so now that i'm back in Atlanta and things have settled down a bit, i'm going to close down this blog in the sense that i won't be posting here anymore. i know that for some of you and definitely for myself, this blog will be a great set of thoughts to read years down the road when i reflect on my time in India. i hope that if you have kept up with my journey and my adventures, you have found my blog posts at the very least entertaining.
from here i will be leaving Atlanta in a couple of weeks and moving the rest of my stuff up to Boston. now that the apartment is settled [refer to my previous post] and i'm paying rent, i may as well go enjoy my place and explore Boston while i can.
signing off -
R
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Saturday, January 5, 2008
You can accomplish nearly anything ...
... if you put your mind to it.
first, a recap. i spent a week and a half with family in the UK, and it was FANTASTIC. i got to see my uncles and aunts, play with my cousins, meet new cousins i never knew existed, and spend time with my dear grandparents. it was everything i could have asked for.
then this past Wednesday i flew into Boston and touched down on US soil for the first time in the past 6 months. what an AMAZING feeling to walk through the airport and see an ENORMOUS American flag stretched across the ceiling, and to realize in your heart, with much relief, "i'm back home." i met up with Duke, my roommate who flew in from DC so that we could see apartments together, and we took a shuttle down to our hotel [which is of course on the company dime]. now Duke is starting at the office on Monday, although i have a little more time, so finding an apartment in the next 2 days was of the utmost importance. checked in and went straightaway to our first destination, Ten Faxon [www.tenfaxon.com] to have a look around and whatnot. liked what we saw, called it an evening, and went out for yummy sushi.
the next day we went to Munroe Place [www.munroeplace.com] to see what they had to offer. finally, we met up with a young fella named Evan, who showed us around some places in South Boston. after seeing all these apartments, we realized that we both had settled on Ten Faxon a while ago, and so we went back with money orders in hand to initiate the application process. got that taken care of, decided it had been a good day, and went out to The Four's for dinner and to watch the Orange Bowl. Kansas won. =( we were rooting for VT.
Friday we checked out of our hotel and went into town to meet up with a friend of mine, Bella. she let me leave my suitcases at her place, and then we hung out for the day. by 3:30 pm Duke and i found out that there were only a couple more steps to go before the lease would be ready, so we left to go to the bank, get the rest of our deposit money, and head down to Ten Faxon. Duke had a flight that night at 8 pm, so he had to be at the airport by 6:30, which meant he had to leave Ten Faxon by about 5:45 at the latest. by the time we got to the leasing office at 5:30, the last of the paperwork - the employment verifications - had JUST been faxed in, so Duke signed the lease and left straightaway to catch his flight. i stayed back, looked over the entire lease in detail, signed, and received the keys to the apartment and other stuff.
so basically, within two days and after a lot of hassle that i haven't even really talked about here, we had our apartment locked in. now i can leave all my clothes and other stuff from India here in my apartment before i go back to Atlanta for the rest of the month.
yay!
first, a recap. i spent a week and a half with family in the UK, and it was FANTASTIC. i got to see my uncles and aunts, play with my cousins, meet new cousins i never knew existed, and spend time with my dear grandparents. it was everything i could have asked for.
then this past Wednesday i flew into Boston and touched down on US soil for the first time in the past 6 months. what an AMAZING feeling to walk through the airport and see an ENORMOUS American flag stretched across the ceiling, and to realize in your heart, with much relief, "i'm back home." i met up with Duke, my roommate who flew in from DC so that we could see apartments together, and we took a shuttle down to our hotel [which is of course on the company dime]. now Duke is starting at the office on Monday, although i have a little more time, so finding an apartment in the next 2 days was of the utmost importance. checked in and went straightaway to our first destination, Ten Faxon [www.tenfaxon.com] to have a look around and whatnot. liked what we saw, called it an evening, and went out for yummy sushi.
the next day we went to Munroe Place [www.munroeplace.com] to see what they had to offer. finally, we met up with a young fella named Evan, who showed us around some places in South Boston. after seeing all these apartments, we realized that we both had settled on Ten Faxon a while ago, and so we went back with money orders in hand to initiate the application process. got that taken care of, decided it had been a good day, and went out to The Four's for dinner and to watch the Orange Bowl. Kansas won. =( we were rooting for VT.
