The importance of tipping

During my first semester at Utah, very few things were going for me.  First, well, I came expecting Yamerica, but what I got was Utah.  Second, within the first week, I realized all my four years of Engineering and my hard-worked above-average GPA could go for a toss as being completely worthless.  The material was miles ahead of what I learnt, and look Ma, they give out problems, no short answer questions like we had back home! Tough, tough problems. Third, did I mention it was Utah? Translated - effin cold?   I did count my one big blessing - I had a part time research assistant-ship job. But since it was only part time, I flipped burgers at the campus grill.

By December, I had just about had it.  Most days, I was so tired from working in the grill  and the back and forth trudging in snow, that it was an effort to stay awake in class, much less at night. I constantly emanated a greasy smell, which to this day, I can recall in an instant.  It was always freezing cold. My grades were so low, I was hoping for a miracle. I hadn't understood major parts of my subjects, and I was flaying at problems. Our TA had just discovered interesting similarities between all our homeworks, so we were expecting getting called into the profs office very soon. I wasn't broke yet but knew that I needed to convert my research job from part-time to full-time if I needed to pay fees.

One day, I was at the grill generally brooding over my problems.  It was almost close-up so I started cleaning the grill.  I looked up and found this one guy who said - Can you make me a cheeseburger?  My shoulders must have stooped, and I must have let out a moan. What he said next totally took me back . "Sorry, my man. Here, let me make it up to you.  I know am not supposed to tip you but here.." he said, handing me a closed fist.  I palmed  what he gave me and opened it to see a $1 coin.  That was the first (and only) time I ever saw a $1 as a coin. And that was the first (and only) time I ever got tipped. The effect was instantaneous. My tiredness forgotten, I made him my very best.

I fiddled around with the coin in my pocket the next couple of days.  I went back and forth on spending it. Some part of me said no, don't spend it.  The other part said - hey, it's free money.  I ended up spending it finally to pay for a cheeseburger (how fitting, I thought).  I made a show of it to the cashier almost to say - look here's a $1 coin, ask me where I got it.  She didn't and the coin was gone.

December came and went. I did much better in the second sem, even grew to like the Grill. I quit when full-time research came around.  But since then, I've always tipped waiters, much to the chagrin of family.  I didn't tip all that big but I tipped very frequently, even for bad service. I would tip for coffees and for take-out. My dad and I fought over how much to tip a waiter in India.   Recently, I saw HG wrestling with the decision on whether to tip the eyebrow parlor lady.  She kept apologizing after saying that the time she worked came back to her.  I told her I completely understand.

Now, I've started cutting back just because being a student again changes things a bit.  But I tell you, tipping is almost an urge for me. 

New Resolutions

I've decided to spend $10 a month on buying used books.  What with the plethora of used book stores in the bay area and the monthly sell out back in Bton, I should acquire a substantial number.  So, during the first month of this mid-summer resolution, I visited Recycle book store.

A quaint place, with a cat that roams around the bookshelf.  The fiction section is enormous.  I bought 

- Murakami - What I talk about when I talk about Running.

- Martin Amis Short Story Collection (Being married to an MFA student has rubbed off some of the good stuff)

- Alchemist

In the end, I spend $20.  The Alchemist cost me ten bucks, but I couldn't resist the cover.

I forgot to mention that the last time around, I had also bought this book.

Who is Ha Jin, you ask? HG's prof starting Sept 2011.  HG got her visa today, so this is a gift for her.   It is, literally, going to be A Good Fall. 

Bookstore memory

Nothing like catching up with old friends on a summer night.  M showed me around the famed Google campus, with their 18 different restaurants providing free food, their volleyball courts and swimming pools and gigantic gym, their open offices with snacks and espresso machines on every floor, their "Google" bikes that people ride around campus - it's a self contained unit with a single motive of keeping the worker in.  ( I wonder what J.G. Ballard would say). I saw pasty geeky looking devs riding around the bikes, young Indian men showing off the place proudly to their parents, few women and extremely fit men and women playing beach volleyball (M said they were from the business units).

We ate in a Tequira, which is a cheap Mexican place popular around this side of the country.  The food was good though, and then went for a couple of drinks.

Walking back, we saw a bookstore and my legs automatically steered me inside.  I've realized that I've done this enough times before and just so that I remember them, I decide to blog everytime I entered one.

So, this was Book Buyers on Castro Street, Mountain View, CA.  (Image :google)

The night was with A & M. And I bought Orhan Pamuk's Snow.

A asked who he was and didn't seem terribly interested when I said that he was dating Kiran Desai (HG is the source of this). 

Book unusual

I have to admit that this is the most unusual book I've read.  Not unusual in the story, but just in the manner of reading it.  I could go two days easily without even glancing at it, but when I do pick it up, I spend hours without even realizing the evening has turned into night and that the natural light is fading. Two days later, I can just continue exactly from where I stopped.

I've never read a book this way before.  Usually, it's the regular 50 pages a day or the frantic reading where I do nothing else. This one..hmm..strange.

Another thing about this book, I GET the guy.  I understand what he's doing - the half man the half loser character that he is.  Weird.

Even engineers have imagination

I was watching a technician setting up a huge ass mass spec instrument for our group.  Now, among other things, the instrument has a long vacuum chamber operated at 6500 V where ions happily travel from one end to the other and back.  The particular chamber is lined with fans for cooling called Medusa fans.

Excuse me, I asked the guy while he was looking for the container for these, why are they called Medusa fans?

Well, ever imagine what form that much electricity takes in a  vacuum chamber?  The bolts look like the hair of Medusa.

