Amrika! - Part II

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!