India trip!!!

Typical responses I received when I visited India late last year.

Mom - You appear to have grown taller. (No complaints about that at all).

Dad - You look like you're taking good care of your health!!! (No complaints about that either).

Neighbor 1 (Mrs. Kumar) - You look nice and healthy now. (Calls out to my mom next) I know a girl in my family (This was the general response in the later part of my trip when I’d grown healthy eating good food and doing nothing other than watching TV)

Neighbor 2 (Mrs. Rajan) - (Calling out to my mom) Nimma huduga idda haage iddane. (Your son hasn’t changed one bit) (This was the general response in the early part of my trip)

Friend 1 (the emotional guy in any group) - Maaaan, I really missed you. I had a big crisis in my life. Needed a friend to talk to during that time. ?

Friend 2 (the one we could never tolerate) - So, what is your salary man? You must be earning in dollars. (No, I receive it in Rupees. I go to the Forex counter in the bank and get it exchanged for dollars).

Friend 3 - You haven’t changed one bit? You don’t even have a hint of an accent.

Friend 4,5,6,... - So, this is your treat right? ;-) Of Course!!!

Will update this post with more as I re-collect.

No offence meant to anyone who think they are being referred to here. Believe me, each of these responses were received as they were expected to be received. :-)

Am I fat or Am I not?

In three weeks in India, I've got the multitude of opinions on whether I had put on a lot or whether I'd slimmed down based on when the person had last seen me. That's when I had this brain-wave of creating a website http://www.amifatornot.com ... Sadly someone's already thought of it and implemented it too. Am planning to post my pic and see what results I get to the question.

Another interesting site on similar lines is http://www.hotornot.com :-)

Nigerian Bank fraud scam

Anyone who's got some kind of spam has to have got the e-mail about the Nigerian Bank Account with lots of money and no claimants or the Lottery winner e-mail. I have to admit, I was one of those who did fall prey to this scam to an extent in that I did believe it when I first saw it. Then on doing some research, found that a million others had got it. Luckily for me, I got this mail for the first time when I was in school and didn't have Bank account details to reveal. :-))

A few years back, I got another variation of a rich Nigerian Dictator who got killed and his last name happened to Randhir (that's my first name). Because of the common name, my dear benefactor was going to produce some papers to prove that I was the next of kin of this Nigerian Dictator and so the money would get transferred to my account. I sent an innocent reply to that mail saying that I was all excited that he had found me and not some other Randhir. I told him that since I had just come into the US, I did not have a bank account. Could he please send me the money as a cheque so that I could deposit it once I opened my account. I had my share of fun and ended the mail chain by using all the swear words I could think off. :-))

Although I don't have the e-mails archived, here are some similar jobless people like me who've gone one step ahead and created a website of their experiences:

http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/

Read at leisure.