FIXING NUTS AND BOLTS IN NEW MICRO-CHIP

Fort Lauderdale:

From my window of the plane flying over the blue-green clean coastline of Florida Sunday afternoon, the cities down under appeared like complex micro-chips: rectangular boxes and a web of green micro-wires running all over.

What are really some of the most fascinating and eye-catching tourism destinations in this part of the world along a long coastline looked from the top like big computer motherboards, complex though neatly designed for big operations.

And then those small dots got bigger and bigger and developed into sky scrappers as we began our descend to finally touch the base at this beautiful county. The lines linking the dots evolved into the vast streets and avenues dotted with palm trees.

Welcome to the land of Americas! This one's indeed the microcosm of the world around the US. You have the Cubans, the Caribbeans, the Mexicans, the Asians, and a whole lot of other communities. NRIs too have their micro-India in one corner.

Just a day into what will be my little world for next five months, I'm thrilled to say the least.

This one's completely different than the landscape of the heartland of Missouri, where we spent the previous three weeks before fanning out to various newspapers all over the US for our five-month stint. We are in the business baby, as my friend and co-fellow Rodney Muhumuza from Uganda would love to say with a burst of giggles and breaking into an instant sort of tap-dancing. We are in the game, baby!

The last three days were hectic. Finishing administrative stuff, meeting our new mentors who came to receive us in the Kansas City, MO, and learning how to adapt to the new culture. A culture that we see making steady inroads back home as well!

We spent the entire Saturday discussing the aspects of cross-culture adaptation with professor Gary Weaver, and honestly, it scared a shit out of me (excuse me for the language, but that's that, it scared the shit out of me).

"Promise you, you'll all feel psychotic earlier on in the program; that's what you call the culture shock," the Prof told us. Gosh! "But then once that phase is over you'll settle down and work your way around; everything will fall in place."

Professor Weaver has been working with the visiting friendly fellows over the last two decades and what he explained to us made a lot of sense.

We don't realize it while we experience it, but cross cultural adaptation could take a toll on you, if you are unprepared or come with ill-conceived notions.

Living and working in a new socio-cultural and economic environment is not only difficult, it could some times be frustrating in the beginning. The professor's experience with the fellows was the base for the day-long seminar that prepared us for the triumphs and tribulations - the highs and lows awaiting us, ahead.

What was quite interesting and I felt more significant was what Weaver said: "You'll break down communication with your gestures and silence more than your words."

And then he went on to demonstrate and explain how gestures and signals are read and mis-interpreted differently in different countries.

In a country where individual freedom and material achievements are ingredients for identity formation, intrusion into personal space could snap communication in just a flicker. For Indians it's weird, but you can't go knocking the next door and say, "Hey! I'm your new next-door neighbor! Wanna go coffee with me!"

He'll go bunkers at you. He's also likely to feel: "Is this guy a nut?"

So Professor Weaver's class of dos and donts and what all could happen to all of us in a totally new world of people afflicted with recession and flu scares (as if this brings an end to the planet and they are the ones who'd bail us all out) helped. I'd rather take it as it comes. Remember what they say in cricket, take it as it comes. Or play on the merit. Ball by ball. This one's a similar situation.

There are many other interesting details of that seminar but I'm not gonna bore you with all that stuff. In nutshell, he tried putting in to context the differences between the two cultures and difficulties in getting hooked on to new life and work styles.

It's not who's right and who's wrong. Just that we are on two diametrically opposite poles. Yet, as I figure it out, basic spices in a curry called homo sapien sapiens remain the same, you go north, you go south, or east or west. People are people.

If I suffer some adjustment problems, I told my co-fellows before parting ways, I'm going to wake you up in the middle of the night and shout loudly: Man, I've gone nuts! But then there are new mentors from my host newspaper the Sun Sentinel with me to take care. I've got four of them, all welcoming, friendly and yes, journalists.

There are too many things in the hand: have to stack stuff in the fridge, explore the new neighborhood, take plunge into the pool that is right next to my entrance (and all my friends back in India, if you want to come visiting, bring your trunks), take driving lessons ('cause these nuts do just the opposite of us, and again, not to blame any one, they're just different,as prof Weaver told us, than the Brits who taught us all the crap they did before exiting our country), and if there's some time left in between working and wandering, grab some wine and multi-cultural food!

Exciting times ahead. Several things lined up.

I'm going slow first week plugging things, picking new tools, getting the nuts and bolts (read technical issues such as get cable connection going, enroll for driving lessons, and stuff) fixed, meeting new journalists in a vast new newsroom and remember their names. And get the hang of new culture. Which reminds me of the fact that I'm not gonna be nuts in going on and on by writing this piece as a fall back option for being unable to filing for my newspaper back home.

So far, there appears nothing wrong with me. Tomorrow, well...I can't say! But I was told somewhere down the line, tomorrow never comes!