There were Alexanders in America

The United States of America (the more you roll your 'r's and drag out your syllables, the better it sounds!) - the land of opportunity, dreams, plenty, and whatever else you want to call it. For me, it fit every cliche ever written about it, and still was very unique and wonderfully weird - quite 'aaawsumm', if you ask me! Dot, Nodot and I, spent 10 days across the east coast and south of America in September. We did New York, Boston, Provincetown (Cape Cod), Austin and Houston.

Here are my random observations about America and about me in America:
- You replace the word 'please' with 'hey' or any other random attention-drawing word you like, before you ask for directions or for any help from a stranger - you then just leave and ignore him/her like they never happened.
- Your tip at a restaurant could leave you filing for bankruptcy - and the food needn't have been that good - you just empty your wallets.
- Bostonians have an accent that's a cross between Aussie and Southern American - and they take great pride in it. (This affects our family more seriously than we imagined. Dot gets a little bit carried away with the whole New England thing and keeps saying "Baaahstunn" every two seconds of our two days there. If that's not enough, he even gets a tee-shirt to remind us of it).
- Airplane stewardesses are too sincere and friendly for my (wannabe) snotty British taste and will tell you why their mother's sister had to look after them when they were young, all in the space between the plane taxiing to a halt and you stepping off it.
- Waitresses are also frighteningly friendly but have a rehearsed happiness and reel off the specials like only thambi in your local Udipi joint can (sending a little English hello out to Britney from the Joe's American Grill in Boston).
- The local Walmart is usually the size of England.
- You cannot buy regular whole milk, only a series of percentages.
- Texans may carry guns but they seem more genuine than New Yorkers.
- New York is over-rated.
- Boston is what I imagined New York would be like.
- Ashwin is an entertaining driver - never mind the fact that you could get killed. Seriously though, we owe him bucketfuls for showing us around. Thank you Ashwin - you're a star!
- I didn't ever think I would live to see a whole gay proud town in America - go Provincetown!
- Clam chowder (or chowda) is orgasmic.
- Nodot and me knew before everybody else that Frank Gehry's Stata Center looks very WRONG.
- I hate Sparkies or whatever that horrid place we went to for a Mexican breakfast is called. Their Migas (puréed beans) had me (and not to mention my two consorts) gassing for a whole day!
- I don't think the IHOP deserves the bad press it gets. At least it delivers a pile of pancakes with maple syrup at the unearthly hour of 11pm in a very ready-to-go-to-bed Austin.
- You cannot cross the interstate or any other road. Walking is not even a concept. We had to summon Nodot out of his working day to ferry us across to the other side.
- All the houses are chalet-style with wood slats on the facade - and boy do they fly the American colours (or should it be colors) with pride.
- Taking an Amtrak train from NY's Pennsylvania Station to Boston, was a great idea and the American countryside is lovely.
- I saw more SUVs in NY than in Texas - that said, the Texan ones were beasts!
- The NY metro sucks, but is the stuff of legends nevertheless. Where else in the world do you get a rastafarian singing out the next stop and doing a one-minute news capsule about the tourist attractions that go with it? Actually, probably only in Mumbai.
- It is not humanly possible to not get dazzled and be awed by Times Square at night. The lights, the people - fascinating!
- The view of the Manhattan skyline at dawn from aboard the Staten Island ferry is breathtaking.
- Clothes are cheap! Three pairs of Levi's for sixty quid!! Aaawsumm!
- Visiting the Johnson Space Center in Houston, being in an actual mission control room, being in a real astronauts' training chamber, seeing a real space shuttle made me feel very insignificant and yet very very proud.
- You can replace words in your vocabulary like 'good', 'okay', 'alright', 'yes', all with one exclamatory 'aaaawsum'!
- I like driving an automatic car - it's like go-karting.

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