MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 3

Note: For continuity, read the first two parts of the series. This post isn't that comical (except the initial part) because most of it is about my solo adventures. And where there's no JD...there's no comedy :(

CHAPTER 3- A messy bubbly incident, the JD catalyst theory and my visit to the bay area

The days passed and we started getting into the Californian lifestyle and really started enjoying it. We spent most of the time on the internet streaming stuff because we hadn’t ever had the liberty of streaming videos in India with the net speeds here and this was a great revelation for us. As we were flabbergasted with the internet speeds (we got download speeds of 1 MBps), there was a person in the apartment who apparently was frustrated with the net as he found it way too slow. That was Hyun, who later told us that they get speeds 20 times as fast as this, all over South Korea. Oh boy! 20 megabytes in a second! That’s 100 MB in 5! A movie downloaded in 35 secs! Phew... I might go to Korea one day just to operate on that.

A hilarious thing that happened around that time was the toilet clogging incident and once again JD was the hero, rather the comedian and I played a part too. He mistook kitchen paper to be toilet paper (LOL) and tried to flush it down but as it was too thick, it didn’t go down the drain. But that’s not the end of the joke. After some scientific thinking, we (JD and I) came up with an idea that if we had some acidic substance, it might erode the paper away. We thought the dishwasher liquid might just serve the purpose. So we brought it and put it into the toilet and flushed. And voila… it became like a bathtub filled with foam, as the dishwasher liquid had obviously foamed when in contact with water and the toilet became a bathtub. We had succeeded in making it messier, if that was ever possible. :D

We had bought a football...ah sorry soccer ball, and were playing with it in the house (with AZ's enthu for soccer, that’s the least you can expect). AZ was our coach, and he spent his time teaching us tricks (I gotta say he was pretty good with it), and we did learn quite a bit. I gotta mention specifically about JD, because of something that followed. He used to try too many tricks at once and his legs and body couldn’t react to the speed his lightning quick mind was thinking. And so he often... let’s just say... messed (and JB…don’t comment “canteened up”) up.

Once when we were practicing power shots in the lawn, he was getting it all wrong as he just couldn’t connect with the ball properly. He tried umpteen times but couldn’t work it out. Suddenly we noticed a blonde girl walking her dog out on the lawns, watching us play. We pointed it out to JD and he looked for a moment at her and suddenly with his face steeled with determination, kicked the ball with a force Christiano Ronaldo would not be able to get on his free kick. Alas... Unfortunately I stood between him and the goal, and before I had any time to react, it hit me square on my stomach and I doubled up with pain the next few minutes. So all you need for JD to do something good is to have a girl watch him do it.

Another instance proving JD's catalyst theory was when our apartment mate brought a Japanese friend of his, to our apartment. For the record, let’s call her "Countryside". Just before she had come, we had been learning some tricks again at home from AZ. And I gotta say JD was having a really bad time, again doing too many things at a time, thereby flopping. He had just given up when she came. After a bit of chit-chat, when the talk came to soccer, JD's eyes suddenly lit up and he said "Lemme show you some tricks". We were all like "Ohhh.... hope he doesn’t make a fool of himself". Then to our amazement and Countryside's delight, he neatly lifted the ball, and did a 360 spin following it up with what was a near flip-flap and even attempting a rainbow kick. And he pulled it off pretty well. We just looked at each other and shook our heads. So now we knew what was necessary to make this guy play good soccer. Just load the stadium with girls. Preferably Chinkey (codenamed Chicklika or Chandralekha…lol) girls, as he has a thing for them.

Around this time, I decided to go to the bay area to visit two cousins I have in Santa Clara, and one in Cupertino. I hitched a ride with a couple of other girls from SRM, who were going to the bay area to visit their folks. Thanx ppl. So I spent a night and half a day at my cousin’s place, playing with her two kids. I was shocked at number of Asians in that place. Every person I saw (I mean EVERY) was either an Indian or a Chinese. I saw many people play cricket, clothes hung outside the house and many more typical signs of Indians dwelling in a place. I really felt at home there.

