July 4, 2003… That’s the day that we started on an Alaskan cruise from Seward, Alaska on the Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas.

July 4, 1971, on the other hand… That’s the day that I came to this country for the first time. As a graduate student at the prestigious and ancient Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. With no money to speak of, except for a few single dollar bills here and there and some loose change (English translation: tight change), the grand total of which amounted to no more than hundred dollars or so, most of which was borrowed! Or was it June 4? I know it was one or the other, because it started with a J, but I’m sure it was thirty two years ago! That’s an awfully long time…, especially in dog years! If I were a Dobbermann Pincher born on June 4, 1971, I would have been 224 years old by now! Thirty two years is also a long time in girl years, especially since they don’t age beyond 29 years, from which point on, they simply celebrate the various anniversaries of their 29th birthday. But in a more personal sense, thirty two years are also a lot more than half of my life. That’s right, I’ve lived about 58 percent of my life in these United States! Were I to be a heap of radioactive material such as U235 (Compare at: You too 35?!; Ye too Brute…?!) with a half life of 28 years, more than half of me would have disintegrated or decayed into something totally harmless. In a sense, I would have lost more than half my punch! Well, to a certain degree, it’s very true in my case. I’m less harmful now than what I used to be thirty two years ago, and the way I’m going, I’m fast approaching a state of total harmlessness! From here on, it’s downhill all the way! I’m benign more than halfway, although the other half of me which is my ego tells me that I must never admit it at any cost and under any circumstances. But the problem is that the part that is my ego is a minority, polling only 42 percent. If I were a fuel rod in the reactor core at any one of my nuclear plants, I would have by now been 58 percent depleted, which would have left me about seven or eight more months of fissionable life. And then, when that’s done, the only option that I would have would be to really split, so to speak…

June 4th has much more significance in my life – a lot more than I ever care to admit. June 4th in 1971 was the day that I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken for the first time in my life! For the first 24 years of my life, I was raised in a culture, which was totally devoid of KFC! My friend, who picked me up at the John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York (whom I will call Jack, after JFK, for the sake of anonymity, thus preventing any animosity on his part) pulled over near a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint somewhere in downtown Brooklyn on that sultry Friday afternoon. Before opening the car door, he popped the question: “So what are you having?” I guess I didn’t fully understand the question, because all I did was to give him a blank stare. After a few seconds, when I finally figured out that he was asking me what I was going to have for lunch, I quickly said, “No, Jack, I’m not going to have anything now. I’m not hungry. Thanks anyway.” As a matter of fact, I was so full from all that airline food that they fed me on the Pan Am flight from Europe, that I couldn’t even have a French Fry, which later on in my life I would figure out what a French Fry was. Jack shut off the engine and went into the fast food restaurant. Since there was nothing better to do, I kept looking at the picture of old man Colonel Sanders holding his finger-lickin’ merchandise for about ten minutes, at which time the beaming Jack reappeared at the driver door holding two orders of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a couple of sodas, from one of which he had already started drinking. I quickly realized that I didn’t really have a choice other than eat it, appetite or not. To refuse it would be bad manners, I thought! I casually asked Jack, just to get an idea, how much it cost for each of those lunch packages. I wanted to get a general feel as to what would be the cost of my room and board in the near future. I wanted to know if my shoestring budget would cut it in these great US of A. I was anxious to find out in advance if I would make it in the Big Apple! Jack said dollar nineteen, which I quickly converted into Indian Rupees at 7 rupees and 50 paise for every dollar (which was the legal exchange rate, mind you; it was more like 10 or 11 rupees on the street!), to come up with a total of about 9 rupees! I quickly made a mental note on that same day that eating in America was expensive! Right there, on that summer day, even without knowing what I was doing, I started the practice of overeating. I assimilated. I blended right into the mainstream. I was already in the melting pot!

