Silicone Valleys

And we 're finally here! I'm writing my first blog from the US sitting here in Simon's apartment, its a sweltering 29 degrees out there, the sun is shining, nearly everyone out there is exactly the cliche I imagined, toned and siliconed to the max, and there's lots of kale and avacado in every menu! So yeah, so far so awesome I guess!

Anyway, so I landed in LA actually on thursday, but flew to Chicago that night for a day full of interviews etc, and generally checking out Chicago to see if that'd be a fun place to live! The first thing that was obvious was that the americans I've met so far have been super friendly, and not to say they are friendlier than Brits, but people definitely talk to randoms more than I'm used to in London. I'm definitely the kind of person that doesn't mind a bit of idle chit chat, but I understand, it's not for everyone, and sometimes you just want to be left alone. But in London, its almost weird saying hello to anyone, people just plug in to their ipods, or hide behind a Metro, and I can only speculate as I've never seen it happen, but I imagine the person saying anything to a stranger on the tube is either having a stroke and needs help, or looked at as if he just wet himself.

Aside from friendly, I noticed people were very polite, and going back to my previous example of people getting off planes, people literally waited their turn when getting their bags from overhead compartments and leaving the plane. It was almost weird, but NO ONE broke the order, one by one getting off the plane as if it was just the right thing to do. I had to reign in my inner indian spirit, and resist the urge to barge through these polite people and scream 'SUCKEERRRRS" as I made my way off the plane. I almost wanted to just give ourselves a little round of applause, but no one else seemed to realise how this level of organisation was such an amazing feat, so I left it alone. One other thing that made me chuckle on my flight over was this:

Silly, I know, I'm sure that warning is probably aimed for parents with babies, but still, the thought of a health warning about earplugs focussing on the risk of putting said earplugs in your mouth made me laugh. It was then that I knew I really was heading to America, the land of the free-to-sue-anyone-for-anything.

Another thing that was strange about the journey from London to LA was that we were constantly going back in time for 12 hours, and having got a midday flight, it was sunny outside the whole time. Kind of annoying when you're trying to get a bit of a snooze given the schedule the next day, and you're sat next to the woman who seems to be playing 'Are we there yet?' with herself, and keeps opening the window shutter every five minutes to see, well, I don't know what really. It's clouds and sunshine, and will continue to look like that for ages - stop it.

So, after a day of interviews and crappy Chicago weather, and various rip off taxi journeys, I finally headed to LA, and have been catching up with our lovely friends Simon and Marissa, who have kindly put up us alien immigrants into their lovely home while we try and find a place of our own. One boozy night, and a day of hangovering was pretty much the weekend, and today is the first day where I have been fully transformed into house husband as I waved off the other three as they left for school/work. I thought I'd give one of my bucket list items a go, and I started with one of the more difficult ones; getting in shape. It's truly demoralising for body image being in LA, everyone seems to be super fit, and healthy, and tall.. Anyway, can't do much about the tall, my parents are both about 5ft 2, so I have already over-achieved in that department. So, I went for a run, and as demoralisingly slow as my run was in the sweltering heat (note to self, 11am is way too hot to go for a run), it was nice to get that whole thing started.

Now to find an apartment:

Here we Goa-gain

OK, sorry, that's a terrible pun. But as you may know me and Sonam are getting married in Goa in February next year, and as excited as we are about getting married, we really aren't good at this wedding planning lark. As romantic as the whole thing is, it's amazing to me how crazily big these things can get. I mean, ours is a relatively simple affair as Indian weddings go, but we are both simple people, so we arent used to so much focus on us! And its true of anything I guess, you can spend a bucket load on birthdays if you like and make it elaborate as hell, but its the only event I've come across so far where there is an expectation to go crazy, even if that element of it doesn't matter so much to you. But I guess part of it is social norms, and partly as its not just about you or even each other, but your families, especially your parents. They have probably been waiting for this sort of celebration longer than we have ever waited for anything. So yeah, crazy, but kind of understandable why it goes overboard more so than other events. Anyway, personally, the more we plan, the more I get excited by what I'm sure will be an awesome and unforgettable couple of days.

