Wednesday, February 11, 2009

You know you've lived long enough in the US when...

You know you've lived looooong enough in the US when you move back to India and...
  • Try plugging in appliances and wonder why they don't start. And then you realize you haven't "switched on" the plug point! (Gosh - I have done this soooo many times with my phone charger only to find 2-3 hours later that the phone is still dead!!! Grrrrrr)
  • While driving, you turn into a new street with no traffic and suddenly panic wondering what side of the street are you supposed to be driving on - left or right? There is no one to follow so you are left clueless as to where to drive and so accidentally drive on the right side of the road!
  • While driving, you constantly keep hitting on the wipers while trying to actually hit the side indicators on.
  • When talking to the receptionist at the medical facility, you mention "you owe me change for 100 Dollars" instead of saying "100 Rupees" (yes - this really happened with me and for some reason cracked up the entire staff out there. Gosh I have even done this with the sabzi wala!)
  • You feel awkward eating your own breakfast or lunch while your maid or cook is busy working in front of your eyes at your home (I still cannot see myself eat without offering them something nice as well).
  • When you take your baby for well check exams, they tell you the weight in kilos and you are dying to go home and calculate exactly how many pounds is it and how she shows up on the US growth curve (even though the docs assure you that you should be using the Asian babies growth curve).
  • You are dying to get a good haircut but miss your salon and stylist there :(
  • Your fingers automatically dial "1+Phone Number" to call an out of state friend instead of dialing the "City Area Code + Phone Number"
  • You go shopping at supermarkets and take the vegetables at the cashiers counter only to realize you needed to stand in queue at another counter near the vegetables section to get them weighed and bagged.
  • MOST OF ALL - what REALLY gets me is you have to really tax your brains and think hard before buying anything coz it is not easy to return or exchange the items once bought in stores here - not in the next 30 days and not even in the next 30 hours :-)
I go through so many more such incidents on a daily basis...so I am sure I will keep coming back to this post and updating it with more. How about you guys...do you go through such gotchas in your early days of moving back to apna des? Any fun ones to share?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG this is sooooo true! Specially the converting weight from kilos to lbs. At the last appt, when the Dr told us Ts weight, I actually stared blankly at the dr till srinath told me the weight in lbs!
-Gayathri

Anonymous said...

:)
The driving must be confusing. I doubt I could drive in India/Singapore.

Hey my sis and bil finally got their stuff after 8 months. I think everything was okay and nothing damaged.

Divs said...

@Gayathri - I knew you'd definitely identify with this one :-)

@asaaan - strangely though, i am getting the hang of driving now...coz there are no rules to follow anyway :-) BTW 8 months!!! That's almost a year - how did they live without their stuff for sooooo long?

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