The first week at U.Chicago

Although my course starts off only by Sep 4th, I had to come in early because I had enrolled myself in a pre-MBA stats course - along with pre-MBA accounting (which I didn’t take), these give a brief intro to courses that might be otherwise a bit of a toughie… esp. for students who have been out of college for 5 years+.

After landing in town, I slept for something like 18 hours, which I think took care of the jet lag. I dropped into a small dept. store to pick up basic grub - fruits, bread, cheeses and milk. The sheer variety of brands and food was more than a bit confusing…take milk - you have regular milk, non fat milk, sweetened milk, fortified milk, fruit milk, organic milk and so on. Multiply so many categories with approx. 10 flavours and 15 brands and you might get an inkling of what I am talking about. Back home, it was either Aavin or Arokya in Madurai, Milma, PDDP or Penta in Cochin…life was simpler. The same applies for all FMCG categories-chocolates, cereals (it took me all of 20 minutes to buy 1 box-sheer fascination with what was on offer!), biscuits and everything else…if you love meat, this is THE place, dudes - with more than 2 complete aisles dedicated to the meats of every creature that can walk, fly or swim…and allows for breeding - every kind of meat with every kind of flavoring…free range chicken, free range beef, salami, polish sausages, steaks, minced meat…it would take me an hour to complete the list.

I can imagine the pop-eyed reactions of some CPI stalwarts from home were they to see this - “Rampant consumerism rules in American society!”. Which is true in its own way, though. Have been walking around the campus mostly and hopefully I am building sexy sexy calves. Time and the Chicago marathon should tell!