Indianization of America

I had to write this. I went for what is known as Fuqua Friday. Today at Fuqua there was an event which was all about internationals. The event included food from different parts of world and various events displaying multinational talents. That is when it hit me. India is popular here. Very very popular. There are quite a few Indians as well, but that still does not explain the popularity of India. Americans love Indian food. “Curry Chicken” as they call it, is probably the most famous of them all. Then of course the very popular chicken preparation which has a number. For some reason “65″ is a difficult number to remember.

 I felt alienated and at home all at the same time. Bollywood dances were happening on stage, awesome Bhangra, the song “churalia..”, and an Indian fashion show. Everyone loved it. Phenomenal when you think about how people from the rest of the world can tap their feet to an alien music sequence. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the people next to me(Chinese, Mexicans, Korean, Americans, Europeans, Latin Americans, and many more nationalities)sway to the beatof Bhangra.

That’s when I got a chance to feel what it is to enjoy dance and music from different parts of the world. Following the Hindustani music and dance performances there was a Mexican song. Well it was actually a Spanish song sung by a Mexican. Accompanied by the “spanish guitar”. You can actually find rhythem and melody when you hear something absolutely different. Music really has no language I guess. The weirdest performance was by a bunch of half naked Japanese guys dancing to Japanese rock music. (:0

I realize the importance of the culture quotient. Some cultures are totally different from yours. What is normal to them, which seems like noise to us, is indeed normal to them. In Japan people might dance to rock music. In Mexico people sing with lots of passion and action. The song seems to come from somewhere deep down the throat. Words are shouted out. In china on the other hand it’s very soft. I know these might be erroneous generalizations based on one show, but still you can make out marked cultural traits. 

I also found people in so many traditional dresses the Korean hanbok, JJapanese kimono, Indian lehengas, sarees, salwars, sherwanis, Chinese Cheongsam, and so on.  I found mostly asians in traditional dresses over there.

Back to the main topic of discussion. India and Indian stuff is popular here. Just like hamburgers and hot dogs have made it into India, doshas, nan and chicken curry are here. Just like Indians like American food, Americans like Indian food. In India rock and pop music is enjoyed by lots of folks. In America bhangra and carnatic music is popular.

Paradigm shift

Slightly on the philosophical note: In life you need to constantly redefine who you are and what you believe in. There were times when I used to think that you have to find a set of values and principles and live by that. If you constantly change your values, I thought people might think that there is something wrong with you. But now I realized that the above belief holds good only if you intend to restrict yourself to your own familiar universe. If on the other hand, you step into a universe where everything that you found normal is different then you have to change your beliefs and values.

For example, I have been taught, conditioned by my mother, father and other older people to look to the right, then to the left and again to the right, make sure there are no vehicles and then cross the road. This was in India and I held on to that belief for 24 years. It worked and I never got hit by a car.

However after coming here and trying out the above rule while crossing the road and nearly getting hit I realized that there was something wrong with what I was doing. I realized over here everything is flipped. I gotta look to the left, then to the right, again to the left, make sure there are no vehicles and then cross the road!! Paradigm shift. If I had held on to what I have been taught then I would have been well ”run over”

Though this a trivial example, it does highlight the fact that you have to have the ability to discard what you have been taught and are familiar with to embrace the uncomfortable and the unknown.

I am thankful for

There comes a time in everyone’s lives when (s)he suddenly becomes thankful for a host of things. One of the primary things that you are thankful for is, when you are hungry and poor and wonder whether you should have cheap toast to stuff your stomach or splurge on something that cost $5, someone offering food.  That happened today. It is not like I don’t have any money and cant afford food. It is far from that. But then the guilt associated with spending money when there is a cheaper alternative overpowers the inclination to have expensive “good” stuff.

I exercised and jogged all the way back home. Only to realize that I was famished. My choices where toast and jam, cereal, or go out and buy good healthy lots of food for $6. Seeing my indecision and complete disarray, my roommate offered to cook some food for me. He made awesome Chinese food! He is Chinese by the way. Fantastic rice and chicken wings and soup. I haven’t felt so good after a meal in a while. That’s when you realize that there is more to life than the food you cook and eat. There is more to life than the food that you can buy from McD or some other grill. There is the possibility of someone being kind enough to give you food.

