Looking back

Hello everyone,

i have been here in LA for two months now... i m writing this to point out some observations.. now, a word of caution before you start reading this. The views here are based on two months of observation. They may be right, they may be wrong, they may be objective, they may be biased. I do not mean to insult / praise anyone unnecessarily. so, here it goes..


Looking back at the last two months (i had to use that phrase, its the title of the blog) i realized how different and similar the culture in US and the culture in India is. I will not say that either one of them is better or worse, they are just different. Will comment on a few significant differences here.

• concerning the overall culture:
  

I feel that the people here are more open about certain ways. E.g. hardly any topic is a taboo in conversations. I wont feel embarassed to discuss about any topic here. Mind you, thats a big difference. In india, some topics are social taboos, e.g. AIDS , gay rights etc etc. I have seen people working in National AIDS Research Institute use hushed tones while talking about 'sexually transmitted diseases'. Here, anyone can (many times does) speak about anything. There is no judging anyone based on the topic he/she speaks on , or the terms he/she uses. E.g. if in india, i supported a gay-right, i wud be judged as gay by people, or atleast they will ask me whether i m gay. Here, i can freely talk about gay-rights withought having to stress on the fact that i m straight. That is a good thing, which our society should learn. I mean, people talkin about sex, drugs etc is still a not-so-civilized thing. And i find that as a sign of a still immature society.

\t (dont know how to put tabs) Another thing i realized is that people throw many phrases casually here which may be taken seriously in india. If a girl casually says 'i like you' here, its taken exactly that.. but in india if a girl says 'i like you' casually, the guy wud think that she loves him and wants to marry him (ok, i m exaggerating a bit.. but i couldnt help remeber the scenes from the movie dhoom). So, i was thinking... is there any way in india that a girl can tell guy tht she likes him (i mean casually like, so like like a frnd, not like-like but just like) and not be understood in a wrong way?..... also, minor insults while thrown in a casual way are not taken seriously.. so, if i make a joke on someone an the person says 'i hate you alok', i will not take it to my heart and really think tht the person hates me.. I m not sure that would happen in india... so the point i m trying to make is, that in a light conversation, the rate of 'taking things seriously' goes down... where in india, even the jokes made in the lightest of the conversations can be taken in a wrong way.

\t One more thing, here, everyone is equal when it comes to a conversation. E.g. those of you who have read the book by Lodish, Berk and Matsudaira, would know that the Berk from the authors is Arnold Berk from UCLA. Everyone calls him Arnie / Arnie Berk. When he is speaking to you, his intellegence and his scientific knowlegde overwhelms you, but he does not show that off, or try to act as if he is a great scientist. That goes for everyone here, or atleast everyone that i have met so far. Wot i want to say is that the people here dont necessarily demand respect, u start respecting them automatically. However, i should restrict this to scientists because of my limited sampling set. I remember ameeta/bimba (generalize to most of the teachers) talking to us as if we are nothings and we know nothing. While that may have been true, the conversation doesnt demand a treatment based on that. So while i talk to Arnie Berk, we are just two science guys talking on science. Isnt that great ? i sincerely wish that this one thing would be adopted by the atleast indian scientist community.

\tAlso, the overall tendency that i observed here is of 'minding-your-own-business'.. as long as you are not harming anyone, you are free to do wotever you want to. E.g. in a lecture, you can drink coffee if u want to, u can sleep if you want to, you can come in /go out anytime you want to. Nobody says 'do this' or 'dont do this'... i remember asking once about drinking water in class in india... that made me think, are all these 'rules and restrictions' really necessary?? E.g. is the teacher telling us not to drink coffee in class necessary?? does it affect the lecture badly in any way?? I found that there are a lot of such irrelevant / unnecessary social etiquettes in india... we need to rethink about these. But i must say one thing, the situation in india is improving, but not very fast.. e.g. i remember Gejji Sir allowing us to drink tea / coffee in class (for those from IBB). but it still needs to improve. Besides, dont people know that drinking coffee in a lecture helps us to not fall asleep (ok, i m diverting from the point here, thanks to all the coffee that i drink).