So, now that I've taken the romance out of the story (sorry!), what I was really writing about was my latest trip to Goa, the beginning of wedding planning. Now, as I booked this trip while I was still employed, it was a ridiculously short trip, with a million things to plan, and overall it was a successful trip. Anyone who has ever conducted any sort of transaction in India will agree; its exhausting! Nothing is priced at face value, nothing is included in the negotiated price unless made extremely explicit, no fair outcome is ever really likely unless you're a local, and if you get close, it probably wasn't worth the effort! But, amongst all that, we did what we had to, got a few things sorted, and on the whole, survived the inevitable shakedowns for extra cash!  However, there were a few things I noted about travelling/life in India:

1) No one really knows what a queue is in India. This is a queue in most places in the world.

This is a queue in India

It's more like an American Football playbook.

And most annoyingly, its the passive aggressiveness of it. No one will cut ahead of you and look at you, they'll just brush up against you, occasionally bumping into you and invading your personal space, and then slowly wear you down till you become one of them, inching forward to try and plug any new amount of space available, or just till you give in and let them sneak shamelessly ahead of you as you mutter quiet insults to yourself and shake your head as if someone around you actually cares, when in reality that shaking of head just meant you've given up some more room to another one of those sneaky space invaders trying to be the next one to overtake your amateur ass.

2) There are too many people working at airports
If it wasn't enough that queueing in India is torture, there are so SO many opportunities to queue. As you enter an Indian airport, someone checks your passport, and confirms you have a ticket. Just to check you werent some terrorist who couldnt be bothered to wait for the flight to try something maybe. Then you show someone the same at the check in counter, so far so easy. Then someone checks your boarding pass before you go up the escalator to go to the security check. Then someone checks it at the top of the escalators (who has ever failed at that stage?), and then again at the front of the security queue. You drop your bag in the scanner, and get searched. Again someone checks your boarding pass, stamps it, and then you get your bag stamped to say its been through security. About a metre further, someone checks your boarding pass has been stamped by security, and then checks your bag too. Then as you finally get to board your plane (and everyone ignores the seat rows just called up), someone checks and scans your boarding card as per normal. As you put it away thinking that's the end of it, someone, ON THE WALKWAY to the plane, asks to see that bloody boarding pass, the thing that's been scanned, stamped and checked a million times, and then checks it against your passport again as if he is the first to ask to see it. Then just before you board the plane, another charmless soul asks to see your bag tag to check its stamped, and just for good measure checks your boarding pass. Then there is the standard air hostess scene as you board the plane. She has one job; point left for poor, point right for rich. But of course she needs to read that overused boarding card one last time. If that was exhausting to read, imagine doubling that experience when you have a connecting flight, because in India, connecting flight staff don't give a shit about any security checks you may have had to get here, as much as its likely that you are a regular tourist catching a connecting flight, it is equally likely you are a ninja terrorist who has conquered the feat of teleporting past previous security, but then decides to use this technology to board a plane instead of just reaching his or her preferred destination.

3) Indians love a bit of excess.
No, I'm not talking about food, although a brief survey in the hotel we were at did confirm that the majority of wealthy Indians eat way too much, but hey, I'm not going to criticise people for that.. What I mean is luggage. No one seems to travel light. Well, actually, no one seems to have baggage within the allowances. People seem to be travelling with suitcases, boxes, one really heavy wheely bag to take on board, and a rucksack that is so big it may as well be a suitcase. The check in process is always so much longer, as people argue and negotiate with the check in assistant, remove boxes of washing detergent, industrial sized packets of chocolate, or random toys and electrical (genuine items I've seen reshuffled), until they manage to get on the plane. I just found it funny watching people do this in an airport which had a massive poster of Amazon.in hanging on the wall. Whyyyy would you do this to yourself in this day and age?!!

