Living in the Bay Area -- 1.

We lived for more than a decade in Lexington, KY and we lived for a little more than a year in Alpharetta, GA. Compared to the pace of living in the suburbs in these cities, living in the Bay Area is like switching gait from a leisurely stroll to a 100-metre sprint. I don't know if the change in pace is also  because we are trying to juggle everything with 2 kids instead of 1. Perhaps, a little bit but I think the reason k & I feel kind of knocked out of breath here is just a reaction to moving to Silicon Valley.

The Bay Area is everything I had imagined it to be. Pleasant (weather wise; I was losing it in the East Coast -- I self-diagnosed myself with SAD years back), exciting (career wise -- oh boy!), familiar (it just feels better knowing friends and family are nearby; we might not hang out every weekend but the knowledge is sufficient to make a place feel like home) and fun (Places to eat, things to do!)...but, it is also more restless, less friendlier and kind of relentless. Let me explain.

Restless because everyone seems to be in a rush. Sort of like:



The context doesn't apply but you know what I mean :p

Friendliness: This sort of relates to everyone feeling rushed. It rubs on everyone they interact with and it feels like I live in a web of constantly buzzing busy bees that have little time to...smell the flowers and take a break. A typical family has the mom and dad working full day picking up their kids after work and then all they seem to have time for is a rushed, distracted evening and night routine. Play outside -- check, dinner -- check, bath -- check, story-time -- check, off you go to bed! Everyone is a little bit on the edge all the time, talk a little bit faster and the next->next->next loop wears you out at the end of the day. k and I have tried our best to maintain the fabled work-life balance. We shall see how long we last with our outdated philosophies here on the west coast! But, I digress. I miss the southern courtesy and the drawl and the relaxed pace of life. For the first time since I migrated to the US, I have switched back to speaking fast (the way I used to when I had just come to the US and my students -- I taught Math as a teaching assistant -- asked me to slow down!)

Relentless: k says I don't always have to try to make things more efficient and carry out process or self improvements all the time. But, am afraid that is part of who I am :/ I love my dose of books and movies but I question everything I do in my 'free time'. Typically, if it is not parenting/work/writing, I question it and see if I really need to be doing it. I take this to great extremes -- I try to delegate every other routine matter in the house to a software (preferably) or to someone who would gladly get paid to do it (House keeping, laundry, cleaning, dishes). But, I digress again (then again, what's the point of a personal blog if you can't ramble on?). Here, more than anywhere else I have lived, I get the feeling that I have to constantly improve myself and strive to be better at what I am already good at in order to succeed (at work) and keep pace with all the other smart folks around me.

But, there is no denying it. It is an exciting time to live in Silicon Valley and am afraid I wouldn't be able to leave even if I wished to at some point in the future.

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A for Awkward...

So there are quite a few things you can learn from kiddo birthday parties. One of them is how to deal with new situations and new people -- you can always run to the center and shout really loud. Everyone enjoys that and if you think about it, it is fun to do that. Only, you can't really do that if you are an adult even though it  breaks the ice and acts as a tension release mechanism. Or you can start jumping. That could be fun too. You can just go hopping from one new person to another or just hop to a beat in your head by yourself. Again, not an option for me. The third easy option is to partially hide your face behind your mom or dad and peek at the new folks standing in a comfortably close circle at a distance. Practical difficulties with this third option for me.
Another option (my favorite) is to start dancing, as demonstrated below. A long shot but this one's worth a try.

Anyway with all my fun options taken away, I get to deal with new people and situations the adult way i.e. by being awkward. The initial meeting is never awkward especially when you meet people in a new place through your kid's activities -- school, birthday parties and so on because that is when you just head randomly to a person or a set of people and introduce yourself as so and so's mom. Or you could stand in the middle of the room and just smile at everyone and some kind soul will usually head towards you and ask if you are so and so's mom.

But, what happens after that? When you meet all these people again at a similar gathering, what then? You have run out of "I am so and so's mom. You are so and so's mom?" stage. So now the onus is on you to say something interesting and meaningful while wondering if you can recognize your kid amongst the 20 other little ones running and jumping everywhere around you. Yes, I could always make small conversation and talk about the weather or something but I don't do small talk well. I know logically, that's how one ought to begin to build relationships. You can't talk philosophy and books and passions to a random person before they know you as more than so and so's mom...I can see how that would go.