Friday we checked out of our hotel and went into town to meet up with a friend of mine, Bella. she let me leave my suitcases at her place, and then we hung out for the day. by 3:30 pm Duke and i found out that there were only a couple more steps to go before the lease would be ready, so we left to go to the bank, get the rest of our deposit money, and head down to Ten Faxon. Duke had a flight that night at 8 pm, so he had to be at the airport by 6:30, which meant he had to leave Ten Faxon by about 5:45 at the latest. by the time we got to the leasing office at 5:30, the last of the paperwork - the employment verifications - had JUST been faxed in, so Duke signed the lease and left straightaway to catch his flight. i stayed back, looked over the entire lease in detail, signed, and received the keys to the apartment and other stuff.
so basically, within two days and after a lot of hassle that i haven't even really talked about here, we had our apartment locked in. now i can leave all my clothes and other stuff from India here in my apartment before i go back to Atlanta for the rest of the month.
yay!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
3 days to UK.
i'm leaving India in 71 hours exactly, and it's all coming together so fast. it's so true that in the end, all you think about is the beginning, and lately i've been reliving in vivid detail my first week or two upon arriving. the meeting in DC, the flight through Frankfurt, landing in Bangalore at midnight, waiting for the other flight to get in, the unbearably long first bus ride from Bangalore to Mysore in the middle of the night, the initial paperwork, the first hostel room, having to switch rooms after the first week, that first week of induction and team-building sessions, the subsequent training, taking care of F.R.O. paperwork in Bangalore [what a debacle THAT was], getting used to the food, the trip to Shivasamudra and Bharachukki Falls ...
so many things to remember, and such an exciting process just to go through all that and recall how i felt at those times, and how much i've grown since then - or maybe just how jaded i've become since then. either way, i've enjoyed this experience, despite the constant struggles and uphill battles we've had to fight [most of those within the company, not with India in general]. i've learned a lot, i know i'm taking a lot away from this experience, and i will cherish the friendships and memories i've made and shared here.
with that said, i cannot WAIT to take off from Bangalore and touch down 11 hours later in London.
so many things to remember, and such an exciting process just to go through all that and recall how i felt at those times, and how much i've grown since then - or maybe just how jaded i've become since then. either way, i've enjoyed this experience, despite the constant struggles and uphill battles we've had to fight [most of those within the company, not with India in general]. i've learned a lot, i know i'm taking a lot away from this experience, and i will cherish the friendships and memories i've made and shared here.
with that said, i cannot WAIT to take off from Bangalore and touch down 11 hours later in London.
Friday, December 14, 2007
India's cooling IT industry
The following is an article from The Economist [get the original story here]. What are your thoughts?
---
Gravity's pull
Dec 13th 2007 | BANGALORE
From The Economist print edition
Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?
MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.
Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest—need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures.
The “IT” in India's IT industry has always been something of a misnomer. True, most of its more than 1.6m employees sit in front of computers, writing software for Western firms, remotely maintaining their computers and electronically handling some of their operations. But the business is mostly about people and processes. The very essence of India's IT firms is their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services.
One of their biggest innovations has been to borrow ideas from manufacturing and apply them to services, by building a sophisticated human supply-chain, for instance. They have also focused on certification and continuous improvement—a result of having to be, at least initially, better than their Western rivals in order to win business, says Girish Paranjpe, the boss of Wipro's consulting arm. Today more Indian than American firms meet the highest internationally recognised standards for software development.
All this has enabled Indian firms to take advantage of a rare, if not unique, set of market conditions. On the demand side, Western companies needed to cut costs, but their computer systems still required a lot of human labour. On the supply side, there was an army of well trained, English-speaking engineers demanding only a fraction of a Western salary. Fast fibre-optic links brought both sides together and a favourable exchange rate made this global connection even more attractive: customers paid in dollars, and employees were paid in rupees. The result was a “low-risk, high-margin business”, says Kiran Karnik, the outgoing president of Nasscom, the industry's trade group. To increase sales, firms could hire more people without caring too much about productivity, with the result that growth in revenue correlated closely with growth in headcount.
So why the concern? Indian IT faces a host of threats, says Sudin Apte of Forrester Research, a consultancy, who argues that the industry needs to reinvent itself. The most immediate difficulty is the rapid appreciation of the rupee against the dollar in recent months (see article). Since its low in mid-2006, it has gained 16%. This has made a liability out of what had been a big asset for Indian IT firms—making most of their sales in America. The strong rupee has also thrown other structural problems into relief. These fall into three categories.
