Jitters

For all the things about human behavior that I don't know, I do know that most of the time we make our decisions based on our fears and our ability to not have to face our fears at a given time. If you can prolong having to talk to the gorgeous girl you have a huge crush on or you're able to delay having to stand up to someone who's giving you a hard time, you more than likely will wait as long as possible simply because some moron coined the phrase, "its better to be safe than sorry." At the young ripe age of 21, I carry the philosophy that you can take however many risks you want because, no matter what anyone says, you have a hell of a lot less responsibility right now than you will later on in life. It sure is depressing to think about, but one day all of us are going to leave college, get jobs in the real world, have families, and get caught in the "circle of life" machine. Not to say its a bad thing, but good luck trying to be young then.

With all this said, I am sitting in my room getting ready to leave for Mumbai tomorrow. For those who need a refresher course on Mumbai, I wikipedia'ed it for ya. My trip to Mumbai isn't purely sightseeing as I will be working at Reliance Industries this summer getting some experience in a whole lot of accounting mumbo-jumbo I'm sure you don't want to hear about. To make that opening thought relevant at all, I'll come right out and admit that I'm scared. Sometimes, I sure wish I was just in the good old Midwest all summer and I've thought about what I'd be doing if I had been. Last year, for the first semester of my Junior Year, I went to Luxembourg and even that wasn't as bad because I was doing it with 130 other kids that I went to college with. Sure I speak the language in India and I'm not making the 3 month trek alone (I'll be living with family there), but a summer in Mumbai is going to be nothing but an adventure for me. As scared as I am, at the age of 21, when else am I ever going to get an opportunity to go do something like this though?

We will all be making a big decision of some sort this summer, some bigger than others of course. Nonetheless, most tough choices can be categorized as either safe or dicey. My decision to go to India for this job is safe in the thought that I'm doing whatever necessary to get quality real world experience but dicey in the thought that I'm outside of my comfort zone and have no idea what I'm getting into. I honestly do not know what to expect when I get there. When I went to Luxembourg for the fall semester earlier, I didn't know what to expect then either, but I came out beliving that it was one of the best decisions I have made in college. I can only hope that this voyage is going to be the same way.

I purposely titled the blog "Mumbai Fantasy" because of the mystery surrounding my summer. Not only am I going to do what is expected of me at work and live my day-to-day life, but I'm planning on branching out a little bit and seeing more of India. I plan on living my summer to the fullest and I hope this blog will be my vehicle of reporting my observations in India as well as remembering the summer for the rest of my life.

Before I end this post, I know that my last attempt at writing a blog about my experiences in a foreign place was, to say the least, pathetic. I came up with 2 posts, one of them being an unfinished two-parter. I hope to be a little more successful in maintaining my blog this time and I ask all of you to pressure me to keep writing despite my shear laziness.