Yeah, it’s warm and sunny, occasionally rainy. No, our place is nowhere near as flamboyant as the crib in India was, but that’s really beside the point – we’re not here to stay indoors, we’re here to dive.

And that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing. Monday we just settled in and took a look around the town (basically one road with a T cross) and got the necessities. Tuesday we got the orientation going, met pretty much everyone at the dive centre (later on known as BSB for Blue Season Bali), got our luggage which was left behind already in Helsinki (thanks again, Finnair and their outsourced ground staff), and fixed transportation (a scooter of about 100 cubic centimetres) as well as telecommunication. Numbers given on request.

Wednesday, pool day. Talk about starting by jumping into the deep end… literally. Figuratively it was true too. There were some skills we were supposed to demonstrate I had never done before since I did my open water course with another company, not PADI by whose standards we’re now studying. All things considered it wasn’t that bad, but I would’ve wanted to shine, of course…

Thursday, Tulamben. Up at 5.30 am, gear all together at 6.30 at the centre, and then two hours and some change up north with a wheezing minibus. The views were amazing, as was to be expected. Bali is a volcanic island, and there is a functioning volcano. We drove up and around it to get to Tulamben, where off the black beach lies the wreck of USS Liberty. It’s one of the easiest and safest wreck dives in the world, and probably one of the most famous too. We went there to learn new species of fish, and how to identify fish we don’t already know. I did my very first swim-throughs there too, and saw a humongous barracuda slumbering under the hull. (by humongous I mean about 2 m long, looks like a hauki [pardon my Finnish]) And yes, we learned new fish species. Two dives on that day, and back on the bumpy bus.

Friday (that’s today as I’m drafting this offline, we don’t have the net in the Bedroom which suits us just fine) was a three dive-day. Off the Sanur beach to south-east there are three more islands, one of which is called Nusa Penida. Off Nusa Penida there are lots of reefs and sloping, coral-clad walls with currents blowing past them. When in season, the Mola Molas a.k.a. oceanic sunfish come to Nusa Penida to hang out and reproduce. Now is not the season, but there was plenty to see nonetheless. Scorpionfish (in the picture), frogfish, stonefish, heaps upon heaps of the usual suspects (different angels and butterflies) and a huge napoleon wrasse. We just drifted along the current, letting it do most of the work.

As I’m writing this it’s almost nine pm, and we’re pretty much ready to call it a day. Tomorrow we’re going – surprise surprise – diving again. It takes forever to upload the photos, but eventually they’ll get there – just be patient.

To be continued…

Tags: Bali, diving, practical stuff, time, why I wanted a change

I have been very quiet for some time (again), because I really feel like I’ve taken one too many hits from the stress on this whole assignment. Although my anxiety as such does not feel so overwhelming anymore, the somatic symptoms prevail. Muscle ache, sleepiness (10 hours a night isn’t enough), sweating of palms and feet, being out of breath and gastrointestinal disorders could result from a number of things, but my best guess is a sort of anxiety disorder. I hope to know more on coming Friday after consulting a doctor.

In actual news, there has been some progress in the repatriation negotiations. I would love to give out more details, but there are so many company confidential ones I don’t want to take my chances. I hope it suffices to say that Corporation payroll will be missing one specialist by the end of this year.

I’d be jumping up and down from pure excitement if I was feeling well.

Tags: oh bugger, planning, sleep, stress, time, travel, why I wanted a change, work

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

Today I finally got the spectacles I’ve been waiting for, and they seem to work according to the first couple of hours. I went to the office to sort out the heaps of mail that had accumulated during the past seven weeks, just to find the minutes of the meeting I wrote about last week.

The TL had seen necessary to list every single absence of mine since I came here, just to “sum them up”. After the list there was an “input from TL” section, mostly like so:

We got a lot of comments for our work and it seems that not all the necessary elements have been there. We haven’t had enough support from you.

You have had a lot of absences and haven’t been in Bangalore enough.

…and so on.

Needless to say, the TL didn’t have the balls to admit what he was after with these comments. According to him, it’s only “stating what has happened”, but anyone with half a brain can see what he’s trying to achieve with his bullshit. I wasn’t going to feel guilty earlier, and I’m not going to start now. It’s just a bit difficult to stand my ground when accusations come from the person who assigns my tasks and evaluates my work performance. I am tempted to bring the issue up with upper management, but I’m not sure if I have enough grounds to raise a proper complaint.