What goes up...
First come the familiar problems. One is India's clogged and insufficient infrastructure: workers in Bangalore can spend four hours a day in traffic. Then there are the tax breaks that subsidise the industry, some of which expire in 2009. There is also a growing talent shortage. Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, but only half are employable by the IT industry. Employees have learnt to switch jobs for better pay, and salaries are going up by 10-15% a year. For senior staff, they will soon reach Western levels.
Second, competitors are starting to emerge. IT industries in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe, may never match India's in size, but they can still pick off valuable contracts. Meanwhile, foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. In 2002 the six biggest—including Accenture, IBM and HP—had fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000. This enables them to rival the Indian firms in scale and cost, while exploiting their stronger brands and international scope.
The third category concerns future threats. In the short term a slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens. In the longer term Indian firms must keep abreast of technological changes. Many of the services they now provide will eventually be automated; this is already starting to happen, for example, in software testing. Western firms, meanwhile, increasingly want Indian providers to do more than just keep systems running; they want help in developing new solutions to business problems—something few Indian firms are set up to do.
The question is whether the industry's business model can cope with these threats even as the potential for growth in its established markets declines. According to calculations by CLSA, a French-Asian investment bank, Indian IT firms will soon have a share of nearly 20% of their addressable market's value and almost 40% of its volume. They will also struggle to make their existing business more efficient: most fat has already been cut.
Many think that Indian IT firms need to move into new, higher-margin services and to cut the link between revenues and headcount, for instance by offering more consulting, developing more intellectual property and making acquisitions abroad. To be fair, the leading firms are already doing this. Infosys now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from consulting, says its new boss, S. Gopalakrishnan; and Wipro recently paid $600m for Infocrossing, an American firm, the largest in a series of acquisitions by Indian firms.
But is the industry moving fast enough? Nasscom's Mr Karnik says no, but he thinks there is still time to change things. Partha Iyengar of Gartner, another consultancy, sees more urgency. He expects slower growth and lower margins if the big firms are not making most of their money in consulting and other high-margin areas within three or four years. This will be hard, he says: today's focus on people, processes and profits may keep many firms from reaching the next level. But, he says, India's IT firms have shown before that they can change if they really need to.
Even if the heavyweights stumble, smaller firms are ready to take up the baton. For example, MindTree Consulting was founded 1999 in anticipation of the very threats that have now materialised. However potent these threats prove, they have already demonstrated that for all the talk of the world being flat, economic gravity still applies.
---
Gravity's pull
Dec 13th 2007 | BANGALORE
From The Economist print edition
Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?
MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.
Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest—need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures.
The “IT” in India's IT industry has always been something of a misnomer. True, most of its more than 1.6m employees sit in front of computers, writing software for Western firms, remotely maintaining their computers and electronically handling some of their operations. But the business is mostly about people and processes. The very essence of India's IT firms is their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services.
One of their biggest innovations has been to borrow ideas from manufacturing and apply them to services, by building a sophisticated human supply-chain, for instance. They have also focused on certification and continuous improvement—a result of having to be, at least initially, better than their Western rivals in order to win business, says Girish Paranjpe, the boss of Wipro's consulting arm. Today more Indian than American firms meet the highest internationally recognised standards for software development.
All this has enabled Indian firms to take advantage of a rare, if not unique, set of market conditions. On the demand side, Western companies needed to cut costs, but their computer systems still required a lot of human labour. On the supply side, there was an army of well trained, English-speaking engineers demanding only a fraction of a Western salary. Fast fibre-optic links brought both sides together and a favourable exchange rate made this global connection even more attractive: customers paid in dollars, and employees were paid in rupees. The result was a “low-risk, high-margin business”, says Kiran Karnik, the outgoing president of Nasscom, the industry's trade group. To increase sales, firms could hire more people without caring too much about productivity, with the result that growth in revenue correlated closely with growth in headcount.
So why the concern? Indian IT faces a host of threats, says Sudin Apte of Forrester Research, a consultancy, who argues that the industry needs to reinvent itself. The most immediate difficulty is the rapid appreciation of the rupee against the dollar in recent months (see article). Since its low in mid-2006, it has gained 16%. This has made a liability out of what had been a big asset for Indian IT firms—making most of their sales in America. The strong rupee has also thrown other structural problems into relief. These fall into three categories.
