Awesome
RETIRED MOD
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- Mar 24, 2006
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It's been very educational. Spent the last several months there. Great weather, the hottest days were pretty cold for a desert guy like me.
It's a different world all together over there. Different rights from wrongs, some of the most mundane things are done in a degree of professionalism. Random people on the street are so open to showing a good degree of courtesy. Heck I've always learned that Muslims should say Salam while passing by someone, but the Americans are who are actually following this so simple courtesy and it makes a hell of a lot of difference.
It was mostly pleasant save the usual bad apples you come across. Landed in JFK, New York. I was tagged with a yellow file and had to be registered upon entry. That airport was troublesome. I was put in a room full of Muslims from everywhere. Most of them knew zilch English and many Arabs there. Had to help a lot of people fill in their forms.
Stupid questions "Why are you here?" "To meet with family I'm on vacation".
Response? "That's not a good enough reason, give me a good reason".
It's different out there, I figured no point in giving the immigration lady an attitude since she probably doesn't get my value system and why meeting family across continents is something that you got to do every now and then. Being my first trip after 9/11, I guess I was not in the system.
It was one immigration officer after the other. Each asking the same questions. That took up about 7 hours. Missed my connecting flight. Next flight in 24 hours. Immigration officers said that if you don't get a flight today we'd arrange for your stay overnight. As soon as I'm out of there, everyone backs off and the airlines is like its the airports fault and the airport's like its the airlines job. Anyway, stuck in New York, no place to stay.
Tired, pissed off and no way of reaching Virginia that day, I almost gave up and decided to pay up for a room by the airport hotel, costing like 200 bucks for the night, plus 100 bucks for taxi. Plus I had to bear JFK again!
I got an idea, took a cab and told the guy to get me to the greyhound station. Turns out it was somewhere in the heart of NYC, passed through Queens (plus side got a nice view of Manhattan). Finally reached New York Port Authority. The cabbie dumped all my luggage off and sped away.
I was with heavy suitcases on a pavement, in a veryyy busy part of town! I had heard bad stuff about New York, like they'd just take your stuff and run away, so at this point I've got half my brain keeping an eye on my luggage.
Finally sum homeless bum walks by. "Brother, I can pick this up for you". He looked so wasted and I was like err no thanks. I figured all I need is some cart and I can manage everything myself.
No cart!
Meanwhile another guy comes around and is like hey lemme give you a hand, and he picks up my stuff and is walking off. I'm like "hey he might just be running away with it". I called the bum again and told him to pick up the other stuff! and I grabbed one bag too and chased the first guy.
Anyway by the time I caught up with him the Port authority's Red Cap helper showed up and is like hey hey its my job to do this, so tell them to give the luggage to me.
So the first guy who picked up my stuff was genuinely helping he said "yeah its his job let him take them", the bum's like hey I got here first. The red cap's like don't pay him anything!
It got very annoying so I paid I just took out a dollar he grabbed it from my hand and seemed so happy about it!
So the next bus was another 3 hours away. Threw my bags on the floor, lied down on em, and dozed off. At that point it was no better than being at a railway station in Lahore.
Finally got on the bus and took off and slept again. When I opened my eyes, we were almost there in DC.
Life started gettin better then.
DC and Virginia are cool places. Virginia's where there is nice peaceful, quite suburban life, and for some city action you can drive to DC and it almost feels like you are back in Dubai.
The next coupla days were spent in meeting family, cousins, heck cousins who now had kids!
So that's a brief version of how I arrived there.
I'll post more about the trip.
Check this video out. It's my niece and a cousin. It was a nice day at the Potomac river. They are almost the same age. I'll post more stuff later.
It's a different world all together over there. Different rights from wrongs, some of the most mundane things are done in a degree of professionalism. Random people on the street are so open to showing a good degree of courtesy. Heck I've always learned that Muslims should say Salam while passing by someone, but the Americans are who are actually following this so simple courtesy and it makes a hell of a lot of difference.
It was mostly pleasant save the usual bad apples you come across. Landed in JFK, New York. I was tagged with a yellow file and had to be registered upon entry. That airport was troublesome. I was put in a room full of Muslims from everywhere. Most of them knew zilch English and many Arabs there. Had to help a lot of people fill in their forms.
Stupid questions "Why are you here?" "To meet with family I'm on vacation".
Response? "That's not a good enough reason, give me a good reason".
It's different out there, I figured no point in giving the immigration lady an attitude since she probably doesn't get my value system and why meeting family across continents is something that you got to do every now and then. Being my first trip after 9/11, I guess I was not in the system.
It was one immigration officer after the other. Each asking the same questions. That took up about 7 hours. Missed my connecting flight. Next flight in 24 hours. Immigration officers said that if you don't get a flight today we'd arrange for your stay overnight. As soon as I'm out of there, everyone backs off and the airlines is like its the airports fault and the airport's like its the airlines job. Anyway, stuck in New York, no place to stay.
Tired, pissed off and no way of reaching Virginia that day, I almost gave up and decided to pay up for a room by the airport hotel, costing like 200 bucks for the night, plus 100 bucks for taxi. Plus I had to bear JFK again!
I got an idea, took a cab and told the guy to get me to the greyhound station. Turns out it was somewhere in the heart of NYC, passed through Queens (plus side got a nice view of Manhattan). Finally reached New York Port Authority. The cabbie dumped all my luggage off and sped away.
I was with heavy suitcases on a pavement, in a veryyy busy part of town! I had heard bad stuff about New York, like they'd just take your stuff and run away, so at this point I've got half my brain keeping an eye on my luggage.
Finally sum homeless bum walks by. "Brother, I can pick this up for you". He looked so wasted and I was like err no thanks. I figured all I need is some cart and I can manage everything myself.
No cart!
Meanwhile another guy comes around and is like hey lemme give you a hand, and he picks up my stuff and is walking off. I'm like "hey he might just be running away with it". I called the bum again and told him to pick up the other stuff! and I grabbed one bag too and chased the first guy.
Anyway by the time I caught up with him the Port authority's Red Cap helper showed up and is like hey hey its my job to do this, so tell them to give the luggage to me.
So the first guy who picked up my stuff was genuinely helping he said "yeah its his job let him take them", the bum's like hey I got here first. The red cap's like don't pay him anything!
It got very annoying so I paid I just took out a dollar he grabbed it from my hand and seemed so happy about it!
So the next bus was another 3 hours away. Threw my bags on the floor, lied down on em, and dozed off. At that point it was no better than being at a railway station in Lahore.
Finally got on the bus and took off and slept again. When I opened my eyes, we were almost there in DC.
Life started gettin better then.
DC and Virginia are cool places. Virginia's where there is nice peaceful, quite suburban life, and for some city action you can drive to DC and it almost feels like you are back in Dubai.
The next coupla days were spent in meeting family, cousins, heck cousins who now had kids!
So that's a brief version of how I arrived there.
I'll post more about the trip.
Check this video out. It's my niece and a cousin. It was a nice day at the Potomac river. They are almost the same age. I'll post more stuff later.
Last edited by a moderator:
:crazy2:
, Nice pictures bro
