Birmingham: First Impressions
It's been exactly a week since I reached the UK and Birmingham. I've resisted posting about it, opting to let things sink in slowly and not reach any conclusions very fast. Which, in retrospect, was a good decision since day 1 was Murphy's Law hitting me with a vengeance. Almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. From non-working telephones and disabled internet access to flooding in the bathroom, I was ready to yell at someone. Fortunately, those turned out to be initial hiccups that got resolved soon. Which is not to say, that the rest of the settling down has been without any more hiccups. Far from it, there are still things to do, registrations to get done, paperwork to be filed, all of which would've been done differently and (dare I say) more efficiently in the US. But if there's one thing that I've learnt, it is that no matter how similar a culture looks and sounds to another on television, it's subtly different in many significant ways.
While most organisations (government, academic and private) in the US have 'gone online' enthusiastically, the British still seem to love paperwork and queueing up. In my conservative estimate, I've spent about 8-9 hrs last week merely standing in queues, for things that could've been done online very very easily. India may have a huge bureaucracy, but the genius that invented it was definitely Brit.
My initial impression about the welcome team at the University was that it seemed rather unprofessional, as compared to the flair and sophistication displayed at CMU. After about a week of attending events, getting help, getting things done, I've changed my mind. Not only is there a gross mismatch of resources, but there's a fundamental difference in the composition of the team that was responsible for the welcome. CMU's welcome was principally done by staff with some volunteers. UB's is completely staffed by a "bunch of undergrad volunteers". Where CMU has experience and resources at its command, UB has youth and enthusiasm. With the number of students at their disposal, they managed to get us through the bureaucracy (notice how this keeps coming up!), the vast campus, the British railway system, shopping centres, night-life and even organised a couple of cultural fests, all in a week! Kudos to the team.
There are a lot of small things that've changed: my spellings are correct again, the units of measure are all the familiar ones in India (except for body weight, the Brits use stone instead of kilos/pounds!), dates are written the right way, switches go on-off the correct way.
Things that've weirded me out:
1. There are no public water fountains anywhere, not in the airport, not in the railway station, not in the university. You simply have to buy bottled water!
2. I've gotten used to the left-hand drive. Even now I get a little spooked when I see a car with no-one on the left hand side. Heh, the things that get into our heads, eh?
3. Utter lack of trash cans, not in the airport, not in the railway station, etcetera etcetera. The streets in front of my residence look a little bit like the ones in India, garbage on the road, folks littering at railway stations. Sigh.
It'll be a learning experience, adjusting to the Brit way of doing things, these next three years. I look forward to more of my 'normality' being stretched, broken, refashioned. Should be an interesting experience.
While most organisations (government, academic and private) in the US have 'gone online' enthusiastically, the British still seem to love paperwork and queueing up. In my conservative estimate, I've spent about 8-9 hrs last week merely standing in queues, for things that could've been done online very very easily. India may have a huge bureaucracy, but the genius that invented it was definitely Brit.
My initial impression about the welcome team at the University was that it seemed rather unprofessional, as compared to the flair and sophistication displayed at CMU. After about a week of attending events, getting help, getting things done, I've changed my mind. Not only is there a gross mismatch of resources, but there's a fundamental difference in the composition of the team that was responsible for the welcome. CMU's welcome was principally done by staff with some volunteers. UB's is completely staffed by a "bunch of undergrad volunteers". Where CMU has experience and resources at its command, UB has youth and enthusiasm. With the number of students at their disposal, they managed to get us through the bureaucracy (notice how this keeps coming up!), the vast campus, the British railway system, shopping centres, night-life and even organised a couple of cultural fests, all in a week! Kudos to the team.
There are a lot of small things that've changed: my spellings are correct again, the units of measure are all the familiar ones in India (except for body weight, the Brits use stone instead of kilos/pounds!), dates are written the right way, switches go on-off the correct way.
Things that've weirded me out:
1. There are no public water fountains anywhere, not in the airport, not in the railway station, not in the university. You simply have to buy bottled water!
2. I've gotten used to the left-hand drive. Even now I get a little spooked when I see a car with no-one on the left hand side. Heh, the things that get into our heads, eh?
3. Utter lack of trash cans, not in the airport, not in the railway station, etcetera etcetera. The streets in front of my residence look a little bit like the ones in India, garbage on the road, folks littering at railway stations. Sigh.
It'll be a learning experience, adjusting to the Brit way of doing things, these next three years. I look forward to more of my 'normality' being stretched, broken, refashioned. Should be an interesting experience.