What goes up...
First come the familiar problems. One is India's clogged and insufficient infrastructure: workers in Bangalore can spend four hours a day in traffic. Then there are the tax breaks that subsidise the industry, some of which expire in 2009. There is also a growing talent shortage. Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, but only half are employable by the IT industry. Employees have learnt to switch jobs for better pay, and salaries are going up by 10-15% a year. For senior staff, they will soon reach Western levels.
Second, competitors are starting to emerge. IT industries in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe, may never match India's in size, but they can still pick off valuable contracts. Meanwhile, foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. In 2002 the six biggest—including Accenture, IBM and HP—had fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000. This enables them to rival the Indian firms in scale and cost, while exploiting their stronger brands and international scope.
The third category concerns future threats. In the short term a slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens. In the longer term Indian firms must keep abreast of technological changes. Many of the services they now provide will eventually be automated; this is already starting to happen, for example, in software testing. Western firms, meanwhile, increasingly want Indian providers to do more than just keep systems running; they want help in developing new solutions to business problems—something few Indian firms are set up to do.
The question is whether the industry's business model can cope with these threats even as the potential for growth in its established markets declines. According to calculations by CLSA, a French-Asian investment bank, Indian IT firms will soon have a share of nearly 20% of their addressable market's value and almost 40% of its volume. They will also struggle to make their existing business more efficient: most fat has already been cut.
Many think that Indian IT firms need to move into new, higher-margin services and to cut the link between revenues and headcount, for instance by offering more consulting, developing more intellectual property and making acquisitions abroad. To be fair, the leading firms are already doing this. Infosys now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from consulting, says its new boss, S. Gopalakrishnan; and Wipro recently paid $600m for Infocrossing, an American firm, the largest in a series of acquisitions by Indian firms.
But is the industry moving fast enough? Nasscom's Mr Karnik says no, but he thinks there is still time to change things. Partha Iyengar of Gartner, another consultancy, sees more urgency. He expects slower growth and lower margins if the big firms are not making most of their money in consulting and other high-margin areas within three or four years. This will be hard, he says: today's focus on people, processes and profits may keep many firms from reaching the next level. But, he says, India's IT firms have shown before that they can change if they really need to.
Even if the heavyweights stumble, smaller firms are ready to take up the baton. For example, MindTree Consulting was founded 1999 in anticipation of the very threats that have now materialised. However potent these threats prove, they have already demonstrated that for all the talk of the world being flat, economic gravity still applies.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Crystallized.
so i got fantastic news just 2 days ago - instead of leaving India sometime in mid-January, i am being released in just 2 weeks. which means i can actually spend Christmas and New Year's with family in the UK. which means i can be back in the US sooner, which is INCREDIBLE. i am so excited about this recent turn of events, and - as i'm sure you have gathered from my previous posts - i am more than ready to get out of India as soon as humanly possible.
furthermore, details have been finalized, and i am definitely going to Boston and nowhere else [there have been a LOT of people moved around suddenly at the last minute with no advance notice]. i am one of the few lucky ones who is going to their first choice of US location, and i'm very ready to begin my new life in New England.
see you soon! =)
furthermore, details have been finalized, and i am definitely going to Boston and nowhere else [there have been a LOT of people moved around suddenly at the last minute with no advance notice]. i am one of the few lucky ones who is going to their first choice of US location, and i'm very ready to begin my new life in New England.
see you soon! =)
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Reverse culture shock - coming in 6 weeks.
This week we're discussing culture shock, and how sometimes it's harder to adjust to one's home country upon returning, than it is when landing in a new country and experiencing a different culture for the first time.
To be completely honest, I'm quite terrified of returning to the States, and rightly so I feel. I remember having to adjust to the Indian way of life when I got here over four months ago. The two main obstacles we had to overcome were:
An example for each one. People here are always late to meetings, although it's better than what I expected it to be. If you're Indian and reading this, you've most likely heard of Desi Standard Time [DST] or Indian Standard Time [IST]. Neither of these are actual time zones, but they do summarize quite nicely the subcontinental approach to managing time, which is polychronistic in nature. A deadline is not a hard, set-in-stone point in time by which something must be accomplished [as is the case in the US], but a general time frame. The task or objective can be completed before, at, or shortly after that deadline. This took some getting used to at first.
