Week of Tuesday, August 16th
I am starting my first day of work in India and I feel like I'm starting at a brand new company. I'm nervous for what I will experience today. We met in the lobby at 11:30am to take the car to work in Gurgaon. My hours are 12:15pm to 8:45pm. It takes about 45 minutes to get to work in the morning and any where from an hour to an hour and a half to get home at night. It makes for a long day! The drive to work takes us through the southern part of Delhi. Each morning there are certain spots that are slower than others - this usually occurs in Delhi where people are trying to catch buses to work, school, or where ever they are going. Once we get to Gurgaon the traffic isn't to bad. The roads in Delhi as a whole are in much better condition than they are in Gurgaon. Even though there are more modern buildings in Gurgaon the roads are in much worse condition. Not sure if it is because they have not been able to keep up with the progress, they just don't have the money to fix the roads, or if the resources are being used to build all the buildings around Gurgaon. It is funny how modern the buildings are - I would just expect them to build a plain building but instead they make it at odd angles with interesting architectural work. I wasn't able to get any good examples of this but hopefully I can take some later. Below is a view from the front side of the building - this is the road we come in on.
Below is a picture of moth balls in the bathroom sink at work. The only other place I've seen this is in the bathrooms at the airport. Not exactly sure why and it doesn't make for a pleasant smell but I think it is to keep bugs from coming up the sink.
View from my desk. It is hard to see in this picture but the first cube you can see has a picture of a little girl. She is a little white girl so you know it isn't the daughter or sister of the girl at the desk. By the end of this week I started noticing a lot of other cubes that had similar pictures of the same little girl. I was thinking it was very strange - I finally asked why everyone had this picture up. An e-mail got passed around the office with the little girls picture and it was saying how she was the highest paid model in the US - not sure if she is the highest child model or model in general but I guess they liked the idea and the picture so much that they hung it up in their cube.
My desk.
This is just to the right of our building.
They are building another building next to ours. I read a book called Shantaram - in this book the main character lives in the slums for awhile. The book made it seem like the slums where there because of the construction of this large office building. The workers that work on building the building live in the slums with their families and other people that join them to live in the slums. I'm thinking this might be the reason there are slums right next to our building. They probably lived there while our building was going up and they are just staying as they work on the next building. It is just such a contrast - modern building and slums - right next to each other.
The front of our building.
Entrance to our building.
Condo looking buildings not to far from work.
My first few days at work I mostly got settled and helped a little bit with coaching other regions SCAs. All of my SCA's are in training until the 24th. It was funny - I didn't necessarily plan to help coach other regions but I overheard an SCA asking questions of Jamie - who was teaching the training class. I knew she was busy with that so I offered to help out. Once I helped this one girl, people just starting coming to my desk asking for help. They were so nice and polite when they came to ask questions. I had no clue what their names were but they knew mine.
The food that we get at work is vegetarian Indian food only. I ate the food twice this week. It is not something that I enjoy but it is lunch. I don't like spicy food so that narrows things down for me even further. I usually have rice, some type of potato dish, and roti - these things can usually fill me up enough to get by for awhile. I do put other things on my plate and at least try a bite or two but that is usually all I can eat of it. Wednesday I went out for lunch. We went to a mall called DT's food court. The food court was much like one you'd find in the US. It had a Mc Donalds, Subway, and several Indian restaurants. Of course I had the Subway! I got a Subway Melt - which is the same sandwich I usually get in the states but it was very different. The sandwich is suppose to have ham, turkey, and bacon. I think the sandwich had the same meats but when they were making the sandwich I couldn't tell the difference between the ham and turkey. The bread was actually better in India than it is in the US - it seemed fresher. Friday I missed lunch because of training. Since they have associates that work all kinds of hours they have this vendor that comes in and sells food. They sell sandwiches, chips, sodas, and other snacks. It is very cheap compared to American standards. I got a veggie sandwich that was 18 rupees - which is less than 50 cents. The sandwich wasn't much but for the price you can get two sandwiches! Everyone says the cheese sandwich is the best but they were out of them on Friday.
Thursday night we went to a dinner with all the SMEs. There were 21 of us here - I think we were missing only one or two SMEs. The resturant we went to was called 360 - it is in the Oberoi hotel. The hotel was awesome - it is a 5 star just like the Taj but it seemed a little nicer. Much more modern than the Taj.
I taught my first training class on Friday. I did a BF Query exercise - I think everyone really enjoyed it because it was a hands on exercise and they were sick of CBTs at this point. One cultural difference from the US that I found interesting was when you were helping someone work on a query someone else would come right up to you and interrupt and start asking you questions - almost as if you weren't helping anyone else. At first it was hard to get use to but then I realized you just have to tell then you'd be over in a second to help them.
