My Journey to the US (Part 1 / N)

A couple of days ago, as I climbed up on to the stage to receive my master's degree, my entire journey to the US flashed in front of my eyes. It was hard for me to believe that someone who had seen a computer for the first time in his life only around a decade ago was getting a Master's degree in it and that too from a decent university half away across the globe from where he was born.

So who the hell am I?

Well, I wish I was someone who the entire world could recognize if I mention my first name but that is not the case (yet). So let me start off with a brief introduction. I am Arun Subramanian, a graduate of Arizona State University hailing from South India who just attended his convocation a couple of days ago. If you are thinking I am one of those guys who travel to the opposite side of the earth from his current location and suffer for a couple of years to get some in-depth knowledge in Computer Science and a piece of paper that claimed that I had gained that in-depth knowledge, then get a cookie for yourself in my name. I am that neighbourhood kid who got bullied in his school, that nerdy kid who did not go out and play in the sun, that kid who always felt insecure about himself and felt that he did not belong anywhere. I had a very average and insignificant childhood just like most of the other Indian kids and I am not going to bore you with those stories. No. My next set of blog posts is going to be about my journey from India to the United States and the cultural changes that I witnessed across the two countries.

So let's begin.

Exciting things generally happens to people who are extremely adventurous. However, my trip to the US was a lot more exciting than I ever bargained for. I was supposed to leave from India on the 4th of August, 2016. My flight was to take off at 4:30 AM to Dubai from where I would be taking a connection to Boston. I was travelling in a decent sized group of 6 people, all of us headed to Arizona. However, as luck would have it, the Dubai airport shut down on the 3rd of August due to some accident. This led to a complete chaos and the flight that was supposed to take us from Chennai to Dubai left from Dubai only by around 4:45 AM. So this resulted in a delay of around 5 hours. This inevitably meant that my connection to Boston had already left by the time I reached Dubai.

After panicking for a few minutes, and worrying for a few more minutes, we made enquiries at the desk and found that our bags were lost and that we will have to stay the night at Dubai and that we would not know if there would be a seat available for us on the next flight to Boston. Luckily, three of us were allotted seats in the next flight. The other three had to continue staying in Dubai till they got a flight. I then took that flight and landed in Boston after a really really long 13-hour flight. That was the time I decided to avoid taking an Emirates flight to the US as much as possible. However, the story doesn't end there. After landing in Boston and clearing immigration, our next flight to AZ was booked for the previous day as per the original itinerary. So we had to meet the front desk of JetBlue and argue with them again as to how it was not our fault that the Dubai airport shut down and how we had to get a flight out soon.

Funnily enough, my parents (especially mom) are a little too religious and consulted an astrologer before booking my flight for the right set of dates to enter the US. Turns out, he chose the worst possible travel itinerary for me.

In the next posts, I will post about my initial days and the cultural experience I faced at the US based on the feedback I get on this post. As mentioned in my first post, I am writing here solely to improve my writing skills and hence, do leave me feedback in the comments!