As for polychronicity, let me tell you something about India that you should know if you ever come to the subcontinent. And if you've been to India and tried to stand in a line, you already understand what I'm about to say. Aside from the more progressive and metropolitan areas of the country [Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore], the idea of a "queue" simply does not exist. When we first got here, all we saw at the little food shops was total chaos. One guy behind the counter pulling out pastries, warming up dishes in the microwave, grabbing drinks out of the cooler, taking money, doling out change, serving prepared orders - all while dozens of people are barking orders at him and thrusting hundred-rupee bills in his face. And trying to be "civilized" about it [from our then-naïve American perspective] got us nowhere, as we would constantly be pushed, shoved and ignored out of the way. Slowly, though, we saw order in the chaos, and we could see that the one guy behind the counter could do what no pimply-faced, gangly teenager working the register at McDonald's could ever do - process multiple requests at the same time with a very high, if not nearly perfect, accuracy rate.
These are the two big things - polychronism and polychronicity. By contrast, US culture is monochronistic and monochronic. But there are a lot of smaller nuances in culture that will be hard to get used to. Another example: when we go out to dinner, we usually go to decent, sit-down-and-order-then-eat-then-pay-the-bill types of places. In other words, not street vendors [even after more than four months here, we're not touching that stuff. No way we want to get sicker than some of us already are]. And even when it's a group of 3 people, the waiters have no idea who ordered what. With maybe one or two exceptions, I haven't had a meal with friends where everyone got everything they ordered without the waiters asking, "Who had the butter chicken?" What's even better is when they'll put a dish down in front of who they think ordered it, and 19 times out of 20 they're wrong. Anyways, with these kinds of situations, although we've gotten a lot better about it, we tend to get quite upset and raise our voices. I know that speaking for myself, I've done exactly that a number of times [see one of my previous posts]. After all, when you pay good money for good food and solid service, you expect that.
Which brings me to my qualms about returning to the States. First off, fortunately, I don't think I have to worry about polychronism, because I've worked enough in business and gotten upset enough here about time management that I'm fairly sure I'll make the transition back to monochronism with no problems.
HOWEVER, when it comes to incompetent waiters at restaurants, I am concerned that I'll be at some place like Chili's [not necessarily high-end and classy, but at the same time a decent establishment] with my family and the waiter or waitress will mess up our orders, and instead of being civil about it I'll start yelling at him/her and make a scene - all without realizing it.
And as for polychronicity, I am quite sure that when I go to a fast-food restaurant and there's a long line, instead of waiting in line like one should in the States, I will pull out a 10 dollar bill, walk to the front of the line, wave the bill in that same pimply-faced, gangly teenager's face and bark my order at him - all while completely ignoring [and thus insulting] the fine fellow who was about to place his order right before I showed up out of nowhere and opened my big yap. That's bound to cause a fuss.
And all of the concerns I've just mentioned don't even take into account the fact that driving in India is akin to playing Chicken on I-75 in Atlanta going against rush hour traffic [in other words, driving straight at cars that are coming at you around 80 miles per hour]. It's not the fact that India's roads are like Britain's [read: BACKWARDS] and that sitting in the passenger seat here is like sitting behind the wheel back home. No. That's not what scares me. It's the WAY in which people drive that has me frightened about my own driving abilities. I've posted a video on YouTube to give you an idea of how crazy it is to be in the passenger seat on the road here, much less be behind the wheel, and my concern is that when I get back to the States I will have an equal disregard for lane markers and dividers, and that overtaking a large bus around a hairpin turn at 30 miles per hour won't sound as ridiculous as it did to me six months ago. Which means I basically have to ban myself from driving for at least a month or so until I get the hang of it again.
So as you can see, I have a lot of concerns about coming back to the States that I need to start preparing for and dealing with now.
Although, admittedly, they most certainly don't overshadow my excitement about returning home in 6 weeks.
To be completely honest, I'm quite terrified of returning to the States, and rightly so I feel. I remember having to adjust to the Indian way of life when I got here over four months ago. The two main obstacles we had to overcome were:
- the concept of cyclical time [polychronism] and
- the idea that attention can be focused on multiple people and multiple tasks at the same time with no loss in productivity or efficiency. It's not quite multitasking - it's actually more like multitasking on crack [polychronicity].