I am starting my first day of work in India and I feel like I'm starting at a brand new company. I'm nervous for what I will experience today. We met in the lobby at 11:30am to take the car to work in Gurgaon. My hours are 12:15pm to 8:45pm. It takes about 45 minutes to get to work in the morning and any where from an hour to an hour and a half to get home at night. It makes for a long day! The drive to work takes us through the southern part of Delhi. Each morning there are certain spots that are slower than others - this usually occurs in Delhi where people are trying to catch buses to work, school, or where ever they are going. Once we get to Gurgaon the traffic isn't to bad. The roads in Delhi as a whole are in much better condition than they are in Gurgaon. Even though there are more modern buildings in Gurgaon the roads are in much worse condition. Not sure if it is because they have not been able to keep up with the progress, they just don't have the money to fix the roads, or if the resources are being used to build all the buildings around Gurgaon. It is funny how modern the buildings are - I would just expect them to build a plain building but instead they make it at odd angles with interesting architectural work. I wasn't able to get any good examples of this but hopefully I can take some later. Below is a view from the front side of the building - this is the road we come in on.
Below is a picture of moth balls in the bathroom sink at work. The only other place I've seen this is in the bathrooms at the airport. Not exactly sure why and it doesn't make for a pleasant smell but I think it is to keep bugs from coming up the sink.
View from my desk. It is hard to see in this picture but the first cube you can see has a picture of a little girl. She is a little white girl so you know it isn't the daughter or sister of the girl at the desk. By the end of this week I started noticing a lot of other cubes that had similar pictures of the same little girl. I was thinking it was very strange - I finally asked why everyone had this picture up. An e-mail got passed around the office with the little girls picture and it was saying how she was the highest paid model in the US - not sure if she is the highest child model or model in general but I guess they liked the idea and the picture so much that they hung it up in their cube.
My desk.
This is just to the right of our building.
They are building another building next to ours. I read a book called Shantaram - in this book the main character lives in the slums for awhile. The book made it seem like the slums where there because of the construction of this large office building. The workers that work on building the building live in the slums with their families and other people that join them to live in the slums. I'm thinking this might be the reason there are slums right next to our building. They probably lived there while our building was going up and they are just staying as they work on the next building. It is just such a contrast - modern building and slums - right next to each other.
The front of our building.
Entrance to our building.
Condo looking buildings not to far from work.
My first few days at work I mostly got settled and helped a little bit with coaching other regions SCAs. All of my SCA's are in training until the 24th. It was funny - I didn't necessarily plan to help coach other regions but I overheard an SCA asking questions of Jamie - who was teaching the training class. I knew she was busy with that so I offered to help out. Once I helped this one girl, people just starting coming to my desk asking for help. They were so nice and polite when they came to ask questions. I had no clue what their names were but they knew mine.
The food that we get at work is vegetarian Indian food only. I ate the food twice this week. It is not something that I enjoy but it is lunch. I don't like spicy food so that narrows things down for me even further. I usually have rice, some type of potato dish, and roti - these things can usually fill me up enough to get by for awhile. I do put other things on my plate and at least try a bite or two but that is usually all I can eat of it. Wednesday I went out for lunch. We went to a mall called DT's food court. The food court was much like one you'd find in the US. It had a Mc Donalds, Subway, and several Indian restaurants. Of course I had the Subway! I got a Subway Melt - which is the same sandwich I usually get in the states but it was very different. The sandwich is suppose to have ham, turkey, and bacon. I think the sandwich had the same meats but when they were making the sandwich I couldn't tell the difference between the ham and turkey. The bread was actually better in India than it is in the US - it seemed fresher. Friday I missed lunch because of training. Since they have associates that work all kinds of hours they have this vendor that comes in and sells food. They sell sandwiches, chips, sodas, and other snacks. It is very cheap compared to American standards. I got a veggie sandwich that was 18 rupees - which is less than 50 cents. The sandwich wasn't much but for the price you can get two sandwiches! Everyone says the cheese sandwich is the best but they were out of them on Friday.
Thursday night we went to a dinner with all the SMEs. There were 21 of us here - I think we were missing only one or two SMEs. The resturant we went to was called 360 - it is in the Oberoi hotel. The hotel was awesome - it is a 5 star just like the Taj but it seemed a little nicer. Much more modern than the Taj.
I taught my first training class on Friday. I did a BF Query exercise - I think everyone really enjoyed it because it was a hands on exercise and they were sick of CBTs at this point. One cultural difference from the US that I found interesting was when you were helping someone work on a query someone else would come right up to you and interrupt and start asking you questions - almost as if you weren't helping anyone else. At first it was hard to get use to but then I realized you just have to tell then you'd be over in a second to help them.
posted by Angela Cooley at 3:05 AM
1 Comments:
Angela, those work hours must be killing you! Usually you're in bed by 9pm!
Post a Comment
<< Home