Work is better now. Homesickness

Work is better again, which makes me really glad. I am still under a lot of pressure since I’m both planning our project and trying to lead a team at the same time. So I have a team before there is really something to give them to do… that is tough. The project has now taken its hopefully final form and I was able to start doing more planning today. My project manager’s idea was that my team members should do most of the planning themselves but I think that is very hard to do since they are so inexperienced. I want to learn planning and design so I will do that (with a lot of help from Tobias) and my team can learn interpreting diagrams and programming. My team was actually taken apart, but only geographically. They thought Yusuf and Stephie were just a bit too loud together so they have ordered them to sit separately, in different rooms, from now on. Too bad for the sake of team dynamics.

My goal now is to regain my professional confidence, which I lost in the infamous first project that I did here. After that I have been just drifting and not really knowing my place. I will really try to make this project work. I know it will be extremely difficult but I’m sure I can do it. I also want to make sure that Stephie and Yusuf learn a lot from this. This is a very good opportunity for me to learn team leading and try to be a mentor and a teacher for the team at the same time. I’m also reading one IT book now about design patterns. It seems very interesting and both me and Tobias are already using one design pattern from the book in our own projects.

I have to tell one incident from work a couple weeks back. I came to work one morning and discovered my emergency biscuits were all over my chair and the floor. I asked my boss what might have caused that and he said, with a straight face, a rat. Oh well. Then Tobias comes and asks if I want to see a really big bug. I went to see and in the hallway there was a bug the size of my hand. It was so big that you could watch which way it was looking at because the head was so big too. Nobody knew what it was. Eventually my boss put it in the trash.

I don’t think things like this too much anymore. At first you of course noticed those above everything else. Then it was too easy not to take the company and the traineeship seriously because things did not work like they would in Europe. Now I try to put those things aside and concentrate on the important issues, such as the work. The Indians in the company work really hard and I try to do the same. This is a great opportunity for me to try out what I can do and also learn something new. One of the most important things I can learn here is to tolerate pressure. I feel a lot of pressure at work but I am now getting on top of it all and not letting it get me down. I think that also partly comes from the basic living conditions here, coping with the traffic and all the people and so on. I am sure this will help me in the future a lot too.

We have started taking joga lessons here in our flat. A teacher from the school where Anastasia is working as a trainee comes here twice a week to hold one-hour-long classes. We have only had a couple of lessons so far. We have been practising some breathing exercises and some meditation postures. I try to do joga after work, a couple of times a week + in the weekend at least. It is actually quite relaxing after a long day at the office.

No matter how well I would do here I still feel occasional homesickness. Some days more some days less. It has been snowing in Finland already a little, also in the area where I’m from. Today was really cold here in Hyderabad. I don’t think it was much more than +15 Celsius. It was practically freezing by local standards. It was nice going to work in the morning when it was cool and raining a bit. Reminded me so much about home 🙂 When I sat at my computer at the unusually cool office I could almost feel like sitting at my desk in Ylistönmäki, except here the view out the window is not green like back there. It is very dark and grey. There also is not the cup of good coffee and the relaxing chitchat with the colleagues. One thing about working here is that I don’t really get along with the Indian colleagues. There are so many trainees in the company now that there is always other people to talk to, but conversations with the Indians are only limited to work related discussions with a very few people. I simply am not very interested in talking with them. I can not possibly imagine what I could talk about. It is hard to imagine that I would share any interests with them. It is sad really, but I have stopped minding about that. When I started here I was very keen on talking with them. I tried to introduce myself to everybody and I wrote down the names to remember them better. I went to lunch with them, learned a lot about Indian food and Hindu gods. Then I just somehow got tired of it. Now I find talking to other trainees and spending time with them simply more interesting and worthwhile.