An example for each one. People here are always late to meetings, although it's better than what I expected it to be. If you're Indian and reading this, you've most likely heard of Desi Standard Time [DST] or Indian Standard Time [IST]. Neither of these are actual time zones, but they do summarize quite nicely the subcontinental approach to managing time, which is polychronistic in nature. A deadline is not a hard, set-in-stone point in time by which something must be accomplished [as is the case in the US], but a general time frame. The task or objective can be completed before, at, or shortly after that deadline. This took some getting used to at first.
As for polychronicity, let me tell you something about India that you should know if you ever come to the subcontinent. And if you've been to India and tried to stand in a line, you already understand what I'm about to say. Aside from the more progressive and metropolitan areas of the country [Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore], the idea of a "queue" simply does not exist. When we first got here, all we saw at the little food shops was total chaos. One guy behind the counter pulling out pastries, warming up dishes in the microwave, grabbing drinks out of the cooler, taking money, doling out change, serving prepared orders - all while dozens of people are barking orders at him and thrusting hundred-rupee bills in his face. And trying to be "civilized" about it [from our then-naïve American perspective] got us nowhere, as we would constantly be pushed, shoved and ignored out of the way. Slowly, though, we saw order in the chaos, and we could see that the one guy behind the counter could do what no pimply-faced, gangly teenager working the register at McDonald's could ever do - process multiple requests at the same time with a very high, if not nearly perfect, accuracy rate.
These are the two big things - polychronism and polychronicity. By contrast, US culture is monochronistic and monochronic. But there are a lot of smaller nuances in culture that will be hard to get used to. Another example: when we go out to dinner, we usually go to decent, sit-down-and-order-then-eat-then-pay-the-bill types of places. In other words, not street vendors [even after more than four months here, we're not touching that stuff. No way we want to get sicker than some of us already are]. And even when it's a group of 3 people, the waiters have no idea who ordered what. With maybe one or two exceptions, I haven't had a meal with friends where everyone got everything they ordered without the waiters asking, "Who had the butter chicken?" What's even better is when they'll put a dish down in front of who they think ordered it, and 19 times out of 20 they're wrong. Anyways, with these kinds of situations, although we've gotten a lot better about it, we tend to get quite upset and raise our voices. I know that speaking for myself, I've done exactly that a number of times [see one of my previous posts]. After all, when you pay good money for good food and solid service, you expect that.
Which brings me to my qualms about returning to the States. First off, fortunately, I don't think I have to worry about polychronism, because I've worked enough in business and gotten upset enough here about time management that I'm fairly sure I'll make the transition back to monochronism with no problems.
HOWEVER, when it comes to incompetent waiters at restaurants, I am concerned that I'll be at some place like Chili's [not necessarily high-end and classy, but at the same time a decent establishment] with my family and the waiter or waitress will mess up our orders, and instead of being civil about it I'll start yelling at him/her and make a scene - all without realizing it.
And as for polychronicity, I am quite sure that when I go to a fast-food restaurant and there's a long line, instead of waiting in line like one should in the States, I will pull out a 10 dollar bill, walk to the front of the line, wave the bill in that same pimply-faced, gangly teenager's face and bark my order at him - all while completely ignoring [and thus insulting] the fine fellow who was about to place his order right before I showed up out of nowhere and opened my big yap. That's bound to cause a fuss.
And all of the concerns I've just mentioned don't even take into account the fact that driving in India is akin to playing Chicken on I-75 in Atlanta going against rush hour traffic [in other words, driving straight at cars that are coming at you around 80 miles per hour]. It's not the fact that India's roads are like Britain's [read: BACKWARDS] and that sitting in the passenger seat here is like sitting behind the wheel back home. No. That's not what scares me. It's the WAY in which people drive that has me frightened about my own driving abilities. I've posted a video on YouTube to give you an idea of how crazy it is to be in the passenger seat on the road here, much less be behind the wheel, and my concern is that when I get back to the States I will have an equal disregard for lane markers and dividers, and that overtaking a large bus around a hairpin turn at 30 miles per hour won't sound as ridiculous as it did to me six months ago. Which means I basically have to ban myself from driving for at least a month or so until I get the hang of it again.
So as you can see, I have a lot of concerns about coming back to the States that I need to start preparing for and dealing with now.
