My Florida Memoirs

“What did you expect about America that wasn’t true?” It was a loaded question; Brian wanted to ask me about the lifestyle, culture and the behavior of the people I met in my first 3-4 weeks of my stay in the USA. Brian was an employee of the client company that TCS deputed me to in Florida. I could not answer the question directly, but gave a political answer, “I expected skyscrapers in the USA, but here in Melbourne, I don't see structures taller than 2-3 stories”. Brian went on to become a good friend of mine. In fact, when my parents visited Niagara Falls, his father, a retired Buffalo city cop showed them around in his big Impala. Brian used to discuss how American history is bloody and how steak is the staple diet for all Americans during dinnertime. He had a couple of complaints about me, one that I can't truly pronounce a “w” and a “v” separately and that my English was more formal than his colloquial language.

The day I landed in Melbourne was a cool winter day; yes even in Florida, I was feeling the chill. TCS put me up in a hotel which had an adjoining restaurant. At dinnertime, I was going over the menu card and saw that they were serving tea. Out of excitement, I ordered a cup of tea and was sincerely expecting a hot tea with milk. The waitress handed me iced tea! That was probably the first cultural shock in a new country.

Earlier in the day, on my journey from Mumbai to Melbourne via Frankfurt and Orlando, I was seated in a small twin engine plane from Orlando. There were 3 passengers in all, a pilot, and a co-pilot. While I was seated at a window on the right side, the other two friends were seated on the left side of the aircraft. Before taking off, the pilot came to the cabin and asked if we could balance the aircraft. Looking at the other two passengers, I couldn't agree more with the pilot. One of them finally came to the right side before we took off.

Hurricane

I experienced all the seasons during my 16-month stay in Florida. The weather is Mumbai-like during the summer, except for the pollution. Mr. Bhate, a long time resident of Melbourne, used to tell me how essential cold beer is to quench the thirst during those hot days. I was satisfied with chilled Florida orange juice though, well, I couldn’t stop at one glass.

In the initial days, we used to wonder about boards like the Evacuation Route on US192, the major thoroughfare in Melbourne. Come August, we realized how Floridians can panic when a hurricane is approaching. And surely, Hurricane Bertha was approaching the Florida coast and we were barely 7 miles inland. Our company office was a nice steel and concrete structure. They asked us to evacuate as it is not safe, apparently during a hurricane. And we were forced to take shelter in our wooden apartments!

Most of the supplies in the Grocery and Hardware stores were gone. Westbound US192 was jam packed and Eastbound was deserted. When we started driving in that direction, a cop stopped us and ordered us to go back! We then went to Walgreens, got a pack of playing cards and stayed put in our apartment. Luckily, the hurricane steered northward and made a landfall in North Carolina, saved!

Car

Most of the senior TCS folks left Melbourne after a month or so. Being there for a long haul, I had to now resort to car buying and getting a driver's license. I was able to get a few lessons from one of my college mates, Suhas, who lived nearby. But I had only one attempt to clear my driving test as I couldn’t have called him multiple times on week days. Luckily, I was able to manage the feat. 

The next ordeal was to search for an affordable, yet reliable used car. The only mechanism those days was to hunt newspaper ads, no Craigslist. One ad caught my attention. The car was in immaculate condition and was also affordable. “Needs engine” was written in fine print. It took me another 22 years to drive a car that needs no engine, a Tesla!

I called the lady from another ad and inquired if she can come down to Melbourne to show the car. Also asked where she is coming from and heard her saying Tituszoo. I asked “which zoo?”, immediately realized what was wrong and hung up the phone right away. What she meant was Titusville, a city about 20 miles from Melbourne.

Finally, I bought my 8-year old Toyota Corolla from an old lady for $2500 and then our gang was mobile again.

Cooking

It would be an understatement to say being a bachelor and a vegetarian in Florida during those days was tough. With one, overpriced, low quality Indian grocery store in town and the closest Indian restaurant in Cocoa Beach, 20 miles away, it was tough to cook anything other than Rajma, Aloo bhaji and use Pita bread as the main diet. No wonder wherever we went, we used to first hunt for an Indian restaurant.

With a Bengali and Malayali roommate, it was even harder to expect that they won't cook meat in the unit. But both, Prateep and Venu did oblige and never cooked meat in the kitchen.

A crash course in cooking at home before leaving for Florida was crucial. While executing the recipe word by word, I mistook the PavBhaji ingredients for 2 people. Later I realized it was for 6. Then Prateep and I called other colleagues who lived in the same complex for the feast!

Traveling

With New York and Niagara Falls already under our belt during the Summer, four of us decided to visit New Orleans during the Labor Day weekend. While returning from New Orleans, the traffic came to a screeching halt on the I10 freeway. This was the first time I saw a traffic jam on an interstate; apparently a baseball game was just over. Well I realized later that traffic jams are very common in California.

Anytime we used to travel more than 50 miles one way, we used to rent a car as I didn't want to take the risk with a used car. Orlando was an exception, although it was 70 miles away. We visited Orlando umpteen number of times to visit theme parks, Indian restaurants, grocery and other things. Visiting Miami was different. All the 3 times I went to Miami and the Keys, I rented a car.

October was the time to head for a Fall vacation, on a Fall foliage tour. We chose Smoky mountains, Chattanooga, Nashville. The time was perfect for peak colors and the weather was simply too good. We then drove to Atlanta and visited the Olympic stadium. With the 1996 Olympics barely finished two months earlier, we were expecting the entire Olympic village would be a top tourist attraction. To our dismay, they were demolishing the stadium. Asked why, the reply was who will maintain it, it costs too much! What a contrast with Indian mentality, where we preserved the 1982 Asiad village throughout!