I may sound a bit pathetic in this blog. But then I don’t feel so bad at all. In fact I am quite liking it. It is an experience to be grateful, soo grateful to someone because he gave you food. That’s when I realized the extend to which I took for granted the hot food I used to get back home, mom’s cooking, all for free. This is a kind of feeling that is indescribable. You need to experience it to feel it and I suggest you try it out. It feels really really good. And I encourage you to buy/give food to anyone you find hungry anywhere. They will go through an experience very similar to the one I had, multiplied many-fold, and you can have the feeling that someone is eternally grateful to you.

Another remarkable culture that I found here is how the seniors help out the ones who are coming into the university for the first time. Like me most of my friends are in America for the first time. We all have no idea how to get to places. Where to buy stuff. The seniors most often offer to ride us to various shopping places as they have a car. They generally buy food for us too. Which again is incredible. And they don’t ask for anything in return except that we carry on this tradition, ie help out the next batch of students who are coming in. There is a sense of trust and kindness which we are expected to imbibe.

So only when you get to a place where you have to wholly depent on others, more experienced folks, to guide you will you appriciate what it is to be helped out. Only then will you realize how you need to change and adopt an attitude of lending a helping hand, because you survived only because others did that for you. It is pretty interesting and quite unique. An experience that was totally unexpected.

A crazy word called networking

I am a bit high when I write this so excuse the odd spelling or grammatically flaw. I am just back at the engineering building after a networking event hosted by Fuqua. It is interesting to note how MBA students are trained to network. Every class you hear the word ‘network’. Every few hours you spend with an MBA student you can count the word ‘network’ a few times. Professors talk about networking. Industry leaders talk about networking. I went to a networking event for the first time today because I ended up with an invitation.

At the begining I had no idea what to do. There are about twenty people who I have never seen or talked to before. All of them are in different circles talking to each other. Now this is a first. I generally go to places where I know people. I know how to start a conversation. I know how to find common interests. But how do I break into a conversation and start off a new one. Is that polite? Is that the custom? Is that ever done at all?

When in doubt, observe! So I picked up a tray of food and a drink and pretended to analyze the weird concoction the bartender fixed for me.  What I was actually doing was trying to find out what someone did when (s)he came in and did not know anyone there.

Bingo! Along comes a guy. He walks up to someone, I presume he is seeing for the first time and goes, “I was standing over there and wanted to meet you”. Interesting… Say no more. I started practicing the fine art of heading into conversations and talking about things that neither of us are interested in.

That’s what I thought in the beginning. Later it turns out, you carry on a conversation by asking open ended questions like. “What do you want to do after this program”. “Do you like it here?”, .. you get the point.

So the conclusion is. It seems to be polite to head into conversations. It seems alright to go and wait where two people are talking and shake you head for a while, the often um, mmm hmm, and the uh hah till you get their attention. That is how you get into a conversation you weren’t part off at the beginning. And this is done and should be done and is normal! You will need to do that when the idea is to network and meet as many people as possible, especially when it is a networking event.

The campout

It would be unfair on my part to not write anything about the camp-out after such a fun and exhausting time. So here goes, even though its past midnight and I am dreadfully tired with absolutely no time for the next couple of days.

Camp-out is more of a tradition. The tickets are to die for. Everyone wants them. There arent enough for every one. I guess it probably started with them thinking of selling the tickets at say some time on some day. People I guess started coming for the tickets and stood in line many days in advance. So the camp out might be an innovative solution to the problem of too many people standing in line from many days in advance. So instead of standing in line they made the rule that the fans have to be somewhere around the the ticket counter. Thus a tradition was born.

The whole camp-out for graduate students is for 36 hours. Typically about 2000 students camp-out. About 1500 make it till the end. And about 700 win the tickets. To spend this 36 hours the students have to invent innovative games and fun events.

Friday night it was all about drinking lots of beer and playing beer die, beer pong and a few other games whose names are pretty awful and needn’t be put up here because I dont want perverted search hits. The basic idea is that you meet lots of people and get involved in the school spirit. Not everyone is a fan of basket ball. But they still camp-out because they want to share in the fun of spending 36 hours with sometimes total strangers and sometimes best friends. At 12 in the night there was plenty of dancing that lasted till 3 AM.

Frequently in between are the checks. A whistle blows at random periods in time when you have to run in and check yourself in. By doing so you let the guys in charge know that you are still camping out and have gone thru the entire thing. Only if you stay till the end do you get a chance to enter your name into the lottery. Then you have a chance, which if you work out the probability comes to somewhere around .3 to win a ticket. To increase your chance of winning what the guys do is decide to form pools. So you maximize your chance of winning. Though I did not win a ticket one guy in my pool of three won a ticket. So I get to go for about 3-5 games.

