Archive for May, 2008
Screeching fire alarm! But where was the fire?
0230 hrs on Friday I wake up to a continuous screeching noise to find my wife already awake. We look around trying to figure out what was causing it. I check the baby monitor to see if that was the issue. I hear my wife screaming from the other room “Its the fire alarm.. its the fire alarm”. Both of us run around frantically, I get the baby and my passport. My wife grabs her passport, baby’s passport, car keys, a blanket and bottle of milk for the baby before running out.
As we run down the stairs we don’t see/smell any fire or smoke. Once outside we see people coming out of the building one after another, most of them in their bed clothes. One old lady walked out with her cat in the carrier.
We make ourselves comfortable in the car where it is warmer (it was chilling out) and the screeching of the fire alarm is subdued. Anju seems unperturbed and rather amused. I give her the bottle of milk and she is happy 
.
Couple of minutes pass and a fire truck pulls up… then another and another. Three fire trucks came to check the situation out… I felt safer already. One of them parked right behind where our car was parked and I had to put my hands over Anju’s eyes to shield her from the flashing lights. Some tense minutes pass and we find out that it was a false alarm, an electrical glitch or something in the basement of the apartment building. Thank God!
It takes them a little while before they manage to shut the alarm off and we went back to our apartments safe and sound. In one way it was good that this happened… I will be better prepared the next time. After all this was the first time I had been in a fire emergency false or true out here in the US.
Kudos to the fire department for the quick response.
More driving adventures | Lost in the city at midnight
My wife Jessica has a wide spectrum of taste when it comes to music and is really into it. I also listen to music but its minuscule when compared to her and I don’t really understand it. Crowded House is one of that bands that she loves and was wanting to see perform. So, when she found out that Crowded House was playing at the 9:30 Club in DC (on 2 May) she had to go see it. I bailed out and she planned to attend it with friends who loved them as much as her. Her parents were coming on that day to spend the weekend playing with their grand daughter, Anju. Since Anju still had separation anxiety issues I stayed home to man the baby, while the baby took care of entertaining the in-laws 
.
My wife had lived in Alexandria for many years before she moved to India to stay with me. And when we planned to move back to the US, we were very lucky to land an apartment in the same Apartment Complex that she used to live in. It made our life easier knowing that at least one person knew the neighborhood. Its been 2 months now since we moved here and I am still getting to know my way around.
For the first time on Friday (2 May) I drove on the highway… it was during the day and I was following directions scribbled by my wife and picked her up from the metro station at Pentagon city without any problem. And with that in mind she asked me to do the same again after the Crowded House Concert. It was 2345 hrs when she called and I left home immediately. And for some reason I asked her father, Fred to tag along and he did so very sportively. Everything was going smooth until literally the last minute… I was supposed to keep left once I took the exit 8C from 395 N as the right lane curves off and I missed it (for Fred and I were chatting away). If we had kept to the left and gone straight the metro station was less than a minute away.
I realized immediately that I had made a wrong turn and told Fred. Since all I knew was the exact route any deviation meant instant disaster and it was. As our mind raced thinking of what to do we had passed the exit to 395 N… it came up so quickly that we missed it. We spent the next hour talking to my wife on the phone and driving what seemed like all over the planet, trying to get on 395 S. At one time we were on the road to Reagon International and then another time we were on the road to Mt. Vernon… then we seemed to head towards Route 66. Some desperate direction changes later we were crossing the Rosslyn bridge and were in Rosslyn. Around Lee Highway, Fred and I switched places at my suggestion for I was overwhelmed. U-Turns out here did not work like in India… driving and trying to navigate at the same time squished my noggin. I was very glad that Fred was there with me in the car.
We stopped and asked directions from a couple that were crossing the street… they were hesitant initially but decided to help us. In the end we had to go over the Memorial bridge before we made it to 395 S. After that it was quite simple for I knew the route. We drove for a while and then switched back to 395 N. And this time we made sure that we were in the left lane as we were coming off the exit 8C. A minute later we were at the Pentagon City Metro and picked up the flustered squirrel, my wife . We laughed about it later and I am sure we will talk about this for a long time.
