An Alien’s Perspective…
The second thought could not suppress the first one and the first one could not completely overpower the second one. These two thought played with each other as I landed from one plane and boarded the next.
Always having a dream to enter the land of opportunity lead my footsteps towards it. It all started with United States of America, my dream country, which gradually and unknowingly implanted its passion within me and in turn lead me to working hard to make it a reality. Thanks to my academic background, my family’s financial documents along with their best wishes and the right situation, I got the VISA!!!
Along with the visa came new and unknown situations. Well, whatever the new situation may be, I was ready for it. At least, that’s what I thought. Leaving my family and my life back home, I started my journey towards my passion and my new life. Traveling alone for miles and miles in several airplanes for the first time in my life along with my inborn motion sickness was a real start to a disaster. With all the hustle and bustle in the airport combined with lack of sleep and proper food, suddenly I said to myself “Sabina, Sabina, you really started off with a mistake… you should have waited for your two roomies and should have come together with them.” OMG! These inner words that came from within me did help me make the worst out of the situation. However, thankfully from the other corner of my mind came another thought and it told me “Hey there, it’s good that you came alone, could you have been so independent if you were with someone you could depend on? NAH… so just hold yourself up and continue the journey.” The second thought could not suppress the first one and the first one could not completely overpower the second one. These two thought played with each other as I landed from one plane and boarded the next.
Ok, done with the background… Now let us meet the novice alien. Gosh! I really did not know many interesting facts about America then, and now that I know about them I want to share them. Basically it starts with being an Alien (with two antennas coming out of your head I guess). You get admitted to the land of opportunity with a tag “ALIEN ADMISSION NUMBER”. GOD! Am I an ALIEN, SERIOUSLY??? One step further out of the airport, and another fact hits my eyes… Literally no one walks in America apart from the few who really don’t have the luxury to own a car.
Now, as for TIME, in America there are three different time zones, Pacific, Eastern and Central. So guys, be careful while contacting your friends and remember if they are in different time zones, because it’s not the same all around the country. The time rule famously known as daylight saving is another interesting fact. Basically it means that in summer time, for half the year the day starts an hour early. Then, if in normal times you are 12 hours away from America, during daylight saving you are just 11 hours away. Or maybe it’s the other way round, but you can research if you are further interested!
Now coming to technological facts, you should use the internet over here. My god! The bandwidth will shock you and dazzle your eyes. You will have to trust online transactions because that is all that happens out here. You go to a website, click the buttons, and make all sorts of online transactions. Don’t worry about cyber crimes and all because you do not have time to do that. Truly speaking, do not worry, there are many people out there working on all sorts of security issues, so you will have to just trust the cyber world and its stakeholders. But beware of issues related to identify theft; all your personal information might be stolen by an unknown person who will try to conduct fraud on behalf of you.
There are many other facts about life abroad, but the last one for now is about the people here and their behavior. A few of the popular phrases here are: Hello, Have a good day, I appreciate it, Sorry, and Excuse Me. I think these are the words they are used to while communicating with each other. At first I used to be like, “My friend, you haven’t even touched me while passing me, why are you saying sorry?” But now that I have been here long enough, I feel that this is just an example of their courtesy towards other people like in many countries all over the world. It is always nice to receive greetings and express your feelings with a few words. You don’t have to be the best or closest of friends to be nice to each other. So no matter what situation you are going through, bring a smile on your face, and many faces around will not hesitate to smile back at you…..
P.S. Forgot to mention, most of the aliens in this country will start researching about the word “racism” when they arrive abroad. You might have difficulty believing this, but I have seen many doing that. This word might haunt you, I can’t tell you how and why because you need to feel it yourself. And unless you have felt it, you might not be able to get it at all.
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Author: Sabina Rajak
Illustration: Shutterstock
Categorised in: Your Say