Monday, October 17, 2005

Impressions of Austin

Okay ... long time no post. :)
It is October. 2005. I'm in USA for a month. Austin, TX. Should be back home in a week or so from now.

Austin is not a very large city - seems small compared to Atlanta, GA - that I visited in the year 2000. Wide open spaces and temperatures ranging from 10 degrees celsius to 42 degrees celsius in a single day. Very, very unpredictable weather - we had a summer, a winter and rains all in a couple of days - however all extremes within Pune limits. So wasn't much of a problem.

The thing that struck me first was ... how little of a change the US has seen since the year 2000.
Malls ... roads, shops ... hell even Walmart is the same as it was 5 years ago. After seeing this, I find it easy to appreciate the -phenomenal- rate at which India is moving ahead.

A very old lady - probably in her eighties came over to me in H.E.B (a grocery store) and asked me - why is it that Indians are taking away their jobs - and if it was really true that China will be surpassing the US in every by 2015!