\tOne thing i realized that 'solidarity' is a big virtue here. In many cases, it comes naturally to us in india. E.g. if i walk back with someone everyday, in india, it would be naturally expected from me and by me to accomodate some minor delays in order to walk back together. Here, i m some kind of saint if i do that (exaggeration again but my point is that such kind of a thing is a big deal here). Here it wont be expected from me to wait for the person for some finite time so that we can walk back together. I remeber in NARI, me, santya and yoga left together unless we had some major work. That kind of thing is a big deal here. I think its a good thing we have that some kind of solidarity is naturally expected. (I may be wrong about the word solidarity, but it approximately says that, and if i m wrong, then forgive me.. but i think the word is dispensable for the whole paragraph). However, as i have spent 22 years in india, or atleast 14 of them being conscious about the society and observing the society actively, i must say that the overall concept that i m talking about is disappearing somewhat from out society too, but its still there.

\t I have made many friends here in last 2 months, and a remarkable thing about that is the diversity. I have good friends who are from different countries. My roommate is mongolian, i have friends from germany, greece, china, japan, korea, mexico, vietnam, turkey, haiti, iran, spain etc etc. The diversity is amazing. It is so good to interact with people from all these places. Moreover, the language barrier is not a very significant issue here. I mean, language was not a problem while interacting with all these people. Also, there is no such thing as 'mixing in a group well'. There is no group to mix into. There are just people. While this can be a good thing, as in while you go somewhere with people, its usually fun. It has a downside to it. The 'close group' is a rare thing here. I m not saying that it doesnt happen, but its not very common. And morover, you dont have to have anything common with people to "mix" with them. I remember that when we had gone to hollywood, i had met most of them on the same day for the first time, and that dint matter at all. But i miss having a close group of friends to always hang out nevertheless. But then i dont 'have' to hang out with anyone jus becuz i m a part of the group.

\t that was a confusing paragraph up there. Enough about the society now, i m gonna talk about work culture for a short bit and then end the long post. I fear it may be a boring read, so i m gonna cut it short and may be write another one about the small peculiarities about the people here.

• On work culture

\t Now, me being a science-guy, work-culture is an important part in my life. So i m gonna spot out the differences in the work cultures here and back in india. I have realized that one of the biggest changes that i have experienced, is the change in the work-culture.

\t the work culture (i was gonna write WC as its abbreviation, but i realized that we use WC to denote toilets in a blueprint, and the work culture here being not so bad as WCs (well, the WCs here are not bad too), i refrain myself from doing that).. so getting back to the point, w-c here promotes independence. There is no micromanagement of your work by anyone else. Your PI (we call them 'guide' in india) does not micromanage, does not interfere in your day-to-day work, and nor does your 'student-guide' (they are not called anything here). In fact, student guide is not really a student guide here and they dont behave like that either. They dont try to control you, or micromange you. This is of course not true in every case possible, but in most of the cases it is. The PI will tell you to do something and give u an approx timeframe for that. How you manage to achieve that is your own business. Its a very good thing for research. It means that you manage your time much better. The students from india here may find it a bit difficult cuz its usually the first taste of independent w-c that you'll get (try that sentence with WC instead !! sorry, couldnt resist). So initially you may get a bit lost, but u recover. When i read my PI's email summarizing our meeting, i said to myself, 'this is the kind of work culture i want to work in'.

let me summarize it for you,

the body of email:

the broad aims for the rotation project as we discussed are (in order of priority):
1....
2....
3....

You are free to come up with any experiments you think of and do them.

Isnt that great !!


Well, with that, i will end this post. I would like people's comments on this. Especially the ones who are in US.

Thank you for bearing with me.