Oh, bloody hell. And oh yeah!

For one, the Corporation payroll withheld 70% of my salary in taxes this month. Those masala-eating surrendermonkeys have been paying too little taxes so far, so they decided to compensate a bit now that I am leaving soon. Of course, it must be bloody difficult to get the percentage right when there are so many choices (four), and the highest one is chosen when annual income exceeds 7500 euros.

And of course I have a hugely expensive honeymoon trip to pay on top of usual living expenses this month.

On the other hand, we’re off for the said honeymoon in 12 hours. I can’t wait!

Tags: colleagues from India, holiday, it's good to be me, money, oh bugger, surprises, travel, ways of working, what is different, why I wanted a change, work

It’s been quite a while since I’ve last written anything, so here’s a summary:

I travelled back to Finland in early September, found out that the glasses weren’t according to the prescription I got, and once again I had to extend the sick leave. While there was supposed to be a prism of 2 prd in front of the right eye and a zero lens in front of the left, the opticians in India had put 2 prd prisms on both. Needless to say, my symptoms didn’t go away with those.

At this point I might have felt a a tiny bit frustrated.

Fast forward two weeks and we’re back in Bangalore. I left the glasses to the optician shop for fixing and started the wait once more. Of course, there were again some delays, but I finally received the glasses I needed last Friday. I hoped to have at least a couple of days to try them out and adjust to using them, but the TL didn’t exactly agree. On top of demanding immediate 100 per cent work effort, he told me all my annual leave would be nullified because of the sick leave.

You see, the local policy is six days of sick leave a year, after which the employee has to use his or her annual leave days as sick leave. When annual leaves have been consumed, additional days are deducted directly from the employee’s salary. (And there’s no social security. Someone still willing to call India “civilised”?)

In my case, however, the civilised world has had its say: our global policy for expatriates grants me three months of paid sick leave, so my annual leaves should still be there. Being in India is already quite a challenge, and being here for seven months without leave would be too much to bear.

I presented the policy to the TL, who saw it best to dispute both the policy and applicable legislation, demanding a reduction to my annual leaves. This was the last straw to me.

I have stood up against his passive-aggressive bullshit for five months now, and in my opinion that’s five months more than the maximum tolerable abuse time from your manager. As I’ve written before, I have tried to talk about it with the TL and with local HR, but his attitude is still exactly the same as before. Of course I understand that he’s pissed about a bloody expensive employee being on long sick leave, but that just doesn’t justify his accusations and hostility towards me. What the hell am I supposed to do about being incapacitated to work?

I can’t do miracle cures yet, but at least I have a huge Corporation full of Big Bosses to help me do something. During last weekend I and Eve spent several hours composing a summary about what has happened since I came to India last May, along with a cover letter addressed to half a dozen managers, second level managers, department heads and so on. On Monday morning I checked my intended recipient list with one of the expat bosses in our office and sent the whole thing out.

Two and half days later there is quite a lot of debris flying around. I have had talks with local HR, European HR managers, my old line manager and a couple of other chaps. The consensus seems to be that I have a case and something needs to be done, but [your preferred higher entity here] only knows what and isn’t going to tell yet. I may get a new manager, I may carry on with the current one, or I may even get sent back home early. I expect it to take at least a week or two before there’s anything to report.

So how’s your life?

Tags: colleagues from India, oh bugger, travel, ways of working, what is different, what?, why I wanted a change, work

I had an interesting discussion with the Team Leader on Thursday.  It was supposed to be a review of what has been done in the past three months (has it already been 12 weeks?), but it turned out to be something completely different.

First of all, there wasn’t much to review. All the hussle in the beginning of the assignment plus a six-week sick leave left me with about two weeks to work on something useful to do, which obviously gives me almost zero performance. Tough luck, shit happens and so on. Being young and naive, I of course assumed that project management knows what is happening and has alreay had a couple of weeks to react to this situation with sick leaves and all.

Well, no.

The TL, in all his wisdom, had decided not to inform our project manager about my six weeks of absence. He thought it made him look bad if he had to bring such negative news to anyone, so instead he decided to try to pressure me to take corrective actions. Mistake number one.

I’ve never worked with anyone so passive-aggressive in my life, and this person is no less than my manager. He “tabled” (his way of saying “bring up”) my absences, my performance figures, my future plans (wedding in Finland, honeymoon trip) and tried to make me feel guilty for being unable to work. He never said it directly, but he wanted me to cancel my honeymoon plans in order to catch up with things. Mistake number two.

