I'm still trying to cope with the reality, I'M IN THE US! It feel rather surreal that I'm living in the states for already 3 days now... As my colleague in the US said "Things are abundance here", which I already can see from the streets, houses and food. I also noticed US is quite the Malaysia in the way how it's comprised from people from many races... Indians, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc...
Well, continuing from where I left off in my previous entry, it's our 2nd day in the US. Kwai mui had arranged to take us on a short tour around Manassas before going to claim our car. Before she arrived, we had our breakfast at the hotel which is rather good. The selection is rather standard for a hotel, oatmeal, cereal, scramble eggs and patties and bread. One thing different though is the waffle making machine, where you can make your own waffles from it. We had a rather heavy breakfast, I of course opt to meet my daily protein requirement through eggs and patties.
Kwai mui arrive at around 10.30+ and the 1st official place we visited in the US is... [drums roll]
LOL, yeah Walmart. We had to get some daily things like toothpaste, cooking oil, detergent, etc. My junior had some skin reaction, so we also got some medication from the pharmacy there. Things I have to say is mostly cheap here (if we ignore the currency exchange off course). You can get shit like 2 litre coke for only $2. I was tempted to buy a ciplak brand protein powder there which is only priced at $16 however decided to make some research 1st on the brand before simply throwing my $$$ into it.
After Walmart, kwai mui show us the most important path in our stay in US. The route to our office. The route is quite straightforward and would take around 15+ minutes to reach. After seeing our office building which looks like a prison camp, we went off to pick up our car. The car rental agency was located in the Manassas airport which looked really like those private small plane airport. We had to deal a rather fiery counter lady to get our car, a Mitsubishi Galant. I had to forked out $1.5K (a whopping RM4K+) for the rental before claiming it from my company when I get back from the States.
I had a short pilot drive at the rental place with kwai mui guiding me on how to drive in the US. I found it surprisingly difficult to drive when everything is swap opposite, signals light control, gearbox, etc... I could adapt quite fast to the controls in the car but the muscle memory of driving on the left hand side instead of the right was hard. I would automatically sway to the left hand side of the lane and I had to constantly remind myself, right instead of left. The rules of the road here in US also is slightly different from Malaysia. Like for instance the left lane is the the fast lane here, you can turn right in front of a red traffic light when there is no car coming, one a 4 way junction the 1st car that reaches the junction can go 1st but if both arrives at the same time the car on the right can go 1st.
Anyway, I had a driving test where I had to follow kwai mui car across some random route. I managed to slowly get the groovy at driving a US car on a US road and pass the test of following her car to our next stop which is where we would have our lunch, Famous Kebab.
After lunch, we drove back to the hotel and parted ways. Me, being worn out decided to take some Zzz. I woke up at our planned "Visit Walmart part 2" and "find dinner" event. I requested to practice driving to the office 1st as I needed some practical time driving without guide to the office, which I managed to do but with some mistake on the route I needed to take. After I verify some major landmarks on the route, we headed to Walmart where we shopped for some eating stuff to fill our fridge with.
As usual, choosing a dinner place which is halal. Not really an easy task especially when both colleague would say "Anything la" when I ask them what they want to eat (Quite frustrating at times). I decided to drive to TGI Fridays which is us behind our hotel. My Pakistanis colleague decline to eat here (not halal) and say he would eat things he bought from the supermarket at the hotel later. I got rapped when I suggested we maybe drop in him the hotel 1st before we go eat, so he don't have to watch us eat. We all ended in the restaurant and decided to order a 5 small side dish meal which we could share.
Despite the initial, "Shit, won't be enough for me", the meal was quite fulling. When we got the bill, we got into a small debate as the bill include some figure for tipping. You see, whenever you dine here in US, if you're serve by someone, it's practice to tip that someone. This is because these people base pay is low and rely on tips. This practice also make the "you get your pay on how well you service is". Back to the debate, my colleague claim that they shouldn't put the possible tip figure in the bill as tip should be based on the customer's free will. I however believe the figure is there not to force you to tip according to this figure but to provide some aid when calculating the amount of tip you want to give.
After the dinner, we finally hit our hotel. I counterstrike till 1am before managing to get tired enough to finally get some shut eyes... Hence ending this blog entry for this time, next on my entry is my 1st day at the office...
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