Ipswich Diary-1

Ipswich is a small and peaceful town in the south east of England and home to Ipswich Town FC.Excuse me, but I have this habit of associating the places in Europe with the football club associated with them. But I will save football for another blog.
This friday, the 18th will mark my two months here in Ipswich.And already there have been some wonderful moments to take back home when my onsite assignment gets over. I have found several new friends here and have loved the time I have spent with them.
The most funny moment will definitely be the one when I went to HSBC to open my bank account.
The lady at the desk was trying to make conversation to fill up the silence while she did the necessary paper work. It went like this-
She: "Which part of India are you from?"
Me:"It is a place called Trivandrum towards the southern part of India"
She:"Is it as big a place as Ipswich?"
I almost burst out laughing.She was asking about a city 4 times the size of ipswich and 6 times as populous as it.I somehow controlled my laughter and replied "Trivandrum is a bigger city than Ipswich". Well,she didn't enquire anything more about my place and continued with her work.
May be she wouldn't have believed me since the people from the west still sees India as a place of bhookha nanga people,just as the various channels like Discovery and NGC portray.
It reminds me of the scene from Munnabhai MBBS: the chinese guy asking Circuit about where he can find "poor,hungry Indians".