Living in LA between an ocean and a desert, with hills for company :)

So I am here at Los Angeles. It was a long journey, with three well distributed flights - 5.40hr from Delhi to Singapore, 7.40hr from Singapore to Tokyo and 9hr40 from Tokyo to LA :P

Me @USC :)

To say that USC is an international university would be an understatement - it takes in more foreign students every year than any other university in the US. And my first few days here have been nothing if not full of international exposure :p. My first visit to the university campus laid down the marker to be honest. While looking for a photocopying machine I ran into a couple of Frenchmen who were also looking for the same. They are here on a semester-long exchange program from their French B-School. The first thing I was asked after I told them I was from India was if I played field hockey. Woah, I thought, Europeans talking about hockey!! Even we dont do that much back home in India, unless we are playing Pakistan :D Apparently T really enjoyed playing hockey and had seen some big stars play in the European league. And the surprise didnt end there -  he had even played cricket!! When I finally asked him if he had played football (or, soccer as its called here) he told me he didnt like it much because it is a very rough game. It was quite interesting to speak with a French guy who would rather play hockey and cricket than football!! A slight shame was that he was unaware of Major Dhyan Chand's iconic statue in Austria. He was also surprised to know that Delhi's hockey stadium, named after the great man, has a capacity of 25000 ppl - about 30 times that of the stadium in his city :p

The next day I ran into a drunken immigrant who seemed to think I owned the shop next to the bus stop :p Wonder what gave him the idea? :p The same day I received a Namaste from a local bus driver - he was very helpful too and guided me to the nearest eatery, something that my grumbling stomach badly wanted :p
Earlier that day, me and my roommate had helped a Vietnamese student open her bank account. Suffice to say the international nature of the university pretty much hit me in the face straight up :P And then, something something else hot me - the jetlag and the gigantic 1230hr time difference from Delhi. I would sit somewhere and couldnt keep my eyes open.

That weekend I went to the Gurdwara here- the langar was awesome :D. I also went to the Griffith Observatory thereafter and bought a ticket for the space presentation there but pretty much slept right through it :p Only remember the last part - the orator said, "We are all made from star dust. So when we travel to the space in our space trips, with our telescopes and in our minds, we are going home." (Note to self - Visit the Nehru Planetarium next time I am home in Delhi :D )

The view from Griffith Observatory - with downtown LA in background

And the other side offered a good view of the world famous Hollywood Sign!!

Hollywood Sign!!

The next week the experiences continued - this time at the International Student Orientation at the university. And that brings us to the title of this post. By a stroke a chance, I seated myself on the same table for lunch as the guest speaker for the orientation herself. She was one of the Board Members of the Alumni Association and enlightened us with some interesting facts about the city of Angels during lunch. She said that LA witnesses weather unlike any other city because it has the Pacific and sea-breeze on one side and the Nevada desert and its hot winds and the other. So it is bright and sunny here and there is hardly any rainfall. And to top it all off, the Big Bear mountain in the vicinity offers snow-capped peaks near Christmas time even as Malibu Beach enjoys a warm sunshine - All in the same city :O

Beach, Ocean, Hills and Skyscrapers: LA has it all :)
(Taken at Santa Monica Beach)

 She also said that public transit here is awful - made me feel happy that the Metro back home in Delhi ensures Delhites can never complain about public transit being poor :)

What was also interesting during the orientation was that all the students working with the orientation team were undergrads, and seemed to be lively personalities and studied subjects such as East Asian Culture, Theatre and Cinema.  The self-confidence that those guys portrayed left me wondering if any undergrad, or grad student for that matter, in India could be so self-assured. And to think that I am a good three years elder to them, with an year-and-a-half industry experience, but nowhere as self-confident as them.
The orientation day also saw me meet more foreign students - including a Chinese student who, although was not good with English, was here to study Music. Wow, I thought!! A piano player coming across the world to study music - just incredible.

Also, met a Mexican student and discussed food - she really liked Indian food with all its likeness to Mexican food in terms to spices (something I was able to observe that first-hand when I ate at a a Mexican place the next day :) ). She also said LA is like half-Mexican and half-everyone-else - and in my little experience here so far, hard to disagree with that :D

The next day, as the Orientation continued, I met a Dutch grad student here to major in Communications. She used to work at the Amsterdam Arena back home in the Netherlands and it was great to discuss football with her :) Though I have to say she didnt really want to talk about her team's defeat in the WC final :P But she quite liked it when I told her how I had lost a bet, and made of several friends lose it too :p, when the Dutch beat Brazil at the QF stage :p :D (Didnt discuss the FB backlash though :p)

A big difference in LA from Delhi is of course the traffic system. Pedestrians have the right of way here (a HUGE change from Delhi :p ) but they can be fined as high as $200 if found to be abusing this right by jaywalking!! And of course, US follows a left-hand drive system. So to take a left you basically have to wait in the middle of the road for the traffic going straight to slow down and give you space to move. I have absolutely no doubt that such a system cant work in an overpopulated India, where everyone is in a hurry - all the time :P

This post is already very long but my experiences arent done yet :p - I have also enjoyed the company of some amazing fellow Indians as well. The bakar at my resistance has been amazing - covering topics ass diverse as US and Indian education systems, the economic recession here, and Anna Hazare and corruption in the country - there have been some heated discussions I must say :p A weird thing here though has been the gutbaazi - Chinese students stick with other Chinese students, Koreans with other Koreans and Indians with other Indians - with other people from their own regions.

My classes will start next week so I will probably not get time to write again - agle 2-3 baar ki kasar nikal di issi post mein :P

PS> A big discussion is on again here :P