Nirenjan’s Space

As my living in USA series continues, I bring to you the perils of bringing a mobile handset from India.

First of all, a brief background on the technology behind GSM. The simplest way to put it is that your mobile handset is a glorified two-way radio. As you would use a radio to listen to an FM channel on a particular frequency, your mobile phone also listens on a specific frequency (to be precise, a set of frequencies). The GSM standard has allocated 4 bands worldwide, namely the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. All operators in India use the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands, while operators in the US use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. GSM World has some good information regarding the usage of the bands and coverage sorted by operator.

From my perspective, if you are going anywhere on the east coast or in Silicon Valley, you are well off with a decent tri-band phone like the Nokia 6681. Basically, you want to make sure that your phone supports the 1900 MHz band also, since a lot of operators here seem to use that particular band. You are even better off with a quad-band phone. One such phone is the Sony Ericsson W300i.

It is possible to get a phone here. Operators usually bundle a phone free of charge when you buy a plan. Or you can get a phone of your choice, at a discounted rate. The disadvantages that I see with this model are as follows:

• Your phone is tied to the operator. You cannot take your phone from, say AT&T and use it on T-Mobile. This is because there is something called a network lock that is placed on the phone, and usually only the operator can deactivate the lock. However, there exist sites where you can get the phone unlocked, usually for a fee.
• You are tied into a contract for a specified period of time, usually one or two years. If you decide to terminate your contract, you have to pay an early termination fee. From the point of view of the operator, this is normal, since they subsidize the costs of the phone and recover those by having a two year plan or whatever.
• If you are going to be in the US for only a short trip, it is usually not worth getting into a contract. However, there are some pre-paid plans, although I have seen it is not as popular as it is in India. Post-paid is usually the way to go.

I hope this should be enough information for you to make a choice.

This is the first of a series of posts about living on your own. I guess this post would be more useful to a student in the US, but really, anybody could adapt the guidelines that I give to their own needs.

First and foremost, when you are coming to the USA, I have seen people, myself included, pack a whole lot of clothes, foodstuff, cooking utensils, etc., thereby increasing their luggage weight and running the risk of getting charged for overweight luggage.

Let me list the essential stuff required.

• Formal clothes - From what I have seen, formal wear is relatively costly here in the US. So when you come here, do bring a suit and a good pair of formal leather shoes. Don’t forget a matching leather belt, ties, etc.
• Casual wear - As a student, I find myself wearing T-shirts and jeans 99% of the time. And that’s what you’ll find other folks - read Americans - wearing also. Even my advisor can be seen in nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts. The point of this is that you can pick up casual wear here pretty cheaply, and good quality stuff too, at rates somewhere of around 50% or even less of what you might find in India. So cut down on the number of T-shirts that you bring.
• Cooking Utensils - I’m still wondering why I brought enough to stock a restaurant here. Apart from the pressure cooker, you can get almost anything else that you need at a WalMart store.
• Other Utensils - You can again pick them up here for a song.
• Foodstuff - Don’t bother even thinking about bringing 20 kg of rice or dal or whatever. My recommendation is to get spices - although you can also get those here at Indian stores. The only thing that I find missing is the curry leaves (karuveppalai/karipattha). I haven’t found them here yet, although I have heard that they are pretty expensive. If you are new to cooking and don’t know the different types of dals, get some small samples in sealed plastic pouches. You don’t need more than a few grams per sample. You can’t bring any perishables into the USA, and you can pretty much get what you need in any grocery store. Regardless of what you are bringing, make sure it is doubly sealed, to prevent any leaks from ruining your good clothes.
• Electronic Stuff - The problem is that the US decides to do everything different from how India does it. Rather than me trying to explain something in technical terms, I’ll leave that job to this website.
• Mobile Phones - This is yet another problem. You might want to consider buying a phone in the US itself. The problem is that the US has primarily CDMA providers, versus a few GSM providers (GSM is the dominant mobile technology in the Indian market). I have no clue about CDMA phones now, but if I get some information, I will update this page. GSM phones are a different story altogether, and warrant a whole new blog post.

I guess that covers my list for now. If I get any further information, I will update this post.

After a long hiatus, I’m back… with a fizz… and not a bang ;). The usual story, loaded with work, blogger’s block, yada yada yada…

Anyway, to keep you dedicated readers updated, I’m now in the “land of dreams”, to be precise, I’m in Pittsburgh, PA, to get even more precise, I’m doing my masters in embedded systems engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

After coming here, I realize that my experience with traveling, cooking, housekeeping, etc. could be very useful to a lot of other people. Let’s first start of with cooking - it’s not all that most people hype it up to be… it’s damn simple, even a kid could do it; however, it does take time. That is the only trouble.

Traveling - depends on where you are. Pittsburgh has one of the best public transportation networks in the USA, and you can even go online and plan your bus trips. I hear quite a few other cities have a good transportation network as well, though I haven’t been anywhere yet to comment on them.

Housekeeping - now comes the hard part, but I kid. Assuming that you rent an apartment, you would usually look for one that has all features, namely microwave, dishwasher, laundry, etc. So there go the majority of the chores, save mopping the floor/vacuuming the carpet.

Shopping - you would pretty much find everything you need here.

Future posts would concentrate on individual topics…