Politics brings out the best in some people and the worst in some others. Wait…strike out the first part.

While I person­ally don’t care too much about the US elections, there are times when a little atten­tion cannot be avoided. For instance, when you idly open the Digg homepage and notice that half the stories are about Presi­den­tial candi­dates, you can’t help but start reading some of them.

My first obser­va­tion is this: every news site or forum discussing the election belongs to exactly one of the two camps. A forum that belongs to camp ‘A’ will post wonderful stories about candi­date ‘A’ and try its best in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to mock, deride and expose the mendacity of the other camp. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

And here’s my next obser­va­tion: a supporter of candi­date ‘A’ will inevitably drift towards a forum that supports his candi­date. There, he will praise his idol and curse the opponent, and he will nod and murmur in agree­ment when others do the same. What is inter­esting is that not many of these people venture into the enemy camp to contra­dict their opponents lies, or clarify their own position. Why? Maybe because they know that few would be willing to change their opinions when provided with better infor­ma­tion — and so they sit with their mates and bask in the warm, fuzzy feeling they get when everyone agrees with them.

What is the point of an election in which a majority of the people stubbornly cling to their opinions without weighing the facts and coming to a conclu­sion ratio­nally? Perhaps the best solution would be to disen­fran­chise everyone having a fixed opinion, and ask the rest to vote.…

Friday evening is the best time of the week. By then, all the activ­i­ties of the day are wrapped up and put away until the following Monday.

Saturday seems much less of a working day in the US than it does in India. I consider this to be a rather good thing, because it gives me a lot of free time to relax, and get ready for the next week. One day, in my opinion, is too little to recharge.

Also, two days in a row is often long enough to take a short trip somewhere, either as a holiday or a visit to a friend’s place. But you need a car for that.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Chinese/Korean (cannot distin­guish between the two, sorry) couples constantly hold each other’s hands when they walk around on the street or sit in the bus. I wonder if it is some sort of tradi­tion amongst them.…

In India, traffic moves along the left lane, but in the US it is the other way around. For newcomers, this is a constant source of confu­sion, because they have a diffi­cult time figuring out which way to look before crossing the street. Obviously the best way to deal with this problem is to err on the side of caution and look both ways.

Cars in the US are built differ­ently. The gears are simpli­fied — see automatic trans­mis­sion — which means that there is no need to change gears as the car speeds up or slows down. This also affects the way people drive their cars. For instance, when a red light turns green, a car in India would start moving gradu­ally, the gear would be changed and then the vehicle would speed up. In contrast, a person driving a car in the US would simply press down on the accel­er­ator and it would be off as quickly as possible. It is as if there were a perfectly functioning system of speeding vehicles that the driver wanted to join in the smallest possible time so as to become a part of the mainstream.

One of the strange things for an Indian going to New York is the way vehicles stop and give way to pedes­trians. Where there are zebra-crossings, cars slow down to let people pass. At the same time, it is almost assumed that pedes­trians will not attempt to cross the street at any other place. I think this phenom­enon is tied up to the technology involved — cars can afford to stop frequently because they speed up very easily afterward.