I quickly figured out that one doesn’t necessarily have to be hungry to eat! One could do it at any time as he or she pleases. Very early morning, early morning, morning, mid-morning, late morning, before noon, noon, early afternoon, mid-afternoon, afternoon, silly mid-on, silly mid-off, late afternoon, early evening, evening, late evening, night, late night, midnight……. you name it, we’ve got it! We’ve divided the waking hours of the average Homo sapiens into as many number of hours that he is awake (Did I say it right?…). And then we sub-divided them into “bite size” half hour time slots. And what’s more? We decided that all of these sub-divisions are appropriate occasions to eat. We’re smart; we believe in variety and diversity. We call the food that we eat at each segment of the time by a different name! We have the pre-breakfast, early breakfast, early bird special breakfast, bed and breakfast, continental breakfast, late breakfast, and pre-brunch for the various time slots in the morning. These are immediately followed by brunch, lunch, delayed lunch, late lunch, extended lunch which is when late lunch overruns its usually allotted time and runs right into the next meal in line, which in this case happens to be the all American and the most favorite late afternoon snack! By this time, about twelve hours of our day life will have been over, and we’re ready for the night feeding. But here’s the tricky part. Remember, we usually do the night feed in the privacy of our home, which is to say that we are pretty much on our own and no one’s watching us when we do this. We let loose, and would be wearing loose clothes, so we could accommodate (same as stuff, but only in French!) more food into our tummies! The question of possible embarrassment resulting from perceived gluttony doesn’t even arise! That’s when we indulge in nocturnal alimentary rituals like early dinner, dinner, late dinner, supper, late supper, and midnight snack…….

I realize that I may be speaking a little too authoritatively about all these. That’s because I have first hand experience on this subject during my recent Alaskan cruise which we completed a few days ago. We boarded the boat (Actually it was a ship!) in Anchorage and, after seven days and seven nights -- which felt more like forty days and forty nights -- disembarked (I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but it sure sounds good!) in Vancouver. We ate all the time. We woke up bright and early every day, pretending that our sole intention was to see the sea, like from sea to shining sea. We looked at the Pacific from the Windjammer café while having our early breakfast. Then we went and looked at the sea some more from the main dining room. The view of the sea from the lunch room was fabulous. We heard the captain (same as driver, but this guy drives a boat!) announcing that there were dolphins jumping and all kinds of other fish frolicking on the starboard side of the boat, but we stayed on port where there were all kinds of exotic food. After all, what is dolphin other than sea food?! And later when we went starboard to take a look at the Leviathan, we got distracted by all kinds of cheeses and cakes and cheese cakes right next to the pool. We walked around on the upper deck, the middle deck, the lower deck, and all the other ten or so decks in between, and ate all kinds of snacks and ham and cheese and cakes from everywhere. We even went into the engine room in the basement where the illegal aliens shovel coal into the furnaces and played hide and seek in the antique car parked there, and later to the captain’s cabin up in the clouds to see if we could see Billy Ocean from that vantage point, while at the same time checking out if there was anything more to eat there! Captains are known to dine on caviar during their off time!

We certainly got our money’s worth during that cruise from those blood suckers! Then we went upstairs all the way to the top deck of our Titanic, stood at the very front end of the boat, which I believe they call the bow (Or was it the arrow?), spread our arms out to the sides (both starboard and port so we won’t discriminate), and pretended that we were Mr. and Mrs. Lawson (Dawson?… well, you know, the guy in that disaster movie) from Philadelphia who, incidentally, were the king and queen of the world! I think it was at that point when we got into a minor trouble with the ship’s security, who politely requested us to go back to our cabin and not to show our behinds on the top deck for the duration of our cruise. That was the closest encounter that we’ve ever had with the Navy, and we obliged, because they were polite. Those security folks…, they were nice people. But let’s not talk about it, since there are so many other interesting things we could be discussing.

So, what was that date again? Yeah, May 4th! That’s right; I think that’s the day in August when we became independent, sort of… well, you know, in 1947…

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