During Christmas break, we took it easy, partly (well mostly) because it is too costly to fly anywhere in the US during that time. We decided to visit Disney World on Dec 24 and all the bachelors started lazily around 10am and reached the park at 11am, just to find out that the parking lot was full and we had to turn back. After a sumptuous meal at an Indian restaurant, we headed back.

When my parents visited, we went to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and Zion Canyon. 3 other colleagues also accompanied us. After a night’s stay in Vegas, we headed to the Canyons and on our return, while the four of us (including Sunil) did not want to leave behind the sheer beauty of Zion Canyon, the other two were eager to head back to Vegas to enjoy nightlife. Manoj was driving at 100mph, I told my Dad not to look at the speedometer and asked Manoj to remove his sunglasses as it was already dark. His complaint was the big Astro Van we had rented had a top speed of only 100mph!

The Space Coast

Because of the proximity to Cape Canaveral, the East Central Florida coast is termed as the Space Coast. We had numerous visits to Cape Canaveral, including the watch party for a couple of shuttle launches. Apart from Orlando, this was a major attraction, and a bit closer too! 

One of my colleagues, Nilu, who has a very heavy Bengali accent, came to us around noon and said, let’s go for lonch. All of us were wondering if there is a shuttle launch on that day, but looking at the tiffin in his hands, we realized he was calling us for lunch. The other day, he was telling us a story when he was in Mauritius and he purchased a ghodi. A ghodi, horse, really? Why did he have to purchase a horse? My other Bengali friend interpreted it as a ghadi (watch). Nilu was fond of junkyard and used to spend hours there getting parts for his car, we used to call him Junku.

Mahabharat

Subhash was a very funny person. Before coming to Florida, he got married, but his wife did not accompany him initially. When she was still in India, he used to say “What’s life without a wife”. After she joined him, he used to say “Life with a wife is like a knife.”

Well, he found the entire cast of Mahabharat in Melbourne. Saurabh, a very pious and serene person was Yudhisthir. Deva, an angry young man was Bhim. Subhash himself was Arjun and I, who gave him (and some other colleagues and their spouses) driving lessons, became Dronacharya. He even christened the Program manager, an old white person from the client, as Bhishmacharya. Nakul and Sahadev were other TCS employees. He even found a Draupadi, who had a crush on Bhim. 

Well, you can imagine, the client personnel, definitely to the tune of 100+, were de facto Kaurav. Our onsite manager from TCS, who goes by his initials MMJ, and would side with the clients more than with TCS employees, was Shakuni Mamaji! Chris was very much like Duryodhan. A bunch of TCSers started teaching him Hindi and then he used to make fun of Hindi, India and Indians. Once he spoke to me derisively, “Aren't ‘bandhu’ and ‘bandar’ very close to each other? How funny is the Hindi language!” I told him, “Just like ‘monkey’ and ‘monk.’” Since that day, he never ridiculed the language, at least not in front of me.

Rich, my boss, was another Kaurava. He refused to add a parameter to an interface he was developing. My program was the only client for his interface then. He said I should manage somehow. 3-4 weeks later he brought Ken, another American, and started asking me why I wanted the parameter to be added. When I explained, he said Ken also wants this functionality and hence he will implement it, and insisted I should change my code. I said I have already implemented workaround and my code is in production now. He felt ashamed of his adamance but did not outwardly show it.

Lifestyle

Melbourne had a small, and hence close knit Indian community. Mr Bhate, the President of Maharashtra Mandal had organized a small, comedy Marathi play for Ganeshotsav and included the very novice cast, including me! We used to practice at his house. That grand house cost him around $100k, which at that time seemed huge, but if you compare to California, such a house would easily cost $1-$1.25MN now!

Being very close to the Coast, we used to visit the beach quite often, but could never visit to watch the Sun rising from the waters☺

I was slowly and steadily understanding the colloquial part. The bank teller told me that there is a charge of (a) dollar fifty to deposit the check through the teller! Looking at the meager amount of TCS remuneration, I thought it’s best to deposit through an ATM rather than spending $50! Later I realized that she meant a charge of $1.5 and not $50. Nevertheless, even at $1.5, I would have chosen the free option.

During the initial days ( I was still hunting for a car), while shopping at Walgreens, we became hungry and craved for Pizza. We asked the lady at the counter if Pizza Hut is nearby. She said yes, about 2 min. We started walking in the direction she told us and kept walking for half an hour before we reached Pizza Hut. She never thought we would be on foot and we didn’t realize initially that she was talking about a 2 min drive!

About a kilometer (well, half a mile) away from our apartment complex, was an open land. Soon it was converted into a construction site and a brand new Post Office was inaugurated within just 3-4 months. I had never seen a construction pace like this.

Speaking of real estate, I used to see a lot of boards, Land for sale 5+/- acres. Neither the seller has exactly measured the land, nor the buyer would care if they are buying 4.5 acres or 5.5 acres! In the West, I could imagine these numbers would go into tens of acres. Brian used to tell me that distances in the West are so huge that if you miss an exit on a freeway, you would have to drive 100 miles as the next exit could be 50 miles away.

Coming to California, especially the Bay Area, was a different kind of shock from a real estate perspective!