Eccentricity of the city

There is no ground floor in the buildings.
Well, they dont hover in air (if only they did!!) but just that the floor on the ground is called 'first floor' and so on. And no .. there are no cellars either. There is plenty of space around for parking anyway.

I say hi to someone. they reply with 'Hi, how are you' or 'Hi, how do you do'. And me who had approached the someone with a firm purpose in mind to ask something or get something done, would have to deviate from the task and reply with a 'Am fine!'. Also am supposed to add a 'how are you/how do you do' which I forget most of the time. And yeah, I hurriedly talk about the task at hand. What I am trying to convey (which I dont seem to be doing well) is that being asked 'how are you' totally offsets me and I end up groping for words. Am not used to 'how are you' unless in chat :D

Also, (Thank-you==cheers) is 1. Young people often say cheers instead of thank you.

Too-low hip jeans are still in fashion here (and everywhere else I guess). However, almost invariably, its the not-slim (this is a euphemism) girls who seem to be wearing them.

The problem with being surrounded by only chinese when waiting at the bus stop is that it gets very boring. If there had been people from any other nationality they would converse among themselves in english and what you would be overhearing would make some sense to you atleast instead of all yang-yang-chi-chang!!

Indian takeaway food is not bad at all. It was pretty decent. The menu however quite baffled me. It had so many dishes that seemed Indian but which I had never heard of before. This has to be a surprise because I have been to all the well known north-indian cuisine restaurants in hyderabad and always studied the menu deeply (though relegating the mundane ordering task to others :D) .. I have seen several Indian takeaways here offering north indian food, several offering kerala cuisine (calling it south indian!!), but am yet to come across some south-indian one which offers vada, dosa stuff :D. Will surely patronize such a thing if I am lucky enough to find it. Also, any item on the menu will be presented with a pappad. Its as if pappad is the unanimous starter :D. Good for pappad lovers like me.

Everything comes with an expiry date. And the date is so atrociously close. Through experience, I know that a bunch of carrots will be pretty good for more than a week when stored in the fridge. But the packets here warn the consumer to consume it within 2 days or so. What is more absurd is that even the computer system box comes with an electrical expiry date! Written on my brand new system in the lab - "Tested 09/06, Do NOT use after 09/09". Maybe its all the MNCs' conspiracies to increase their sales by frightening the gullible fearful public into discarding old items and buy new ones?

The past few days, since I had nothing to do in the room, I started practising my signature with the left hand :D. By the way, All phd students are provided with a log book, which is a pretty sturdy binded notebook in which to record all their ideas, experiments etc. If a book gets full with written matter, you need to show it to the supplies office and will be given a new one. I had an idea, what if I fill mine totally with my practice of the left-handed signature and present it to the office and ask for a new one? :D

I have read somewhere that the much hyped 'Culture shock' has the following phases-
Euphoric stage or Honeymoon phase: everything excites and delights the person.
Hostile stage or Everything is awful phase: everything is irritating to the person.
Acceptance stage or Everything is ok phase: the person adjusts and enjoys the new culture.
Reverse Culture Shock stage: the person goes back to find himself and his previous culture changed. (courtesy wikipedia and a host of other websites)
Anyways, I feel am not going to have a culture shock at all :D. The readers shall know my feelings about everything as I would keep blogging and thus the reader would be the witness to whether I had to experience any 'shock' at all :)