The weekend threw in a couple more interesting experiences. You can go over to my wife’s blog to read about the altercation with a bus driver that ended with us having to call the cops.
PS: Two of my friends entered fatherhood recently – Gopinath three weeks ago and Rajesh last week. Congratulations guys!!! I am very happy for you both .
My first (unassisted) car drive in the US
I have been driving for the past 11 years, for the most part a motorcycle with the past three years, a car… but in Bangalore, India. We follow two sets of traffic rules in Bangalore – one on paper and the second on road. The biggest difference I see between Bangalore and here is the lane discipline. The other immediately noticeable differences are the presence of few two wheelers on the road and absence of autorickshaws.
In Bangalore the concept of driving was simple ‘Nugidavanige dhari’, which means the one who pushes his way gets the road. Some amount of aggression was needed to survive and keep your ground. Those who were timid, drove slowly and hesitated got pushed to the side or run over by other vehicles. The eye was trained to watch all other vehicles, pedestrians, stray dogs, cows, buffaloes, kids, cyclists, etc and anticipate their movement into your path or out of your path. This estimate then guided me to take necessary action to have my way and avoid accidents. My dad calls driving in India as the ‘Great Escape’ .
The most important and essential weapon in the battle for space in traffic is the horn. Installing a good / loud horn and using it judiciously could get you through the worst of traffic. In the last couple of years Bangalore traffic has gotten very crappy and its not because of more vehicles on the road but because of more bad drivers with poor judgment and commonsense… the worst being the BPO/Call center taxi drivers. In the last year and half I had to drive 40-50 km pretty much on a daily basis during peak traffic hours.
After driving in Bangalore for 11 years I had built a significant amount of reactive reflexes that kept me alive on the road and my vehicle unharmed. I did have a couple of accidents, most of them being minor. The biggest accident I had happened a week before my wedding.
It was around 2300 hrs and I was driving home on my motorcycle. There was hardly any traffic and I was driving on a main road at 70 km/h. I was near the Johnson market and from the corner of my eye I could see plenty of stray dogs on the side of the road. What I did not see until it was too late was the two street dogs in the shadows on the median/divider. The dogs suddenly ran across the road. Everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion, I rammed into one of the dogs, it was black in color and quite fat. And the next moment I was flying in the air in a somersault, yanked slightly to the left as my shoe got stuck at the foot pad of the bike. I landed on my left knee and after a five foot long travel on my hands and chest I came to a stop.
Luckily the vehicles behind me stopped and people came to my assistance. A kid from the small dhaba at the Johnson market got me a jug of water and I sat down at the side of the road. I even had some of the people who were drinking at the dhaba insist on offering me first aid but I hushed them away politely. The dog I hit ran away very fast and I don’t know what happened to it. I sat for 20 min waiting for the adrenaline spike to die down and to see if my knee swelled up. I seemed to be in one piece and drove home with just some abrasions and a twisted bike handle that cost me very little to fix.
Here I am now, in the US where all my reactive reflexes are useless or worse, a hindrance. People drive in their lanes and much faster and you don’t use the horn unless there is a problem or emergency.
I drove for the first time in the parking lot for just a couple of minutes under the expert guidance of my wife. It was an important one and it helped me to get comfortable with the dimensions of the car and reinforced the fact that the driver sat on the left side of the car and everything on the road was to the right.
My next opportunity to drive was a road test for my driver’s license at the DMV (Dept of Motor Vehicles). I failed the road test as I did not come to a complete stop at a red light before I turned right. My third driving experience was another road test at the DMV the next week. This one went fine and I got my driver’s license. Though the road tests were unassisted I felt comfortable knowing that there was someone sitting next to me.
Yesterday, I made my first (unassisted) drive with just me and my nine month old daughter strapped in her car seat, in the rear. I was driving her to the day care provider who is just 5 min away and I have to say I was scared shit less… afraid that I might make a mistake and cause an accident. I don’t know how long it will take me to feel comfortable again driving and begin to enjoy them once more… with time I am sure it will happen .