Although, admittedly, they most certainly don't overshadow my excitement about returning home in 6 weeks.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Temperature check -- burnt to a crisp.
wow. it's so hard to believe, in so many ways, that's it's been 4 and a half months since i came to India. that's a LONG time, and most certainly the longest i've lived abroad by a long shot. we've endured a lot, been to a lot of places and gone through a plethora of unforgettable experiences.
but by the same token, we still have nearly 2 months to go before we go back to the States. and while the countdown calendar next to my bed [yes, I did create one back in mid-October] has been whittled down from 13 weeks to just about 6, that's still a long time to go.
temperatures here have been soaring. things were going well until it dawned on us that it's already mid-November and we have no information on where we're going in India and what we're doing after training. and all that aside from our US-based concerns. as i might have mentioned in a previous post, there's a chance that i will not actually be living in Boston proper. we have clients spread throughout the New England area, and i know people whose base location is Boston but they live and work in Portland, Maine or Hartford, Connecticut. that's NOT what i signed up for, and i refuse to have that happen to me. i have too many things set up in Boston already, and a co-worker friend and i are signing a lease on an apartment together in the next few weeks. unfortunately, i have to hold my breath until the company provides me with a solid, black-and-white confirmation that i will indeed be in Boston proper. any news about my initial client would be very helpful as well.
and all of that aside from the way we have been treated for the past 4 months - those conditions, while not physical in nature [don't worry, our living situation here is just fine], have steadily worsened, and it's gotten to the point that we refuse to be treated poorly any longer. never mind for a minute that HR is supposed to be a department we can actually trust. nope. it seems that our direct HR contact is terrified of confrontation and will thus go to rather extreme, albeit amusing, measures to avoid us at all costs. meanwhile, that person's supervisor - the one who actually could help us out, be our advocate, and make this company truly successful at the global level [and especially in the States, since my co-workers and I from the States can and will be the company's only advocates stateside] - seems to really have it out for us. seriously, it seems that every day someone has a new story of a meeting he or she had with this individual and how all s/he did was yell at and belittle them. for crying out loud, someone resigned just over a week ago because of a direct confrontation with this person, who - as if i need to remind you - is in a managerial capacity! not to go into too much detail here, but basically the person in question told my friend who resigned [who is Indian by ethnicity and was raised in the States, like me] that my friend had lost his heritage, didn't know who he was, and didn't belong in India slash wasn't really an Indian. this short tirade was followed by a direct request - practically a demand - from the HR person in question that my friend resign immediately
since i'm on the topic, i may as well go on about it for a bit. seriously, this management person is in charge of Human Resources!! if it were any other department, it would be one thing, but as head of HR for the company campus at which i currently reside [thousands and thousands of employees here], that person should be at least corporately diplomatic and neutral enough to NEVER bring up an issue like that with another employee - much less on company time and on the company campus. the only word that comes to mind is unprofessional, and i cannot understand how this individual has moved through the ranks with such blatantly discriminatory outbursts. i would like to grant this person the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps it was an isolated incident. HOWEVER, a) similar, although less harsh, situations have taken place with my other US batchmates, and b) directly because of the HR person's words and actions, my friend resigned!! ... or perhaps he was told he was being fired and decided to retain some scrap of dignity by resigning himself after the HR person ripped into him.
this whole anecdote is just to give you an idea of how my company is lauded in India in general, but then people here act SO SURPRISED when we tell them that in the States, not many people have heard of the founder [practically a god walking amongst mere mortals here in India], much less the 90,000-person strong company itself. it's because the people in charge of running operations really aren't qualified enough, in my opinion, to do their job with competence. at least that's been my experience thus far, and i sincerely do hope that things get better in the last month and a half we're here. but the only way that would happen is if the right people take initiative. we for our part have done our best to voice our concerns, and to communicate to management [including the HR individual i've been talking about] how we envision processes and communications being improved within the company. unfortunately, in order to enact positive change there have to be two active parties - the one suggesting the change [collectively, us as speakers] and the one to enact the change [collectively, them as listeners], and as of right now our suggestions and, yes, complaints are all falling on apparently deaf ears.
sometimes, just sometimes, i wonder if this job is all it's cracked up to be. i guess we'll see if things get better when i'm back in the States, if they don't improve before then.
my nerves are shot and i'm frazzled. i'm completely at wits' end, and it's because of the people above us - the ones who are supposed to help us out, be there for us, be advocates of positive change. there's just a very large gap, and i'm hoping, really praying, that it will be bridged soon.
