Hundreds of Indian students head to the US every year. YouTuber Aashish Chandratreya tells Brut about the stuff that surprised him on his first day there...
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00First expense was paying $6 for a trolley, so we were like dude that's 420 rupees for
00:10a trolley that you would just use 5 minutes.
00:12Hello, I'm Ashish Indratia and I'm a photographer and a YouTuber.
00:15I recently moved to the United States of America to pursue a one year course in photography.
00:20As soon as we came out of immigration, we started converting currency as any typical
00:24Indian would do because our first expense was paying $6 for a trolley, yes, at the JFK
00:29airport of New York, you have to pay for trolleys and they are not free.
00:32Part of the day was pretty good though because the driver of the Uber that we had called
00:35was actually Indian and he was speaking to us in Hindi, that made us feel that some family
00:39member had actually come to pick us up and not some stranger.
00:42So we just went to our Airbnb, made some ready to eat food that we had got from home and
00:46went off to sleep.
00:47And this was our first stay in the US, our Airbnb, we stayed here for 7 days, after that
00:52we moved on to our individual rented apartment.
00:54First thing that we did after waking up the next morning is that we came here and we opened
00:58up a bank account for ourselves because having a bank account in the US is very important
01:03to do all sorts of transactions.
01:04Also, since we were students, we got a $100 bonus and this was the first station that
01:08we went into and got our first subway ride from and I still remember when I went to the
01:12counter and asked the person to give me one ticket, he immediately recognised that I was
01:16a newcomer and he told me that son, it's not a ticket, it's called a ride because ticket
01:20here is something that you get after you do something wrong.
01:23The thing that I truly love about New York is that the footpaths here are pretty wide
01:26and that makes me love walking on the streets.
01:28This right here is the first city that we visited for grocery shopping after we came
01:31into the United States and what we realised is that the price of commodities when compared
01:35and converted to INR is pretty high.
01:37For example, a loaf of bread costs around $2.75 where it was just 25 or 30 rupees back
01:42in India.
01:43Also, a subway ride to anywhere costs $2.75, that's almost more than 150 rupees whereas
01:48it's just 10 rupees to the farthest location anywhere in Mumbai.
01:51These people use the imperial system and not the metric system.
01:54They use miles, pounds and gallons instead of kilometres, kgs and litres.
01:58Well, though that was initially a little difficult but somehow we managed and got used to the
02:02system but then one system which I haven't got used to personally is the temperature
02:06system because here temperatures are measured in Fahrenheit and not Celsius.
02:10And it gets confusing sometimes because right now when I'm shooting, it's 2 degrees Celsius
02:14which you know that it's very cold but then when you listen to it in Fahrenheit, it's
02:1738 degrees Fahrenheit which doesn't feel so cold to me and hence it is a little confusing.
02:22I miss my mom's hand cooked food a lot and that's why every month I ask her to send me
02:26something or the other.
02:27So maybe snacks or laddoos or something that she prepares just so that I can get the taste
02:32of her hand here in the US.
02:34So far, the experience has been very good overall.
02:36I've been loving this change in location.
02:38Yes, there are times where I miss home a lot especially during festivals but then we try
02:42to celebrate it here as much as possible.
02:44New York City has transformed the always Uber riding Ashish to the always local transport
02:48taking Ashish.
02:49I've also started walking a lot more here than I used to at home.
02:52I've started preparing food by myself and also doing a lot of other things by myself.
02:56So I think it's a positive change and I'm looking forward to spend one year in this
02:59amazing city.