4) Getting off a plane is so chaotic with Indians, I dread to think how bad it'd be with a real emergency.
For some reason, anytime the plane lands, no matter how much the air hostess begs the crowd to stay seated till the seatbelt sign goes off, or at least wait till the plane stops moving, there seems to be a massive number of people that can not wait to get up to get their bags out the overhead compartment, as if there is a winning lottery ticket in there or something. So after forcing people to sit down, there is an almost nervous wait for the sign to go off, followed by an almighty panic as people scramble to get their bags down, and get off the plane as if it was on fire. I don't really get it, but what's hilarious is that its hard not to get caught up in it all, and if enough people start to rush, everyone seems to feel the need to follow, and even as you stand at your seat waiting to be let into a stream of rushing people in the aisle, you soon realise the only two ways you are getting off are either a) last or b) by irrationally charging into the traffic muttering under your breath again like an irritated foreigner. I opted for a) or b) depending on the mood of the music coming through my headphones.

Anyway, I think I could go on and on; from the traffic, to the noise, to the crazy driving that is just accepted as the norm (very similar to their rules on 'queueing' unsurprisingly), but India is like one of those magical places that really makes you work for it, but I'm starting to feel that you learn to love it. There really is no place like it; where multiple layers of chaos combine so seamlessly to form an impressively beautiful and vibrant backdrop, exhaustingly unique, with a drive and ambition so universally present that amongst the shock to the system it always provides, you can't help but be impressed by the tapestry it ends up weaving.

But still:

Home alone part 1

So, tickets are booked, car sold, first trip to Chicago already booked, what next? Well as it turns out, a load of boring shit that fills the gap before any fun stuff happens. One thing I have learnt about growing older is that for whatever reason, there is never an end to the list of things that I should be doing. As I write this, I literally remembered something I should have done, and have instantly forgot about it, an itch in my brain that will continue to be scratched, and one that will end in possibly the dullest ‘Aha’ moment in history.

Anyway, I digress. Which kind of sums it up. Adult life is full of digressions, or digressions are occasionally filled with adult life, I’m not entirely sure. But either way, the things we tend to enjoy are just so regularly interrupted by chores, that I’m not sure we ever learn to fully appreciate the fun stuff till we are completely away from everything. And as a result, I am adding something to the bucket list; For at least 8 days this next three months, of which at least 4 of them have to be in a row, I want to completely [aforementioned itch just lived up to its ‘Aha moment, in case you were curious] disconnect myself from the ‘grid’. No phone, no lists, no internet, no Facebook, no Whatsapp, or any of the million other ways to be reminded of what I’ve forgotten to do. I think I have my new favourite addition to the list.

As I spent the last couple of days with my parents, said goodbye to them before setting about my travels, I couldn’t help but feel so lucky to have parents like them. And I’m sure everyone feels that way about theirs, I know Sonam does with hers, but I think it’s a mixture of gratitude and confusion; “How do you care so much, and give so much at each an every opportunity, with so little expected in return?” As the guy who spends so long avoiding things on his to-do lists to try and fill it with fun stuff, I can’t see myself giving up things on my to-do lists to go visit someone else too lazy to get on with their to-do list, but help him finish it anyway. But I guess I’ll never know, not really, until I’m a parent myself. Still, pretty irrationally awesome.

Another element of my past few days has been the sheer speed of regression into a student slob. I have been alone at home for just under two weeks, and until my parents happened to intervene and visit, my days were like that of a slightly older Macauley Caulkin in Home Alone, staying up till all hours watching terribly made TV, eating one meal a day because, well that really wasn’t a priority when you’re too busy playing Playstation, regressing a year for every hour that you play on that thing, mentally crossing off ‘non-essential’ items off that list I mentioned earlier as a friend decides to give you a call to catch up, and before you know it you have a bin bag full of two weeks of takeaway, a sink of just knives and spoons, and a strange jet lag seemingly impossible to get when you haven’t even left your postcode, never mind time zone. All I can say, is that the cliché of being left alone by your other half is true. Its ability to regress you so rapidly is kind of fun, for a while, till you find yourself in a Poker room at 2 am just because you can. And as much as I enjoyed having a little dabble at poker, mostly because I haven’t played in years, I quickly got bored of the setting, and scurried on home. As much as some people love that life, I left with a sense of relief, not only because I left that room of sharks with my money intact, but a realization that I really couldn’t wait for my domesticated life of having a fiancé, a meal that involved talking to another person, a rough bed time, more meals than just ‘Brunchinner’ (if it’s not a word, it should be) and for those meals to be had on plates.