In continuation of my enquiry about America, I have a few more questions to you, Prof. Farooq Kperogi.
After I had gotten over my flu - the drugs worked like magic - I continued to attend the show and did some shopping together with my colleagues in Austin, Texas, USA. Just close to my hotel, within walking distance was a good restaurant we discovered that was inexpensive and had the kind of food we could stomach. We frequented it a lot and we got friendly with one of the waitresses. She was a friendly elderly lady who immediately spotted that we were foreigners. When she learned that I was sick and that I had lost my appetite, she went out of her way to advise me on how to go about it and what kind of food I should eat. I found her advice useful.
I think she noticed also that we didn't know that we were expected to be giving tips. So she advised us to be doing that. She said it was expected of us. She said everybody in America gave tips.
My question here is, Are tips so institutionalized in America that you'd look odd if you didn't give?
Then, again, I had reason to believe that I was discriminated against on account of my religion - probably a backlash of 9/11 - right from the beginning of the trip. You see, three of us from the same organization were on the trip and I was the only Muslim and bearing a clearly Muslim name. So when we applied for visa, the other two companions were given two years visa while I was given only a few days. In fact, my visa expired before I came back. Secondly, our tickets were purchased at the same time, but somehow when we reached Amsterdam we were separated. We didn't know this until we collected boarding passes. While I was routed through Detroit, they were routed through another town (Michigan or Mississippi, I can't recall) and we went our separate ways and linked up at Austin.
My second question is, Is that usual or was I a suspected terrorist?
Hope you won't get tired of answering my questions or think I'm unnecessarily inquisitive...😂