The following is an attempt to give a picture of people and things in US as I found it during my visit. Needless to say, these are strictly personal, and are not authoritative, in any sense!

Introduction

US is a very large country. There are 4 Time Zones. The climate, food, people, culture, nearly everything, varies from place to place.

The Place

My visit was to Cupertino, a small town on the western coast of US. San Franciso is the nearest "famous" place, though San Jose, which has an international airport is nearer! These places are located in the State of California, one of America's 50 states.

Santa Clara is a small town adjacent to Cupertino. Palo Alto is another place nearby. HP set up its office, nearly 60 years back in this place, and started, what later came to be called, Silicon Valley. I discovered offices of many well-known IT companies - IBM, Oracle, Tandem (Compaq), Siemens, Rational, in and around Cupertino.

Each place has a Web site with lots of information pertaining to the place - places to visit, history of the place, the town councillers, transport, schools, etc. There are maps available on the Web site, as well as, elsewhere, with granularity ranging from the world to the streets! Americans rely mostly on maps to reach places (as you cannot stop at a road-side tea shop and ask the seller, as we do it here)!

People

There are a large number of Indians in these places. At least, I found 6 Indian restaurants in a 10 mile radius! I also found a large number of Chinese too, especially in HP.

Climate

When I went, winter season wasn't over. The first few days, it was very cold, and there were occasional drizzles and wind. The sun came out the last few days, but it was still cold! The temperature varied from 6-8 degrees (C) to 15 degrees (C).

Roads

The roads are very wide. Unlike India, driving is done on the right side of the road. (Also, it is right hand driving, i.e. the driver sits on the right side of the vehicle) There are signals at all intersections. The interesting thing about the signals are that they change, based on the number of vehicles in each lane. Also, by default, pedestrian crossing signals are not turned on. If you want to cross the road, you have to press a small switch located on the signal-post, and then after a few seconds, the pedestrian lights get turned on!

Here, I must mention expressways (or freeways/highways). They are 5-6 lanes wide (each direction) and do not have signals. Vehicles maintain a constant speed (very high). You change lanes depending on the speed you are driving your vehicle.

When you want to go to a particular place, you take an "exit". "Exit" is a side road, whose arrival is indicated a mile or more early. The signals I talked about earlier are once you take the exit and go to the place you want to go.

You can also "enter" the freeway through designated roads.

Distance

The distance between places are very large. Though there is public transport, car is the preferred medium of transport. The absence of a vehicle was a major constraint to me in terms of sight-seeing or even going to a good place for food.

Food

I discovered that Americans tend to drink almost everything ice-cold. They put ice-cubes even in plain water. Milk is drunk cold, from cartons (tetra-packs, a al Frooti!). The only hot drinks are coffee and tea. But wait, they only have black coffee and tea! If you want, you can bring "colour" to it, by using "whiteners" or "cream", but it's unusual to mix milk!

They are fond of fruits (taken straight out of freezers, of course!) and you can find plenty of them, wherever you go.

Their salads are very peculiar, in that, you get a mixture of leafy vegetables (mostly lettuce), with cheese spread over them. Cheese is "bread and butter" (figuratively speaking!) to them, and is a default ingredient of pizza, omelette, etc.

Individuality

Americans value very strongly, their independence, individuality or freedom or whatever you choose to call it. You generally call up a person before you meet him. You never walk across to a person's work-place and talk to him, as we do here! Seperate cubicles (for the non-IT readers, cubicle means your seat) with high partitions reinforce this!

Politeness

I personally felt that Americans are very polite, sometime to the point of irritation. You walk across to any shop and the shopkeeper greets you with "How do you do" or "Good morning" or something similar. It's great, but sometimes it sounds rather mechanical and hollow. A visitor (especially from India) needs to be prepared to reply politely, and reciprocate!

Relationships

The individuality extends in the relationships as well. Though I was with people, who led happy family lives, these are exceptions rather than the rule. Mostly parents and children stay separately, once the children are over 21. In fact the concepts of "Father's Day", "Mother's Day", "Thanksgiving Day" were introduced there and are popular because these are the days, when they have some interaction with their family.

Newspapers

If you thought "The Times of India" was trash, you just need to take a look at the local newspapers there. I had the "fortune" of "reading" "USA Today" - a local tabloid - during my stay there. While they start with their "President's concern about Kosovo" (forget it, if you don't know what that is!), the bottom part of the front page is likely to feature "Pet cat leaps from 6th floor, alive, but injured" with a large picture of the said creature! Basketball and baseball scores cover 5-6 of the sports pages. The weekly edition is around 40-50 pages, while the weekend editions go upto 100 (mostly "sales" advertisements).

Television

My hotel had around 20 channels, 8 of which were news channels (CNN, NBC, USA, FOX, et al!). There was ESPN, which mostly had basketball. Discovery had some good programs. TNT and HBO (Home Box Office) mostly telecast movies. The news channels had international to local news. (The latter were rather amusing to view in the mornings!) The news included the current traffic in the various freeways. There was an exclusive channel for Weather. (Americans are paranoid about weather, as I discovered latter) You can find weather forecasts for that morning, evening and next morning displayed in many places.
 

Cars

American cars are big (in contrast to our popular Marutis). Most of them have no clutch and have automatic gear change - you just need to press the accelerator, break, and use the steering wheel. (Of course! it's not as simple as that - I was just exaggerating!) You rarely find a two wheeler unless you are lucky to spot a BMW bike (which are of course! costlier than some cars!). Cycles share the footpath with pedestrians. And footpaths exist - for all roads, to preempt any doubts on this!

Measurements

Americans use different measuring units from us - miles for kilometres, fahrenheit for degrees, pounds and ounces for kilograms and grams, gallons for litres, and so on. The currency "dollar" is subdivided into cents. (1 $ = 100 cents) There are 1 cent coins. "dime" is a 10 cent coin (which I figured out with some effort!). There are "quarters" (25 cent coins), but very few 50 cent coins.

Hotel

I stayed in Hotel Courtyard Marriott. "Marriott" is a chain of hotels in USA and Courtyard is one "class" of hotel. Besides what you would find in any hotel (in India), it had a coffee maker, refrigerator, phone with an answering machine, a bath tub, hot water in all taps, iron and hair dryer!

I've put down whatever I've remembered. As can be seen, it is not exhaustive by any means. I can always update this based on feedbacks.