Its an Island. Its long. Its the Long Island !!

What do you do on a Saturday morning? Head to the Atlantic ocean, of course !! From White Plains took a train to Grand Central, walked from GC to Penn station, caught a train on the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) got off at LynBrook and caught another train which finally took us to Long Beach. Phew !!!! took us 3 hrs in all ….but traveling in U.S. is rather stress free …not much crowds…information readily available, no dust, no heat …so basically even a 3 hr journey with so many changes doesn’t tire you out and you head for the ocean, fresh as a daisy ;-)

Now Long Beach is a rather small place and just a 3 min. walk from the station leads us to the beach. It’s a huge stretch of clean , powdery sand. The beach is almost 15 kms long ( yep it is that much) with hardly anyone around. A lot of people were jogging, exercising their dogs on the walkboard though …the water itself is pristine and quite cold. We had a fun time on the beach and I also managed to get myself a quick fishing lesson from a friendly guy on the beach. … no fish though ;-(


After an awesome lunch at a Taco Grill place ( which had the best soup I have tasted in a zillion yrs , it was called Chicken and Audille Gumbo soup..or something like that ) we rode back into New York..

Spent two hours walking around in downtown Manhattan…at Soho , Greenwich village and West Village. West village is so much like Europe…with quaint roadside cafes , people walking around at an unhurried pace and practically zero high-rises. Soho is the fashionistas paradise…all Big Brands have their outlets there. We decided to walk into the Prada showroom. The design of the store is quite neat …fancied a pair of Boots. Had a look at the price tag ..800 $ !!!!! and quickly bailed out of the shop ( Just to put that into perspective, its about 37000 Rs)

Its getting cooler and wetter now…next few days promise a lot of rain…The Weather Channel has become my favourite channel here, in part because it is quite good with a lot of in-depth analysis and in part due to the lack of other good programming. The quality of advertising in India is much , much better than the quality here.( Kudos to Piyush Pandey, Prasoon Joshi and others. You guys rock!! ) The ads here completely lack creativity..just some guys facing the camera and saying stuff…there is no script, no story. And most of the ads are about medicines / diseases. Very Boring.I also sorely miss my Hindi Music on tv.

Also we feel - Back in India, general service levels are lower than here. You know, whether it’s your newspaper or cable guy, or at a restaurant or at a car mechanic’s. But there is one important distinction. We know how to, and we can demand higher service. Over here, there is a basic service level, which is nearly always defined, and rarely ever exceeded. And, when you get discerning customers like we sometimes become, service levels in America leave a lot to be desired.In India, the general service level is maybe 2 on a scale of 10, while here it is 5. However, back home it can be extended from 2 to maybe 9. Not the case here. From 5 , it will max go up to 6. Sanjit has a theory on this, he feels it is because American society is at a point where infrastructure & service levels are defined, while Indian society is on a learning curve where customers have to raise service levels by demanding it.( neways, this is just what we think ;-) other views on this are welcome and will be interesting to discuss )

Ok, this blog has turned out longer than we thought, so we’ll sign off now !! Happy Children Day to all !!

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