CMU: Extracts from my journal 2

4th September (Saturday)

We are responsible for food from today onwards!

Had a yoghurt-and-carrot bun sandwich (which evoked a yuck from a friend) and bananas in the morning.

Venkatesh, our senior took around 16 of us to the Bank of America to open an account. We took a Route 51 bus (the university had given us passes to travel free of charge in the public transport) to the nearest branch of the bank in Mountain View.

Since there quite a few of us and since the bank worked only half day (today being Saturday), I felt that I might perhaps not be able to open an account and so encashed some travellers' cheques to pay for medical insurance on Tuesday.

The bank officials were very polite and helpful and I was eventually (after a two hour wait) able to open an account. I did not have to use the photos I carried with me since I was photographed at the bank, and xerox machines were available to take copies of documents.

I found quite a number of Chinese and Indians in the course of my wanderings today. In fact, Chinese is one of the official languages of the state and the boards in buses and the bank had messages in Chinese (sometimes written in Roman script), besides English and Spanish.

An interesting part about American towns and cities is that pedestrians desiring to cross the road have to press a button and wait for a signal and can't strut across the street blissfully ignorant of the traffic as people do back in India.

After opening the account, we were taken to the Mountain View Public Library. There is no charge for membership or borrowing.

The library has a large collection of fiction and non-fiction, technical books and magazines, CDs and DVDs, audio cassettes and VHS cassettes. There is no one to formally "issue" books as in India. The members themselves place the books (or any other media) with the barcode facing up on a machine which registers the "issuance" and prints out a receipt, which also contains the due date for each. (The borrowing period varies with the medium: Books and CDs for 4 weeks, DVDs for 1 week)

I borrowed a couple of fiction books and some western classical music CDs.

We then took Route 22 bus to Madras Cafe for lunch. I had puri-channa which cost $2.98. We then briefly visited a Walmart supermarket (the American equivalent of Subhiksha); there wasn't time to purchase anything.

And, before I forget, it was a very sunny day (95 F = 35 C) -- I am not missing the Madras heat!

We caught a bus back and reached at around 6:30pm. Immediately, I fell asleep.

5th September (Sunday)

Our first week-end!

For breakfast, we prepared cornflakes with pieces of apple thrown in to provide crunchiness. This was washed down with orange juice.

After this sattvic breakfast, I took my clothes for washing. The laundry facility is situated close to our hostel and is available free of cost. One has to enter a pass code to enter the place. There are four washing machines, with two of them having attached dryers. In addition there are two dedicated dryers, one of which does not work. The whole process took around an hour and a half; so long because I had to figure out how to use the machines. Washing and drying should take about half an hour each. The clothes get absolutely dry and can just be folded or pressed directly.

Next time, I plan to take along my laptop and/or a book with me so that I can do some work as the washing goes on.

I was already hungry as soon as I returned to my room -- it was time to prepare lunch. Gaurav (my room-mate) and I thought of trying out the traditional food (rice, dal, sambhar, curry) in the microwave. Using the recipe I wrote down from Mother and based on some recipes from an Indian microwave recipe book, we managed to cook decent stuff. Except that it took a bit too long -- two hours. But then we were just learning and experimenting on a free week-end. I will probably use the pressure cooker from next time, which will take a lot lesser time.

The rice and potato were just perfectly boiled. Gaurav used some masala to prepare a curry out of the potatoes. The sambhar was a bit too watery... requires more practice, I guess.

I was so tired that I fell asleep after the lunch.

In the evening, I spent some time with friends and visited the university for some time. Rummaging stuff the seniors had left behind, found some ceramic vessels that could be used with the microwave and some containers to store food items.