Its different

This is exactly the feeling I am getting on entering into US. Its surely different to go out of India into any country which is developed and advanced in terms of social status but coming to US is even more different than that. Having seen Europe, I can't help but noticing differences between the two and my own homeland of course.

US is big for sure. I haven't had a chance to see anything beyond where I landed and within 30 miles (yes miles is what I have to adjust to) of it but one thing that's most obvious is that they're grand on everything they have.

A supermarket will be twice the size it requires to be. Parking lots are like open fields. This is one thing you wont find so much in Europe. People are obsessed with cars etc but somehow I have never seen such big parking lots there. At most restaurants, the size of the restaurant would be one twentieth of the parking lot around it. Give one parking lot to 100 farmers in India and they would convert each one of them to lush green paddy fields, have 200 children and be happy.

Vastness gives to me a great feeling of wastage. You can blame me as back in India you wont waste a single piece of land except of course where it matters for the business, clients. Beautification is one thing which is secondary to utility.

When you come to roads, it beats the sense out of your brain. If one of the expressway is evacuated and given to people of Modinagar then they can have the whole city settled without even any 'choplas' (that in modinagria terms is a crossing) in between. I mean you wont have to go to other crossing on the freeway before the whole city shall be happily finished. Also when someone tells you this 6 lane freeway crawls at 15 mph speed you feel like laughing. But wastness is what you have to get your mind.

No difference in currency notes. 1 $ goes as big as a 100$ bill. Its also grown. They did not even spare numbers, our humble little centigrade scale is now bigger in Fahrenheits, so 30 degrees Celsius become 85 Fahrenheits (don't remember the formulae, just guessing from the feel factor). One thing is miles which is shorter but believe me its psychologically bigger. You would be ready to walk 2 kms but never 2 miles.

Your country itself has 3 time zones. I never faced that when calling anyone in Europe/India. Atleast the country people are in the same time zones. You have a lot of Indian friends but its like one is in Kanyakumari and another in Kashmir.

So this grandoise is giving me the initial jerk of entering into the US of A. So till I settle properly things will keep on amazing me. Not in the sense of awe which you might get into any developed country as that has gone after my first travel but more in the sense of differences between the cultures of the East, Europe and the West. There's a lot that does meet the eye in terms of people and places which I'll sure pen down at a later time, coz people is what I am still figuring out myself. Till then its just the tomato ketchup feeling which I cannot explain... It's Different