Saturday we have an option. You can do community service in the morning and miss about 4 hours of camping. Among many options I picked weeding a garden. That was interesting and that garden, a part of duke garden, was in such a bad shape that it was tough differentiating the plants from the weeds.

Saturday evening this MBA student from fuqua was teaching latin dancing. So I went there and got a free lesson in salsa and a couple of other dance forms. That was good fun as well!

Saturday night back to the beer pong, beer die and other unmentionable games. More dancing more flip cup, which is yet another beer game and a bit of sleep.

Sunday morning the tickets were raffled off and the excitement of some major basket ball fan winning a ticket is incredible! It is wonderful to watch! So I was part of a tradition at Duke! Nice

Diversity

Eventually diversity wears out. Eventually things that you thought really cool are’nt really cool anymore. Right now I am still in that phase were things are really exciting. Duke has a reasonably good MBA program. The school is called fuqua(phew-ku-ah). I am taking a course there and as per course requirement I have to do a presentation. What is interesting is that it is a market study for a particular medical device company. What is really interesting is that my team has members from China, US, Mexico and India! I have to put up a slide in a couple of hours with the Mexican. For that we schedule a meeting at the Fox center which is were all the MBA students meet up, have food, discuss basketball and work. Fox center is a huge pentagon with two of its walls as glass. I tried to figure out how to describe the flight of stairs that lead down to the basement right at the center, the resume counter, the food courts, more food courts, the comfortable sofas and the chairs and tables where everyone sits and works but failed to do justice and gave up.

I got there at 8 and we spent 4 hours,till 12 in the night, putting up a competitive landscape. If you asked me a month back when I was in India what I was going to do at Duke, I could have never told you that I was going to put together a competitive landscape with a mexican. That would be the last thing on my mind. It wouldn’t even be on my mind!

After going home, I worked for another couple of hours on my other classes and finally slept at 2 only to wake up today morning at 7.30. The amount of work that gets done is phenomenal.

The crazy thing is: I like it. That is when I realized that in life you gotta give yourself a jolt sometime or the other. Whenever you get comfortable and you dont feel so good about yourself, you gotta realize there is no reason for you to stay that way. You have to try something else. you may be surprised by what you find. You may suddenly find yourself having a great time, when you never thought that it was possible. The point I am trying to get across is that you need to constantly change and experiment. Only then will you feel, at least at times, on top of the world. And I feel that is necessary.

I am not asking you to throw away your job if you dont like it. Well, I am saying that!! But with a clause. Give it up once you find something else to do. What I am really saying is look for opportunities, they may sound crazy to you and to everyone else around you, but you never know: you may like it!!

Duke Campout

Basket ball is big in Duke. The motto is “if you arent a fan of basket ball we make you into one by the time you graduate”. So you can imagine what it is to get season tickets to the games. That’s what everyone wants. They are expensive and well limited. But what if you have an opportunity to win them? That is what the camp-out is all about. Graduate students camp-out. Literally we spend one weekend, right from Friday evening to Sunday morning on Duke campus outside. We put up our tents on the parking lots or on the backs of trucks. Bring coolers, grills and other amenities to spend 36 hours out in the open.

During these 36 hours at regular intervals there is a whistle. You need to be at the tent during this whistle. If you make it thru all the whistles then your coupon goes into the lot. Then it is basically a matter of probability that chooses the winners. They say if you are in a team of 10 people the chances are high that you will win at-least a few season passes. This would mean that everyone in the team would get at-least one chance, often many more, to go for the games.

Camp-out for this season is next weekend. Everyone is all geared up with getting the stuff ready. The atmosphere is electric. I am right now a bit confused as to what it is all about. But I am guessing that it will be a lot of fun. 2000 graduate students in a couple of parking lots!1000 season tickets to be won. It doesn’t get better than this. It is a major social networking event as well with people from law school, business school, engineering, life sciences, physics, philosophy, english and well numerous other departments come together for a fun and party time.

And of course there is plenty of opportunity for beer pong. That is the major game during camp-out. Search on google if you dont know what beer pong is all about. Wikipedia also carries some interesting data about beer pong. More on camp-out during the week!!

