" Too legit to quit "

About 15 miles east of Glen Allen on I295 - one of the three interstate highways connecting Richmond, lay Mechanicsville. This is where Owens & Minor's new office building is situated. It's been just a month since people have moved in here. For the first few days it seemed like there were more plumbers and electricians than employees out here.

One thing that wouldn't escape your eyes for sure is the gorgeous cafeteria. Well it's quite a feast usually - steaks, salads, sandwiches, snacks, fruits bowls, soft drinks - bottled/fountain ...blah blah..lots more but hei ...... There is no free lunch mate..you got to pay for all this :-( !!". The menu changes every other day and newer tempting items appear. I couldn't help thinking about the canteen we had back in Bangalore.

Mingling with coworkers has not been an issue, probably because I had known many of them for quite sometime. Besides, people are very friendly. The work environment is quite different from what one could imagine from offshore. For anything and everything there are subject matter experts and your job is just to find the right person for the right task. Their efficiency and dedication are quite impressive. But having said that, they make sure that there's enough fun at work place.

Baseball is a big craze here and so is college basketball. Most cubicles are adorned with pictures of huge favorites - player posters or colorful team logos. I remember this particular incident when I went out for lunch with two of my American colleagues. A discussion about sports was going on and then one of them told me how crazy he was about football. And very innocently I asked him "So, you watch English Premier League..eh?" and he replied with a strange look "No mate, you got me wrong. I am talking about football..the real football". I realized my folly... and apologized...""Oh, Sorry I thought soccer!!".

"I have heard that India - Pak Cricket matches are supposed to be huge sporting events. Nothing can match the rivalry..eh?" ...asked one. "Yes” I replied hiding my surprise. So they knew that something called Cricket exists!! Infact they knew much more..might have heard it from another Desi.... I then had to take a crash course on the game's basics drawing analogies with baseball.

Ajith "2 legit to quit" Nair..that's the name they have given me. My colleague managed to get this printed for my name board. Here's what he explains "These are the verses from an early 90s song which basically means 'somebody who doesn't quit easily' ". Wow..thank you" said I and promptly pasted it on the board. "Actually you ought to be named FNG" he said.. "And what the heck is that?” I remarked. "Oh..just.. Fun New Guy!" he replied and with a giggle continued - "Infact replace Fun with the 'F' word and add an 'ing' !!"

From Virginia with love!

I know this has been late...it's been quite a while since I scribbled something here. I do owe an apology to some of my friends who have been repeatedly pestering me for updates since I landed here in Virginia.

And so..this is my first post from Virginia - a beautiful green state on the east coast of the United States of America about 90 miles south of Washington DC...DC as it is called here. East coast - supposedly the most developed region in the US, boasts of biggies like New York, NJ , Boston...can keep on naming them... Richmond lies somewhere in the middle , geographically and economically. Glen Allen - where I live, is a surrounding town about 10 miles north east of Richmond downtown. (Downtown is the US jargon for what one would call "city" in India).

The only other city that I had seen by then was Dallas,TX - the land of cowboys. It was more like one built in the middle of a dessert as somebody had rightly told me before. Plano an adjacent town is the IT corridor- a budding silicon valley. Companies that once suffered badly during the economic recession of 2001 had decided to expand out of Silicon Valley to low cost areas and from then on it has been hey days for Dallas - courtesy: the Russian lady I met on the flight. She says that there is a pretty good indian presence in Dallas. And a whole lot of Indian restaurants also...

One fact that I have learnt from valuable sources is that politeness and courtesy of people vary indirectly with the population and degree of development of a city. Well...coming from India, this was not new to me..but yet again experiences here ascertain the universality of the rule. And so, my point is people in Glen Allen are quite nice. Generally its the American way that even guys whom you see for the first time would pass a "Hi" or "How 'u doin?" at you. It can be a bit strange initially… but gradually one would get equipped with answers - "I am doing good, How about ya?", "doing great", "excellent"....."I appreciate that.." and you would be ready enough to throw these at any alien. (Foreign nationals are called aliens here... first time I saw this, I was wondering which planet I came from :-( )

Tho bechara ye alien landed here at Richmond International Airport..in a United Airlines flight from Chicago. I bet Air Deccan has a better aircraft ...boy that was one hell of a journey...! I felt like I was traveling in a bus...and they had my seat allocated to one girl also. Though everything turned out to be fine in the end, I despised America for the first time then...I later realized that Lufthansa had pampered me enough and my expectations for a local flight was too high. "Hmm..things can go haywire even in America..."

Now as I write this piece stretching on an ergonomically designed plush chair in my cubicle, I am pretty much settled physically and mentally. For when I landed here, I felt like singing "Swargathilo njan swaptnathilo...". The excitement of that order is slowly dying down...but America is always America....truly, madly & deeply....!

"Saadhanam kayyil onde...."