The Alligator, Okeechobee and the silence of the ‘H’

This is something which is way off the timeline. I had a backlog of things to blog about and being lazy and of the procrastinating type, well I procrastinated. I have tried my best to condense some interesting stuff from the first 4 months of my stay here in Gainesville into this post.

So we are called the Gators. We who go to the University of Florida. And not surprisingly you have “Gators” attached to anything and everything- from drinks, to your ID card and yes even your health insurance. And it is for good reason. Although it might sound like an exaggeration, most bodies of water in Florida supposedly have some Alligators in them. That by itself is not something which would freak you out. So Florida is a hot, swampy place and a conducive home for Alligators. But what would freak out an Indian for sure is to see people swimming in a Gator infested lake. Oh yeah, there are some nets below the water. But jeez, you have Alligators a few hundred yards away. In India, if a lake is known to have crocs, the lake would probably be surrounded by a fence, the fence itself wouldn’t have seen any Human within 100 yards of it and then you might catch a sign somewhere down the road leading to the lake warning you of crocs. This being my fragile background, I was simultaneously struck by thoughts about my family, my health insurance and my last day in office as I frantically tried to paddle my Kayak (which was entrenched in some weeds) away from a Gator which was lying motionless a few feet away. I resolved never to go into that lake again (and broke that resolution once). I have been told that Alligators are not aggressive, at least not in the least as crocs. But hey, Wikipedia says The alligator is notorious for its bone crushing bites. Be that as it may, it’s very interesting to see this difference in attitude between Americans and Indians (maybe I am generalizing here) towards Gators/Crocs (for all practical purposes they are the same to me). As an example, my friend has a lake behind his house and he casually throws in that it has Gators in them!

I have read and seen a lot of Thanksgiving Dinners on TV and often wished that I could have one too. Well I did have one! My first All American Thanksgiving. Thanks to my friend who had me over to his place for Thanksgiving. I did think it would be kind of weird before I went, because it is supposed to be a family affair mostly. But it turned out to be alright and an awesome experience at that, sitting at a neat table with a carved turkey being the center of everyone’s attention. That was Thanksgiving. And then there was Okeechobee. Okeechobee is a county in southern Florida. No, I didn’t exactly go there, but I couldn’t resist using that native American name. I went to West palm beach, Okeechobee being on the way. At West Palm beach you can see the Atlantic ocean and you also get to see unbelievably huge mansions connected to the beaches through tunnels!

I have always thought my English was decent and one of my stronger points. I was in for a rude shock when I stepped into the USA. Half the people in the Atlanta airport couldn’t understand more than half the things I said. On my first day in college I was searching for a place called the Institutional Review Board and not being able to find it, I ask an American woman. And she looks at me for a minute and says- “The instituuuuuutional whaaat?. Son I can’t make a thwing of wot u are sayin”. In some cases the way Indians pronounce words are wrong and in some cases they are just different. For example I got my way through 16 years of education in India with no silence on the ‘H’ in Honor. After a heated argument with my American friend, I had to agree that it was silent. Not so with words like Infinite which is pronounced as Infiknit here. It’s just a different way of pronouncing. There are differences in some terminologies too. You never say queue, you always say line. You will be looked at weirdly if you say you are going to a hotel to eat. You go to a restaurant to eat. A hotel is synonymous with our lodges. Other differences not necessarily associated with words- I have hardly seen people untying their shoe laces here or wearing long socks, its mostly anklets. And for the first time I realize that it makes a lot of difference when you say you want to take a bath and when you say you want to take a shower. Finally, for the love of God, Cadburys is associated with only easter eggs . Its Hersheys all the way here!

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