Notes from Uncle Sam

On June 10 this year, I put in an emergency visa request to visit the United States of America, and on June 22, I found myself on a Finnair flight to Seattle via Helsinki.

The plan was to visit some friends in Seattle before playing the WSOP in Vegas. However, I contracted a somewhat strong case of Covid-19 after playing just a week of poker, and could not play the much anticipated Main Event. I then spent a couple of weeks recovering in Pittsburgh at my sister and brother-in-law’s place.

Following are a few observations of my time spent in the USA:

• Work culture is extremely relaxed here: I interacted with folks in tech, consulting and those practicing medicine, and while there are differences across each of them, they compare very favorably in terms of just the hours spent at work when compared to India. Forty hours a week seems to be the upper limit at most workplaces.
  
• But housework takes up most of the free time: The time that lesser hours at work free up are not exactly spent in idyllic pursuits, developing hobbies, or in random musings. There is a never-ending host of activities that require daily attention, these could be figuring out food, grocery-shopping, utensil cleaning, house upkeep and so on. As these are mostly outsourced in India, the total free time for individual pursuits remains approximately the same.
  
• It’s a fairly expensive country: Absolute no brainer this one, but still needs a mention – to maintain a similar life standard as I had back home, I need approximately 5K USD a month, which translates to an income of 100K USD annually. This is the absolute minimum which is needed, and will yield no savings or investments, while a similar absolute income in India (INR 80 lakhs) will result in approximately 60% of the money being saved/invested.
  
  It took me a couple of weeks to get used to prices, for comparison, some estimates – a simple meal outside would be USD 20, a five mile Uber ride around USD 40, a one bed-room apartment in downtown Seattle around USD 2500 and so on.
  
• Life feels a lot more like a simulation here: Just like we practice Game Theory Optimality in poker (a player’s attempt to play as close to a machine), it appears as if society is trying very hard to be robotic. Communities are designed with a cookie-cutter approach, small-talk greetings are uniform to the extent of not appearing genuine, and in general there is very less variance in an average day of an American job-goer. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I miss the chaos that India offers.
  
• But the simulation is a high quality one: There is no compromise on quality of infrastructure. Roads are kept squeaky new, public spaces are clean and well-designed. Of course coming from New-Delhi I cannot not have a comment on the much better air, but also noticeable is how much better I am sleeping here (possibly due to lack of any sound pollution).
  
• Poker is a dichotomy: While USA is one of the easier places to play poker as the average player is not that good (I would rate Indians as far better poker players), the issue is that this country does not offer online poker (which is one of the big reasons players aren’t that good in the first place). To make money playing poker here requires one to travel to different states and play in casinos, a nomadic lifestyle that I am personally not too fond of. So a solution will have to be arrived at when it comes to my personal ambition to stay in USA for a longer period (I’ll explain why an extended stay is on the cards in a separate post).

Until next time!