Three weeks down and counting…

I’ve had so much to do this past week…pheww…. I’m glad it’s over! Pretty busy with all the new procedures and systems I have to learn. Some of them I wish I never knew…like number stamping -- who number stamps anything these days???

I’m surprised to see a very paper-and-pencil-based office when the rest of the world is moving to e this and e that. And you would think America being one of the most technologically advanced countries would have embraced and evolved a tech savvy solution faster than anyone else. Well they missed the bus on this one!

Something we have never worried ourselves about is the number of hours we put in rather than as long as it takes for the job to get done. There is no concept of putting in extra hours to get a job done. Going by labour laws in America I guess it would just be too expensive to pay overtime, but hey what ever happened to getting the job done and then leaving!

What have I been doing other than work and spend 17 to 18 hours in a in front of my computer? I went to this Indian restaurant and stuffed myself, it felt sooooo good to eat alu gobi and nan, my first taste of Indian food in three weeks…emmmmm.

Oh yes, the high point of the week was this jazz performance I went to by an amateur band at a bar called the “Elephant Room.” The band was called Drop Trio and they call their music spaceship jazz… it was not earth shattering or anything spectacular but I enjoyed it – the percussionist was the best. All the members of the band hold fulltime jobs elsewhere, one a computer programmer and the other two I don’t remember, but they find time on week days and even weekends to perform.

I’ve been told Thursday nights have become the new Friday nights in Austin. Anything and everything interesting supposedly happens on a Thursday night. Bye bye TGIF it’s now TGIT. Laid back and easy going is what I would call Austin. Most people are friendly and helpful and they do know to have a good time. Back home, sometimes I think we take things maybe too seriously. But things have been that way for most part of my life, I’m used to that. I like the pace of things at home. It is frenzied and everyone always seems on the go. It may be the very reason for burnouts happening all too often, but what the heck I like it all the same.

And my latest acquisition is a bicycle – borrowed from a colleague at work. The very first time I tried to ride it I found myself drifting automatically to the left of the road…aaahhhh! Thank god it was a one-way street and a Saturday afternoon. I keep having these thoughts of being hit by some speeding vehicle. I don’t want to die or even be in hospital in a foreign country. So tomorrow I get myself a helmet just so I feel safe -- and I know it wont keep me on the right of the road! I’ve been driving in India of all the places and I don’t believe this sissy traffic is freaking me out.

Tomorrow starts another, I hope, short week …