=(
but by the same token, we still have nearly 2 months to go before we go back to the States. and while the countdown calendar next to my bed [yes, I did create one back in mid-October] has been whittled down from 13 weeks to just about 6, that's still a long time to go.
temperatures here have been soaring. things were going well until it dawned on us that it's already mid-November and we have no information on where we're going in India and what we're doing after training. and all that aside from our US-based concerns. as i might have mentioned in a previous post, there's a chance that i will not actually be living in Boston proper. we have clients spread throughout the New England area, and i know people whose base location is Boston but they live and work in Portland, Maine or Hartford, Connecticut. that's NOT what i signed up for, and i refuse to have that happen to me. i have too many things set up in Boston already, and a co-worker friend and i are signing a lease on an apartment together in the next few weeks. unfortunately, i have to hold my breath until the company provides me with a solid, black-and-white confirmation that i will indeed be in Boston proper. any news about my initial client would be very helpful as well.
and all of that aside from the way we have been treated for the past 4 months - those conditions, while not physical in nature [don't worry, our living situation here is just fine], have steadily worsened, and it's gotten to the point that we refuse to be treated poorly any longer. never mind for a minute that HR is supposed to be a department we can actually trust. nope. it seems that our direct HR contact is terrified of confrontation and will thus go to rather extreme, albeit amusing, measures to avoid us at all costs. meanwhile, that person's supervisor - the one who actually could help us out, be our advocate, and make this company truly successful at the global level [and especially in the States, since my co-workers and I from the States can and will be the company's only advocates stateside] - seems to really have it out for us. seriously, it seems that every day someone has a new story of a meeting he or she had with this individual and how all s/he did was yell at and belittle them. for crying out loud, someone resigned just over a week ago because of a direct confrontation with this person, who - as if i need to remind you - is in a managerial capacity! not to go into too much detail here, but basically the person in question told my friend who resigned [who is Indian by ethnicity and was raised in the States, like me] that my friend had lost his heritage, didn't know who he was, and didn't belong in India slash wasn't really an Indian. this short tirade was followed by a direct request - practically a demand - from the HR person in question that my friend resign immediately
since i'm on the topic, i may as well go on about it for a bit. seriously, this management person is in charge of Human Resources!! if it were any other department, it would be one thing, but as head of HR for the company campus at which i currently reside [thousands and thousands of employees here], that person should be at least corporately diplomatic and neutral enough to NEVER bring up an issue like that with another employee - much less on company time and on the company campus. the only word that comes to mind is unprofessional, and i cannot understand how this individual has moved through the ranks with such blatantly discriminatory outbursts. i would like to grant this person the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps it was an isolated incident. HOWEVER, a) similar, although less harsh, situations have taken place with my other US batchmates, and b) directly because of the HR person's words and actions, my friend resigned!! ... or perhaps he was told he was being fired and decided to retain some scrap of dignity by resigning himself after the HR person ripped into him.
this whole anecdote is just to give you an idea of how my company is lauded in India in general, but then people here act SO SURPRISED when we tell them that in the States, not many people have heard of the founder [practically a god walking amongst mere mortals here in India], much less the 90,000-person strong company itself. it's because the people in charge of running operations really aren't qualified enough, in my opinion, to do their job with competence. at least that's been my experience thus far, and i sincerely do hope that things get better in the last month and a half we're here. but the only way that would happen is if the right people take initiative. we for our part have done our best to voice our concerns, and to communicate to management [including the HR individual i've been talking about] how we envision processes and communications being improved within the company. unfortunately, in order to enact positive change there have to be two active parties - the one suggesting the change [collectively, us as speakers] and the one to enact the change [collectively, them as listeners], and as of right now our suggestions and, yes, complaints are all falling on apparently deaf ears.
sometimes, just sometimes, i wonder if this job is all it's cracked up to be. i guess we'll see if things get better when i'm back in the States, if they don't improve before then.
my nerves are shot and i'm frazzled. i'm completely at wits' end, and it's because of the people above us - the ones who are supposed to help us out, be there for us, be advocates of positive change. there's just a very large gap, and i'm hoping, really praying, that it will be bridged soon.
=(
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