America - visit

I want to highlight my impressions about US through various sub-topics.

Infrastructure. I knew about the advance infrastructure the country has but to see it for real is a good experience. Indians living in US have always mentioned about the high standard of living and now I could understand why. The road & transport, shopping areas and mostly airports are very systematic. In Cleveland, while on road the cab driver told me about the walls being built across the length of the road (free way). I saw continuous iron pillars and then saw wall being constructed. The completed wall structure was being mounted on these pillars. The purpose of these walls was to provide for noise insulation for residents living on either side of the road. The material used for these walls was specially made to serve this purpose after a lot of research. The price - 1 million US$ for 1 mile (one side) of road. The project was also hauled to provide major boost to the economy during recession along with providing employment. Thanks to my erudite cab driver for the above knowledge. He also joked that he hoped the construction of those wall material and iron rod was happening in US and not outsourced to China.
As part of infrastructure, airports were very good. Mostly big and very well organized.

Television. I could see most of comedy serials I see at Home and saw few early episodes which would be viewable back home a month later. There is a lot of local city content in the TV programs, especially news channel and within this weather. Back in India, I have never given much thought to weather related news. It could be either because of wrong forecast or may be because of the fact that it has little impact on lifestyle. But I understood its relevance in western country when life is impacted because of it. It makes a difference if it is windy, snowing or sunny. I was tested with a different unit for temperature measurement, i.e. Fahrenheit. I had to recall my school days to remember that 0 Celsius is 32 Fahrenheit. For locals, use of Fahrenheit is so obvious that they seldom use it. Although I do not remember the inception of different measurement for temperature, I could make some sense of use of Fahrenheit in US- since temperature is mostly below freezing in winter, if we use Celsius then people have to preclude temperature with the word 'minus', whereas in Fahrenheit it would normally be straight away degree (it would be seldom be minus in Fahrenheit). This would save that extra millisecond in speaking. And psychologically you are still positive. Another big use of watching the weather channel is that it's very good topic for conversation. Everybody right from cab driver to professional would be able to tell you the measure of snow fall in inches expected this year.
I have never understood why people across globe cannot use a common unit of measurement. Why is it still mile and gallons and not KM and litres?
Another thing I want to highlight is the quality of advertisement on television. It is not good. Now I understand why many Indian ads are getting critically acclaimed international awards.

Culture. My earlier notion of US was through many movies (both Hollywood and Bollywood) which I had seen. Most of the setting would be in New York (Like most Hindi movie earlier were Mumbai based), where Statue of Liberty would be shown as sign of coming to US, swearing cab driver were mostly Asians and city would be buzzling with people. But my arrival in US was in Atlanta, none of the cab drivers were swearing or Asians and I did not see a lot of people on streets. On the other hand couple of cab drivers were very learned and provided me a lot of information to write this blog and also knew about India (IT, Mukesh Ambani Antilla, Goa, etc).

Brand Division: It seems that big brands in US have divided their geography. We have heard of Mafia gangs dividing their area of operation. Similarly cola major seem to have divided their areas. In Atlanta it was all Coke, which is understood as Coca Cola is headquartered here. But it was surprising to not find any Pepsi available anywhere, be it in shops, restaurants or airport. Cleveland was all about Pepsi and no Coke. Same way in news channel, it was all CNN in Atlanta (again headquartered here) and no Fox. Also CNN people were highlighting quite openly that Fox is favoring the Republican party and are not impartial as news channel should be. i guess the war is in the open.

Currency: For a long time recent times, Dollar has been the most powerful currency in the world. In the last decade Euro had strengthened as an alternate global currency while Dollar had a tough time due to the financial crisis. But recently with few Euro economy facing a very hard economic times, dollar once again is looking as favorite. My experience handing dollar has not been that good. And the reason for this is that all denominations look same in both color and size. If you look at Indian Rupee higher the denomination (moving up from Rs 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000) size of the note increases. Color is also different. The same is true with Euro. Or may be it is simply familiarity. Here even if I do not have a look at the numbers on the currency note, I know what value it is. I remember when the new Rs 500 note was introduced, one common advice from others was to be look carefully while giving someone Rs 100 note as the new Rs 500 note appeared similar. During this time Rs 500 mattered a lot and not many of us were used to carry it in our wallet as daily expense.
Imagine the same situation (at least for me) while handling Dollars. Their size and overall color is same whether it is $1, 5, 20 or 100. The only way to differentiate them is look at the actual digits or to remember past US Presidents in order of currency denomination, i.e. Washington, Lincoln, Jackson or Franklin. In the Oscar winning movie 'Slumdog Millionaire' there was a questions in the movie plot where Anil Kapoor asks the question - Which US President face appears on a specific US dollar denomination? Luckily the hero had seen and remembered that currency. But for me, it would take few more visits to US to become familiar.
I had a even more difficult time understanding the coins. Once I was buying something and when the lady asked for money, I started counting the coins and because of the unfamiliarity, started fumbling with the coins. The lady over the counter, politely offered to help me count. She must have thought I was mentally slow. The engineer and MBA in me felt so ashamed :(