America runs on..
 |
Sorry, but have become too much of a fan of this! |
Over the last four weeks in this 'land of opportunity', I have discovered things that are so integral to american lifestyle that it would be impossible for the residents to part their union with these things.
...on paper
First one being the 'toilet paper' or paper in general. I say 'toilet paper' is because that is the first thing I observed after a very heavy, continuous, gastronomically satisfying string of meals on Qatar airways flight! The absence of water and mug(ga!) was very conspicuous to the brown man's eye but was known beforehand as every other brown bastard does! Rolls and rolls of paper consumed every moment. People are obsessed with tissues. You wave your hand in front of machines detecting motion and paper rolls out. You go to restaurants, consume a bunch of tissues along with the meal; former going into the waste basket and the latter in the waste bowels!
The consumer @ any eatery is expected to clean up before he leaves the place, there you go, the paper count keeps notching up. (No chotu to stroke the table wth his 'gamcha' in this pauci-labour land!) The excessive and most of the time, unnecessary usage gets me thinking about the "Hygiene hypothesis' and the affect this obsessive compulsiveness of use paper and even that of sanitizer could have in this hypothesis.
...on Chips and Soda
They are the faithful companions of every American meal. Club it with cheese and the better living standards owing to "high' per capita income, you got the perfect 'causation cocktail' for the epidemic of overweight and obesity here. I see a 'cheesy' cheese-burger with 'deep' fried fries but, a 'Diet' Coke. Oh, give me a break! Seriously?! Soda replaces the generally used water along with meals in India. Drinking water is so rare here! And you have these water fountains which pees(!) water up and you somehow drink it. It took me a week to satisfactorily quench my thirst using such a device. The technique i devised: Make a small fish-mouth rounding your lips just greater to the diameter of the stream and drink water with constant suction force being created. Phew! I used to long to drink water from a water bottle, well obviously! And the chips, the sheer variety of flavours encourages such a habit.
...on plastic money
If you don't own a card (credit/debit), i assure the fact that by the end of a trip of reasonable number of days, you would be a 'Chiller man' and join the famous lineage of 'super, bat, he..' replete with dimes, cents substituting the red undi(derwear), black undi and 'only' undi! Quarters are still consumed for washing, bus tickets, vending machines etc but the others, not so frequently and extensively. So swipe and pay or swipe and sign and pay!
...on small talk
Short, non-sensical, utterly superlicious phrases are bread and butter of conversations among people here. It is so tiring even to say 'Bye'here!
1. See ya, man.
2. Catch you later.
3. Peace out.
4.Take it easy, bro.
5. Alright then/ A'ight then.
6. Later man.
7. Cool, man...are additions to the good natured 'bye, take care and have a good day' that exist everywhere. This is quoting just one situation. Too many for my comfort. But the general friendliness and helping nature is very heartening. They talk too much to convey the message, but yes, they do and always, with a smile.
...on internet
I will keep this one short. Die Hard 4.0, remember? I seem to understand the concerns the hacker seem to be having as he launched the 'FireSail'. I have no know-how of computers, networking etc but i am just saying, everything runs on the world wide web! Too much 'sedentariness', i felt!
Not going in to the financial sector namely credit, loans, insurance and mortgages which are some things that really runs America and its citizens.
Thus, I conclude my first 'real' blog post.
Ciao.
haha....sahi hai saale
ReplyDelete