Free free Free

Free seems to be the magic word on campus. I was walking dejected, after getting my back side kicked by a crazy thai ping pong expert, on campus along beautiful stone laden paths when I found something that really perked me up. A bbq hosted by WXDU, which is the radio station in Durham. Fantastic hip hop and RnB with some bbq is mah favorite combination from yesterday onwards! So grabbed a coke, couple of well done hamburgers and a hot dog and went and sat down amidst the crowd to listen to the music. I like it. The university does provide a nice atmosphere to unwind and refocus. I found that RnB helps you refocus and figure out what is really important to you. Thats when I decided that I should be home studying.

Now I couldn’t figure out what I needed to study because I fell kinda asleep during one of the classes. So what are my options?
Call up a friend?
Email the prof?

Oh wait! This guy records his lectures and puts it on his website. So I go there, log in and listen to parts of his lectures to get my concepts straights. That gives me another idea. Maybe from next week onwards, I needn’t go to his class. I can stay at home and listen to the pod cast. That way I can slow down the lectures and skip parts I dont like.

Over the last week I met up with many professors and asked them about career opportunities. The way it works, I figured out, over here is that you need to figure out exactly what you want to do in life. Once you have done that then you can go to a prof and tell him this is what I want to do. The prof then refers you to someone he knows. You tell them about your interest and that is it. They put you in a position where you get to explore and work in your field of interest. The important point however is that you need to figure out what is it that you want to do in life as early as possible. Only then does meeting proffs help. Otherwise you only get philosophical advice and no concrete help or links.

This actually extends beyond professors. If your idea is to get some help from someone else you need to know exactly what is it that you want.

Oh well enough of the philosophies!

Schedule of a mad biomedical engineer

Monday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience
1:15 – 3:30 medical device innovation
4:15 – 5:15 seminars in biomedical engineering

Tuesday
8:30 – 9:45 Electrophysiology

Wednesday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience

Thursday
8:30 – 9:45 Electrophysiology
1:15 – 3:30 medical device innovation

Friday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience

You might think that this schedule isn’t too hectic. But believe me when I say that it is. Every second I get in between, I carry around my laptop and read/make a report. We get over 100 pages to read every day, two to three assignments and one lab work.

I come back home go for a swim and then get back to work on reading the extra material required about each of the subjects. And of-course wait for friday/saturday night for the big party!!!!

Hey I forgot, we have this elaborate network of friends from across departments to call up and let us know when there is free food. So I get a free lunch and dinner.

Weekly I spend about $25! And make about $50, with mininal amount of work! Good life right now.

Retreat in the mountains

The crazy thing in America is the amount of money that is spent on recreation and relaxation. Duke organized a retreat or getaway for some graduate students to go to the appalachian mountains for the weekend. The whole trip that included stay in bunkers and wonderful high pastures food was totally free for this select group of students. I ended up being part of those lucky few due to reasons I cannot fathom.

The journey started of on the right note with me siting next to this cute american girl who had an insatiable interest in Inda and Indian cultures. I seemed to be the third Indian she has ever met in her life. Now that is odd, but we found common interest in neuroscience and the dating customs and differences in India and America. Four hours later we reached Burnsville which is a resort/retreat on the appalachian mountains.

There I found the most welcoming sight of fantastic delicacies. I dont want to go into describing the different pork, chicken, turkey, beef, veggies, deserts and many more food stuff that I found spread before me. It was like Aladdin and the gene. And I didn’t even have a lamp to rub to get all that free food!

Then we had these leadership sessions which are like any other regular leadership sessions: group discussions, strategic planning, debates and more such sessions. That was alright and quite useful.

After that we went hiking to the top of a nearby mountain at 11.30 in the night where we set up a campfire and toasted marshmallows. Maybe this is very regular and mundane for Americans, but coming from India and being the only Indian in a bunch of people from all over the world and them trying to teach you to toast marshmallows is one crazy experience.

That was fun, but the weirdest thing happened after that. I met this norvigien girl who studied in pune for most of her life and did her under-graduation at Delhi university. We were singing Hindi songs on some peak on the appalachian mountains.
Mitwa, O mitwa…..
kabhi kabhi mere dil me…

Now is that odd or is that not? Her hindi turned out to be much better than mine!

Next day, attended more sessions, met new people, listened to more hindi songs, discussed the merits of a saree, the concept of respect and uncleji and auntiji and finally came back to Durham where I was overpowered by a desire to learn about the problems of US health industry. Thats when I read a 40 page booklet on how to cure US health care!

Bubye folks!