It’s hard to express the body language and tone of voice he used, but these should give an idea:

“I want you to see where I’m coming from, and you have been absent a lot. Now this honeymoon leave…” (silently waits for an answer)

and

“I went on a honeymoon on the second anniversary so I knew my wife better when it happened.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t going to budge. Had he taken proper action (informed the project manager, searched for substitutes and so on) and given me a direct proposal for a schedule, I could have considered giving in a bit. Right now he is shooting himself in the leg by trying to make me guilty and pressuring me without actually saying it. He is also damaging the whole company by giving false information about the situation, but that’s nothing I should care about.

Immediately after the meeting I called up the project manager and gave him an update on what the situation really is. He thought it was best to find someone else to do the job (since I now lack some required knowledge) and promised to find a solution. I clearly have to call him more often to keep things running.

All in all: the TL fucked up, tried to make me feel guilty about being ill and passive-aggressively pressurised me to save his ass. Which I didn’t and won’t do.

On the other hand, we have a week-long reservation to Komandoo.

Tags: colleagues from India, culture, holiday, oh bugger, people in india, practical stuff, time, ways of working, what is different, why I wanted a change, work

Being out of office has left me with plenty of time to do stuff, and it has gotten to the point where I am having problems with too much time to spare. The whole thing is even worse considering that reading and long sessions on the computer are off the menu, leaving me few options that my eyes can handle. That’s why I’ve been playing Rock Band, building Legos, listening to podcasts and riding the bike a lot. An eye patch allows me to work on the computer for some time, but it’s still a strain and I would rather not do it a lot. Unfortunately the lack of entertainment keeps me coming back to the desk to read some blogs or whatever.

I like to say that there are no boring environments, only boring people, but this time it’s shooting back at me.

Or maybe it’s just lack of company and good conversation that makes me feel this way.  No matter how I try to be open, positive and all that, I just don’t find myself on the same wavelength with the locals. I especially have to supress my twisted sense of humour to avoid trouble – people have gotten fired and mobbed for a lot less than what I usually like to say and do in the free world.

And I’m not even going to start about sarcasm, a form of art all India seems to be oblivious about.

Having to watch my language and behaviour this much all the time has also given me a reason to stay at home more than before. Here I can still be fully me, but without my friends it feels… futile.

Like, what’s the point of being a clown in an empty circus tent?

Tags: culture, friends and family, oh bugger, people in india, religion, time, what is different

I haven’t been updating the blog for a couple of days due to health problems. I haven’t had the usual Indian diet or anything, it’s again all about office ergonomics – or, more accurately, lack of it (them? is it a plural?). I’ll have to keep this short to avoid further problems, but here goes:

The first doctor I went to on Tuesday seemed helpful, but after deciphering the prescriptions I wasn’t very convinced. I’m not exactly sure how anti-reflux drugs (in English: stomach medicine) are going to cure computer vision syndrome, so I decided to get a second opinion.

I found a very good spec shop on Commercial street (my recommendation:Vision Express), had my vision checked and got a prescription for anti-glare glasses. On top of that I wanted some treatment for my sore shoulders, so I went to another doctor just to get a new set of painkillers along with antidepressants to ease tension.

Yesterday was already quite ok with the new treatments, but most of it must have been because I didn’t spend much time at the office. I figured this out when I came home this afternoon and found my shoulders biblically tense again. The nausea seems to be out of the picture this time, so maybe the specs do some magic after all.

I still don’t get it how all the employees here maintain their health in these working conditions. My guess is that I’m the only one to complain about it, but who knows. Maybe Indian body structure has evolved to withstand more punishment than my silky butt?

Tags: doctors, oh bugger, what is different, what?, why I wanted a change, work

I already touched this subject in the comment section, but there are some more things I want to say about it. The cases of mysteriously disappearing personal property (here and here) brought up some irritating aspects of the Indian culture quite well and I think those aspects deserve some closer attention.

The first point I don’t like about this country is that people are corrupted to the bone. Nobody seems to think thievery in the office as a problem since everyone has locks in their drawers. Every single Indian I talked with about these incidents was asking the same question: “Why didn’t you lock it up?”

