaining".

·         The way you put your key inside the keyhole is also upside down, compared to India of course.

·         You can drink water directly from the tap!

·         You hardly see buses or people crushing themselves into a car.

·         You can't print your photos if vary from the standard dimensions, which is annoying.

·         You allow pedestrians to cross the road if you are driving unlike in India where the pedestrians cross the road when there are less, or no vehicles.

·         You get hot water and cold water in every tap of the house.

·         You have to give the driver's test when the examiner as shotgun, unlike it happens back home in India.

·         People drink cold water even in winter.

·         You and your time have the highest priority in others books.

          We all change as we grow up. Fact is, "growing up" itself means to change. Our intellect, reasoning power, common sense and everything that you can list about yourself grow and change as time passes. The way we think, dress, eat, talk, walk, behave; the list goes on. Out of everything, change that I am really proud of is that I have been expanding my comfort zone considerably as I grow. By comfort zone I don’t mean the confidence by itself, but the pace in which I embrace the change around myself. "Change in lifestyle" wasn't something new to me. Of course I have changed 6 different abodes and cities in 10 years. But migrating to United States has been the greatest leap and I am happy for the way I have embraced the changes around me.

           Like every Indian who is new to United States, I converted the dollars into rupee before deciding if anything I liked is worth buying. This did not affect me because I had my lovely husband alongside in all my shopping trips. I entered the country wondering if I can establish myself here. But now after 10 months here, I have successfully built a routine life here with my husband. I give full credits to my husband and all the wonderful people I met here. Before coming here I thought it would be difficult to live amidst the Americans because I didn't know they are as good hearted as they are. They do have a major hand in making my stay pleasant with their warm welcome. They helped me in everything I wanted without hesitation in a way that I don't feel that I am a foreigner anymore.

When I drove my car today

          I wanted to learn to drive a car mainly to avoid the crowd in the public transportation of Bangalore. But I loved driving the moment I started my training. I learnt to drive in India during my bachelor's degree. Being a new skill that I had to master to survive on the streets of India, I was as scared as I was enthusiastic. I managed to finish the driving class and earned a license. In India, if you have license it doesn’t necessarily mean you know to drive on the streets and that you can survive the monstrous vehicles driven by the impatient drivers. At the same time it doesn't mean you can't drive if you don’t have license.

          I did mention that I went to driving class. But I only learnt how to balance the steering wheel and that I need to step on the clutch to change the gear. I joined the driving class only because that was the safest and easiest way to get a license amidst all the corruption. I got the actual the driving class from my dad. We practiced a lot together before I gave my test. He taught me that I have to slow down before taking a turn, to slow down at the speed breakers and to pedal the accelerator only after the front wheels cross the bump, to drive on the streets without any room for fear. Basically I learnt to balance the steering wheel; to step on the accelerator, break and the clutch, and to change the gear; especially to do them all simultaneously and in a right way from my dad.

          Driving in United States is a different experience. It requires less effort to set a car in motion but takes a lot of concentration to follow the traffic rules. One has to adhere to the rules always and maintain a designated speed limit. I have also seen the signs for the highest and lowest speed limits on my way to Chicago. In United States, there is huge difference between driving in a town and driving on a highway. The latter is easy since one has to just stay in the same lane and maintain a particular speed. On the other hand, within a town you have to read each and every sign and stick to the rules. The rules on which the traffic system functions is amazing.

          After driving in India, I used to hesitate to step on the accelerator to drive at 70mph. My dad always advised me to drive slowly and carefully. It is all about speed in this foreign land, be it high or low. My husband had a hard time making me familiar to the traffic system. I took my time, but I learnt with the help of my husband. He taught me how to correct the mistakes that can be made and potentially, effective ways to correct them instantaneously. Of course it was in the hard way, but I learnt.

          Today I am writing about this because I could make a firm and correct decision while I was driving home. I was personally happy and super proud of myself. I wanted to tell about that to my dad and husband although it is nothing to them considering their driving skills. I am lucky to have two great men who constantly encourage me to be independent. My dad gave me enough confidence to look out through the side window fearlessly while driving and my husband gave me the skills to avoid any disaster that could happen while I stare out of the window as I drive along the road and along the way of my life. Now I know that I will never miss any beautiful view along my journey because of these two gentlemen. I always get the encouragement that I want to be better than what I was the yesterday. I love my life, especially with these two gentlemen in it. This is just a small of conveying them my gratitude and love.