Windows + R --> calc --> Enter --- The desi mind

When a person comes to US, his mind is always running a calculator. This calc has just 1 function. Multiply by 45.

My first lunch in the US was in a small restaurant called the Hogi Yogi. It cost me $6.36. I thought, 300 bucks for a sandwich. I could have eaten 6 good meals in Bangalore.

This feeling quietly subsides as you start buying things and start seeing a good deposit in your savings account.

But some people never change...

During these times, a lot of us had come to US for the first time. There were 2 guys were sharing an apartment in the same place I stayed. Their antics were quite funny.

They would go to Winco ( an Idaho/Oregon based food retailer) and buy groceries. One fellow did not like tomatoes. So when the other guy took some tomatoes, he told his roommate
"I dont eat tomatoes you see. I will not pay for this. This should not be a part of common expenses, you know"

Hmm...Roma tomatoes those days were just 80 cents per pound.

Then another day, he bought some apples from Albertsons and put them in a corner in the fridge and warned his roommate.
"Those are my apples"

Luckily I had a roommate who was totally cool about spending and was a true gentleman. We never kept cent level accounts and never argued about buying groceries.

Well. Its been almost 18 months in the US and now this calculator has stopped working. Infact, a kind of casual dividing calculator has started running in my mind which is not good. I nowadays divide by 45. When my mom says that flight tickets are expensive and its not a good idea to spend 1500 to travel to Bangalore (from chennai), I think, thats just 30 bucks that she is not willing to spend that!!!!

I think, I gotta kill this calc...
Or may be, it will die its own death when I start seeing my India Pay stub..