Here’s why: the bloody building has at least one guard in each floor 24/7, no one is let in without a badge, and there’s an access card system in the doors (granted, it’s out of order right now, but still). Even I can’t get through without my badge, and I’m positive that every single guard recognises me. And after all these security measures I should keep my stuff behind locks? Am I the only one to see a problem here? What good is a squad of guards if I can’t trust them to keep thieves from stealing a plastic child’s toy? What the hell do they pay those slackers for?

The second thing I don’t like in the office is the attitude of our Team Leader. Every time I tell him there’s a problem, he tries to wriggle his way out of facing it. It’s biblically frustrating to defend my position against the person who should be my closest advocate on all matters, the single point of contact for my queries about day-to-day work. I guess he’s trying to suppress my enthusiasm to report everything that’s wrong, but that’s where he makes a grave mistake – I’ll be sure to report every problem I find. He will think me as an irritating asshole, but that’s what I am when someone tries to push me around.

Tags: colleagues from India, oh bugger, surprises, what is different, what?, why I wanted a change, work

It’s funny how the role of money is different in here. Rupees feel like Monopoly money and it almost never feels like I’m spending a lot of money on anything. On top of that, I have almost zero capital expenditure, leaving me with too much to spare on living.

And still I feel like I might run out of cash any minute now.

This controversial effect comes from the combination of low-value currency (1000 rupees is 15 euros) and generally low prices (lunch buffets less than 300 rupees). While I can easily afford stuff here, there’s always the feeling that I wouldn’t have enough money for this and that back at home. I can spend 45000 on home decoration without realising that it’s actually more than 700 euros, and still feel hopelessly broke when my account balance drops below 300000 or so. Five years ago I got through a whole year with a similar amount of money – in Finland! I never had such amounts of money roaming free when I lived in Finland, but here – with cheaper prices and all – the world is not enough. Somehow no amount of rupees associates with Real Money, no matter how hard I try.

Maybe it will get a bit easier next month when I have the chance to convert part of the balance to euros.

Or not.

Tags: bank, luxuries, money, prices, what is different

I got a firm reminder of being in India some hours ago at work.

One of my local colleagues had a problem he couldn’t solve by himself, so he came to me for help. I didn’t know the answer either, so he told me that he knows a technical expert who knows about these things. The expert works in Oulu, so the Indian wants to know if he can send e-mail directly or if he has to go through some process with it. Mind you, my colleague and the expert he’s talking about are on the same level in Corporation hierarchy, with similar tasks and responsibilities.

Finally the simple e-mail gets sent (with me in CC, though I don’t have anything to do with this) and a reply is received some moments later. Our primary contact doesn’t know the answer, but he gives us the names of people who do. And again the Indian dude comes to me, asking if he should e-mail these persons to ask the same question. I again try to assure him that he doesn’t have to get my permission to do his job, and he can take responsibility by sending out the e-mail without asking anyone. So why do the locals think a foreigner will EAT YOUR FUCKING HEAD every time he is bothered with questions?

Yes, yes, thousands of years in hierarchical culture and blahblahblah. But these guys aren’t stupid or anything. They can learn and communicate effectively when they want to, but something in the back of their heads still makes them afraid of us foreigners. The exact same thing happens when they communicate with their superiors, and maybe for some reason they consider every Finn and German as one. Or maybe we are scary just because they don’t know who we are? The bottom line is that I don’t know what causes this behaviour, I just know it slows down our work.

I’m trying to figure out an incentive to my teammates so that they could communicate more easily, without the unnecessary burden of asking for permissions every time they need to contact someone. Apart from saving their efforts, it would leave me and their managers more time to concentrate on something relev- no, wait: that could leave one level of managers completely useless. What would happen to them?

Tags: colleagues from India, culture, time, ways of working, what is different, work

Oh bugger.

The goddamn shit-faced communist ass-munchers in the office have shown their gratitude for my souvenirs by eating 90 per cent of the hugely expensive 3kg chocolate box I brought with me. Without my consent, implied or otherwise.

Okay, I admit I didn’t lock it up, but still: what the fuck? What the hell is wrong with these wankers?

I swear the next box I bring with me will have liquid laxative and Viagra injected in them.

Edit: Just to emphasise, the chocolates weren’t even showing. Someone has gone through my drawers in order to find them.

Tags: oh bugger, people in india, surprises, what is different, what?