"Hey, you are r's mom right?"


"Yes but I'd rather discuss the latest book you read or I read or we could talk what you are really passionate about...what are your thoughts on r2i, bharatanatyam, organic food...oh...you have to go? Right now? Ok."


The other issue is when we try to interact as adults while managing kids, we fall into what I call the-half-attention syndrome. This gets better as the kids get older but still...it's like half our brain is focusing on the conversation with the adult while the other half is wondering why your 3 year old is licking that germ-infested bouncy contraption and giving you that look that says, "I dare you to react to this in this public gathering". The nice thing about the half-attention-syndrome with friends is you both know each other well enough to carry out a meaningful conversation with half finished sentences...

"Hey, did you read 'The help'? The movie didn't really...stop chewing on that thing! (that thing = a USB drive)...do justice to the...right now or no cake for you ever...but that other movie was a good adaptation, you know which one...no, not my iphone...we should go to that new organic cafe...no, no lollypop because it has chemicals...how's your brother's marriage coming along...yes, even if it's pink, it's bad, kannu...no! don't throw it there!..."

Yup. Can't do that with new folks. I notice with new folks, it is a more contained half-attention-syndrome.

"Yes, we should definitely meet to set up a...excuse me, I need to..." pointing to your red faced bawling kid because another kid would not share the ball while 3 other balls are lying unnoticed on the floor.

But, I like to believe I am getting better at this plus if your spouse accompanies you to these get-togethers (thank you, k), you can actually get past the weather talk, which I did with a few folks here.

I am still awkward. I still tend to chatter to fill up voids but I am getting better at 'awkward'. I still would prefer a "Tu meri chamak chalo" routine instead...

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On moving and moving on...

This post has been a long time coming but glad to write now about it. The past couple of months have been eventful -- quitting IBM, preparing for interviews, arangetram, moving to Alpharetta (or should I say Alphapet? So many desis here, it could be Alwarpet ;) and leaving Lex and Lex, I guess, is the focus of this post now. The rest will find their way to this space sooner or later!

It's true that I was ready and I do mean, really ready to leave Lex after 11 years of making it my home. There were a multitude of reasons for my wanting to leave Lex but having said that, there are a number of reasons why Lex is, to reuse an overused adjective, pretty awesome! It's been a few weeks here and I still haven't found a library as attractive and close to home, or a Kroger that's 2 mins away! And I truly miss Joseph Beth, our defacto hang out place for the past several years now.

But a place is after all a place and it's the people really that matter. And people are what I miss most about Lex. It's not like I dropped by my friends' homes every other day but weekends usually found us in a friend's home or them in our home and it was...good, familiar, comfortable...like home. Even if some weeks all I did was talk to them on the phone, it was knowing that people who knew me for my quirks and craziness(es) were nearby should I need to see them. The wise folks online tell me it takes anywhere between a year to two years to call a place your home, sometimes never. A year seems far away now. I asked k if we should call a friend's contact here, you know, just to make new friends and he said, "It should just happen else it's artificial" :p

So weekends here find us in the mall (there is a carousal in the mall and a train, a real train for kids!) or Hotbreads (paav bhaji and veggie-puffs) or India plaza (yes, they have the latest Tamil movies) or in one of the umpteen Indian restaurants here, all of which are a stone's throw away. Fill friends in on this equation and we are set for life.

But.

It is harder to reach out to people and make friends as we grow older and for desis here with siblings back in India, that becomes a necessity. Friends are our family here, right? And with work being more challenging (and fun -- which translates to time consuming because you spend more time working for two solid reasons now!), I wonder when the whole forming-a-community here will work out. The moving is easy (k would disagree since he did all the work). It's the moving on that's harder. Perhaps, like k says, it will happen one day, naturally and without any special effort on my part. Who knows? Meanwhile, a glimpse of Alphapet :)

Need I say more?

Hotbreads!

Really neat restaurant where k and I had our rare couple-lunch-- Never enough thyme.

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