So tell me: what the hell should i do with this situation?

Tags: let me know, morale, oh bugger, stress, what?, why I wanted a change, work

I’ve always tried hard to make everyday living work smoothly and in a timely manner. My number one option so far has been staying in Finland where the infrastructure is good and things are well out-of-the-box. Everything is bloody expensive, but for that money you get a reliable road network, tolerable bureaucracy and very low corruption rates. Things just… work.

I’m sure you already know what India is like in this regard. I may be rich here, but it doesn’t make everyday life as easy as in the civilised world. I could spend my whole salary on domestic help, bribes and everything, and still be a long way from the quality of living Finland provides. So this is not the place I want to settle down in.

The problem with both Finland and India is that I’m heavily dependent on the infrastructure and other people. A lot of stuff I do requires electricity, special skills, buying something or travelling somewhere. Things are really complicated, and on top of that I have to sacrifice more than half of my daily time in a job that doesn’t give me much more than money. While it’s nice to have a good salary and a “good” job, I don’t find satisfaction in the lifestyle anymore.

The following two paragraphs may seem irrelevant to the ones above, but bear with me for a while. I’ll try to explain in a moment.

The nature of the problem is the same as in video game industry today. In the 1980s anyone could buy a C64, learn how to write code and put up a semi-decent gaming experience in a couple of weeks. Twenty years later, it takes a team of n+1 professionals, expensive development tools and at least a year (or something?) to put together even the tiniest Xbox Live Arcade game, not even mentioning “real” games. One man creations are really few and far between, and in a bigger project you can easily find yourself doing something completely meaningless just because you were told to do so.

And this is the exact problem I have with the Corporation. I worked on a project for two years, saw a prototype of the end product once (not in action), and the whole project was shot down shortly after that. Two years well spent, thank you and here’s the next one. Motivation, anyone?

The common denominator of these topics is the lack of personality and individuality. Being just a faceless part of a huge group – be it a company or a nation – just doesn’t cut it for me. I know I’m an individual person with my friends and relatives, but being a greedy bastard, I want to be one in other contexts too. This includes the ability to create something meaningful by myself and keeping my work in touch with the real world, not just fiddling with bits & pieces that are useless without hundreds of other people.

And that’s why I intend to change careers after this assignment, even if it means that my income will be cut by 90 per cent or so. I know there are endless possibilities out there, and life is too short to be spent on something I don’t like doing. IT might have been fun once, but it’s time to move on already.

Tags: friends and family, luxuries, money, planning, prices, ways of working, 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

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

The dismal ergonomics of the office finally had me yesterday. On Monday my shoulders were in fire, my head was ringing, I couldn’t focus my vision and I felt like I could throw up any moment. I rushed home, sent my driver home for the day and went directly to rest. I thought I was a bit better the next morning, so I had breakfast and tried to stretch my shoulders to keep them functional. On the way to the office the mild nausea got a bit worse, and it really got hold of me when I was supposed to sit down in my cubicle. In less than fifteen minutes I was on my way back home, unable to even think of working. I went to bed before eleven in the morning, just after sacrificing my breakfast to the porcelain god. The whole day was an endless hell of pounding headache, sore neck & shoulders, nausea and weakness due to nonexistent appetite. My eyes still protest by focusing slowly and my field of vision is very strange on the sides. It’s like someone put a random impulse generator in my optic nerves.

I have complained about office ergonomics before, and I think all the stress and fatigue from it has accumulated during these weeks. In addition there might be some psychosomatic elements to it, as the work environment brings new disappointments way too often. My body knows it doesn’t like it here and acts accordingly.

I tried to self-diagnose the problem, but couldn’t find anything that would fit my symptoms well enough. Tension headache is not supposed to induce vomiting, but on the other hand migraine should have different characteristics in terms of duration and side effects, so I’m out of ideas. I’m trying to find a doctor to help me out on this, but no one seems to know anything about occupational health care.

I guess I’ll try to find a private one, then.

Tags: health, oh bugger, why I wanted a change, work