My cousin from Santa Clara came to pick me up from Cupertino in his new Audi A4 (cool car to have, San...) and took me to the Saravana Bhavan in the bay area. I was happy to get to eat some authentic Indian food, after a month's gap. It was quite a large restaurant, seating at least 200 people, and it was flooded with people flowing in and out. After a short wait, we got a table, and I got my first look at the menu card. I had got used to the dollar system and was no longer converting it to rupees, but the cost of the items in dollars was really vulgar. A plate of idly was 6 $ (Rs 300), a dosa was 10 $ (Rs 500), a masala dosa was 12 $ (Rs 600) and a meals was 15 $ (Rs 750). Half my appetite vanished looking at the menu, but then the aroma brought the appetite back and I had really enjoyed the food (which he paid for).

We then went to his apartment, and I met my other cousin as well. We unwinded and had a good afternoon chatting and learned so much about each other. Neither of them were the reserved homely people I was told by my parents they would be and I wasn’t the quite innocent person they had pictured as well. :) Lol it was fun getting to know we were all normal people on the same wavelength.

After a lot of debating and planning, we all went out in the evening to San Francisco to hang out in the night as SF is a great city to see with the lights on. We first went to the golden gate bridge, which was a bit of a disappointment because it wasn’t really visible as it was a heavily foggy day. Only the next 10 metres or so were visible, and so I could just mentally picture the glory of the whole bridge taken in one eyeful. We walked on the bridge a bit and then left the place.

We then drove around SF, which in itself is an exciting thing to do around the Lombard street areas, because of its Monaco grand prix like curves and slopes. We drove around downtown near the towering skyscrapers, which were a majestic sight when lit in the night. Now I experienced what the America that is showcased in movies and media was like. This is just a small part of the country, and most of the country is like Davis, with the tallest building in the city being not more than 3 storeys, or even worse with just barren land. The rich well-to-do parts are what are portrayed all the time. Watching other cars on the road was in itself an experience, and cars I had seen only in NFS-like games and on TV and magazines, were right before my eyes. Ferraris and Audis and Porsches...you name and it was there. This was in stark contrast to Cupertino where I noticed an excess of Japanese cars like Toyotas and Nissans. Every alternate car was a Toyota corolla. I guess it is no coincidence that there number of corollas and the number of Asians were proportionately high. It shows our attitude of looking for the cost of the car and the mileage it gives before choosing a car, which is why we prefer the cheap less-prestigious Toyotas. :D .

So after downtown, where there were some places we wanted to go to but couldn’t because...ah... I was...underage. Californian law totally sucks there, and this unfortunate handicap kept haunting me in the whole seven months I spent there. I am glad I have just turned 21 a couple of weeks ago. So no more babysitting for me when I go back there. And so from downtown, we went into Chinatown. There is only one way to describe it... it was China... It’s quite a large neighborhood with all shops, houses, buildings being run by Chinese. Everyone looked the same. We went to a Chinese restaurant and had some food, which I really enjoyed as it was authentic Chinese. It was pretty late by the time we were done and we drove back home to Santa Clara well past midnight.

The next day, we got up early (8 am...which is early of course) and drove to Santa Monica to the beach. I got my first feel of the Pacific Ocean then. After hanging out at beaches in Chennai, I forgot how water in oceans looks blue and so my first sight of the beach was breathtaking. The beach was like an amusement park with roller-coasters etc. I didn’t have time to ride them, but I guess it must have been a good experience to be in a roller-coaster overlooking the sea. There were a lot of people hanging out and sunbathing on the beach too, as it was just about the end of summer.

I then had a good breakfast there on a beach-side restaurant and from there, we drove to the mystery point, which is supposed to be this place where gravity behaves strangely. People cannot stand straight, they tend to lean towards a side, water moves from "lower" to "higher" level, a freely suspended ball moves "uphill". It really aroused my curiosity. It was as good as anticipated to see these "miracles", and the way the guide described it to us made it seem even more mysterious. However, it is just a simple concept where a cabin has been built on a hill after digging the hill such that "uphill" was made into "downhill". It was well made indeed I have to say.

After having a good time there, we drove back home to Santa Clara, where we unwinded a bit in the evening and then it was time to go. I again hitched a ride back with the girls in their car. Thanks San ‘n An for taking the effort to spend time showing me around the bay area. Hope to hang out much more this time.

(TO BE CONTINUED...NEXT POST TUESDAY, 18th AUG)