Houston, Texas

Quit London, have reached Houston.

First couple of weeks are going to be hard since I'm gonna have to wait for my passport to be with me. Only then, can I move out into an apartment, have a licence, a car rental etc.

When you come to US, you realise their need for Oil. Here , in texas, people drive pick-up trucks, which can house at least 8 people , alone. Such vehicles give a mileage of 5-10 miles per gallon. Now you know why innocent Iraqis are being killed.

To add to that they have deliberately made nearly no public transport. Cities like Chicago,NY etc have a good interconnected public transport system, but the rest of the US drives. And for that it needs OIL. This was one of the most noticeable facts after I came here.

However, they are themselves realising the danger of being over dependant on OIL for a long time. You can clearly see that practically all American car manufacturing companies are rolling out prototype models with Alternative fuels.

Toyota has launched Toyota Prius Hybrid, which runs on a combination of electric powe r and normal fuel. Chevrolet has launched over a million vehicles which run on a combination of E85 Ethanol (which is manufactured from 'corn') and normal gasoline.
This is what excites me. This is what I call maintaing the edge, come what may.

On relative comparison, Mani Shankar Aiyer (for those who don't know, he is the Petroleum minister of India) is vooing the Iranian and Pakistani governments for allowing a Oil pipeline into India. While this step is completely welcome, the ministry needs to put in billions of rupees in alternative fuel. Coz' if we get ahead in the race for gaining our upper hand on alternative fuel vehicles, we can actually realise our dream of India becoming a super power 50 year quicker than current estimates.

I wish I was in the Government.