http://www.makepovertyhistory.org Expressions...: December 2006

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Sammy's Land

Finally got my lazy bum up to blog after a long break.
For all those who don't care, i am in US now, Working from Boston.
Its been almost a month since i arrived here.
The weather's been good to me, till now.
I experienced snow yesterday for the first time in my young life. Felt good!

The city is good and so are the people.
Comments/observation time.
One thing i notice(d) is people saying "hi, how r u doing?".
That's "cool"!(A term i used to severely mock when i was in India and using it "severely" now)!
Anyways, i decided to try out a little harmless experiment - Saying "Hi, How are you?" to greet people i meet/encounter.
I made my experiment go live and i think i can safely assume that it was a success.

But, no experiment is declared a success without boring conclusions.
So, here goes...
Almost 90-95% of the Ams/Yankees/ did give a positive greeting back to me, like a smile or a "Doing good, how about you?".
Wait, there's more.
Almost 50-55% of the desis did not respond.
The look I got from them was something like "Dude, What are smiling at me for?".
desis who did respond were (are) those whom I currently work with or others who looked like they stayed here for some time now.
Why didn't the rest respond back? I have no clue.
Do we only "jell" with people we know?
I never did actually observe this back home. I think I never said "Hi" or "How are you doing?".
Hmm. Interesting.

Reasons anybody?
Is it because we are almost the world's most populous country, we don't care about people?

Maybe I (we) need this.

*The percentages might not be accurate, i didn't accurately count the number of "specimens".
I do understand that about 90% of the people who are new to US do this kind of rant! My 2 cents? Bah.