Being one and one who has seen many, I can picturize an indian RA here in US with pretty good accuracy. Firstly, you can see him walking across the corridor (sometimes with items like papers, coffee mug, water bottle, pencil, key chain with lot of keys and other assorted items) for no apparent reason. He does this deligently several times a day. For a naive or a new person, he is busy doing something. He typically starts his work(if you call checking emails!!!) around 10am or later. He staggers though his lectures, lunch, smoking(if he is one) and several pieces of unregulated talks with his fellow RAs. If he is in a flurry of activity, know that he has a meeting with his boss that day. He is the person who keeps janitors company late in the night, when he supposedly does research (read google search!). On rare occasion you witness him in all his splendor, talking about his research. However, dont be cowed by statements like, "convex function which is entirely not postive definite", "asymptotic response of reliability curves for dual CMOS" or by his philosophical ramblings about the relative merits of simulation using cadence when compared to mentor graphics, know that he is just kidding. Eventually he figures out something, sometime, from somewhere in his research and produces a thesis. In in all he is quite harmless, tries to work hard but eventually a typical india grad student.