Huh.

Some engineers know their Greek.

My version of 'Dude, I was there'

 - Chris Daughtery
 - Sheryl Crow
 - Maroon 5

All three in the same day, all for free and all from 100 ft away.

It helps if you are working for the 'second best company to work for in the country'.  It also helps if your classmate is working for the 'second best company to work for in the country'.  Genentech was having a week of giving it back, the culmination of which was a concert at the AT &T Park in downtown San Francisco.

Yes, where the Giants play.  Yes, I walked on the green, stood next to the diamond and carefully looked for spit balls from Barry Bonds.  I also imagined hitting a home run into the stands, and was generally beaming on the rest of the Genentech crowd.

The musicians were a big secret, but since last year BEP showed up, we thought it would be pop or hip-hop. Daughtery showed up first.  Ah, it's rock for today. Good.  (One can be a snob when one has free tickets).  This is my first ever of Daughtery since I was never an American Idol fan. The band was good but he was OK, he really was ..just OK (one can be a snob etc..).  His vocals were bad, sounded very generic that what you would expect coming at the end of a rock lead up. Until he did a cover for Rebel Yell.  Maybe he was toning down the rock.

And then Sheryl (yes, 100 ft away is enough for first name basis) shows up. She's really tiny but effortless in her vocal range.  Her songs were most of the popular hits from her 7 Grammy career, but with variations and improvisations.  Plus she had a mean guitarist who took it away every single time he was asked to do so.

Maroon 5 was just ..awesome.  Adam Levine showed what a true band leader would do in a live concert (Hope Daughtery was taking notes - BOOM! Ok last one). And Dusick was easily the best drummer I've seen, which I admit isn't much.  Sunday Morning was stretched out to a whole 12 minutes.  Levine Has Skills.

And of course, there was free beer and food too.

A good weekend, one where you know someone up there is sitting where they should be sitting.

Every family needs a Godfather

The mallu nair/menon are tradionally maternal. Our family takes it one step further.  We become our uncles. 

It all started with my granduncle whom I could easily call my grandfather.  My mom's dad died when she was a kid. My granduncle made the decision to take his widowed elder sister and her four children right under his wing.    All he had going for him was a job at Cochin Customs which he was terribly good at, and a doting wife who happily agreed in spite (or because) of the fact that they themselves had no kids.  Slowly, brick by brick he laid the foundations of our family.  The other brothers were less selfless.  They each sought to set up their own families first, establishing themselves in Bangalore and Kuwait and such. They always lend a helping hand, of course.  But the guy who stayed put to face the drum music was my granduncle on his measly salary but with a determined mind and a pure heart.  Only one other brother Chandran stood at his side.

Little stories emerge like the time when my mom's cousin Balu moved back to Kerala to study. Balu's mom and dad were sufficiently rich for him to attend KV (then a big deal).  Sunny, Usha and Suja (my mom) had all been educated in governtment schools till then. There was the youngest, fondly called Baby, who's education was still left.  Everyone including Chandran, said - forget KV, it's expensive and plus Baby might find it too hard. Send him to the Govt. school just like the others.  My granduncle put his foot down and said he was going to send Baby to KV no matter what.  He did exactly that.  Baby wasn't aware of all of this (he still is not). But that hasn't stopped him from being a Director of Finance in Phillips. 

 Balu hung around the ancestral place long enough for some of whatever it is that works in our family to rub off on him.  He was smart and ambitious, wanting  to come to the US at 28 for his MS.  His own dad said no.  My granduncle again put his foot down and said yes.  We'll arrange it. The family was not all that rich.  I have no idea how exactly he managed to pull it off with his impeccably high-standard of conduct and his ethical nature.  I hear stories of hardship, but that somehow seems irrelevant when I think of how amazing the fact is that everytime he put his foot down, he had nothing to go on except a pure gut feeling that this will work.

Balu came to the US. Baby followed.  Then my cousin Vinu and then me.

The next time he put his foot down was in choosing a bride for Baby. Another grand decision that paid so well in that I now have a gem of an aunt. 

My granduncle went on to win Presidental Award while in Customs.  He retired with great prestige and establish a successful insurance detective agency which further extended his fame.  In fact, one of the things that worked in mine and HG's favor was that my father in law knew  him!

Robin was a house painter whom my granduncle found reading an English newspaper on his break. He had tough luck in getting an education but wanted it badly enough.  My granduncle called up his now established nephew, Baby for some help.  Baby never even asked what exactly Robin was going to do.  When Robin was told there was money available for his education, he said gimme a week.  He went away and found a course in bartending that he could take at a reasonable amount.  Baby said yes, his wife equally agreed and Robin went on to become a bartender on a cruise ship.  He always came back from his sails with presents for my granduncle and grandaunt.

My granduncle is gone.  To be be left by a crowd of people, family and otherwise, whom he has touched.   And I get a lump in my throat everytime I think of that big place without him in it. 

My granduncle once recently told me - don't worry, I have done enough good in my life time that you and Vinu will definitely get it all back.  This is how I will remember him.

And Baby is becoming him.  Balu is not too far behind.  Half my generation owe it these two, whether they recall it or not.  I know I couldn't have made it  here and survived here without them.  And being around them has rubbed off whatever works in our family on to me.

At least I hope.  I hope I become Baby and Balu someday. 

If I let myself think that people who died are looking over me right now, I imagine a long list of uncles  gazing over my shoulder. The stern Chandra, the life-loving Anniyan, the book loving Appu, and the truest of them all  - Achuthan.