I’m going to the office tomorrow to sort out the details of my short but interesting post-Bangalore career in the Corporation. Most probably I will go back once or twice after that, but that’s about it – I hope. I’m not going to say anything as fact before having something about this on paper.

Still, it’s good to be back.  Clean streets, peace & quiet, me blending in the crowd… Oulu is a lot better than most of people even realise.

Tags: planning, practical stuff, work

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

There is a new countdown timer on the sidebar. Right now it says we’re two weeks and two days from Oulu, after which we can shake India off our feet for good. Never say never, but the odds aren’t good for our return.

I also realised I have only 11 working days left after today. Oh, joy.

Tags: moving, time, 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

I got an e-mail from Germany:

Hi Heikki

regarding your concerns about leave days and financial situation I have some good news and will try to call you in the morning time.

It’s 07:25 in Germany right now. The anticipation is killing me.

Tags: holiday, time, 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’ve been keeping radio silence for a couple of days on purpose. The situation in the office is solving itself, and I don’t want to comment it right now in any way. Suffices to say that my views weren’t just hot air, and people are working to solve the problems.

In other news, I’m flying again in a couple of days. No more lonely nights after next Tuesday!

Oh, the post title? My favourite whisky, nicknamed “Almost there”.

Tags: friends and family, travel, work

There is something mystical about jigsaw puzzles. There they sit, harmlessly in their boxes, waiting to be assembled by someone with a little time to spare. Some day you start doing it, just to realise later that it has saved your marriage. And some other day you just put together some pieces in order to kill time.

My session today with a 3000-piece Ravensburger was of the former kind.

Just a couple of hours ago I tried to clarify my problematic situation at work, but at that time I wasn’t able to pinpoint either the exact problem nor the solution. I spent a couple of hours thinking about it – in front of the jigsaw puzzle of course – and I think I found them both.

The problem itself can be divided in two parts, the personal and the professional. They are quite closely intertwined, but still somewhat separable. The solution is the kind of one I usually prefer anyway, I just had to take some time to get it organised in my head. In any case, I feel like I’ve really accomplished something here.

The personal part of the problem is a piece of cake: I am not compatible with the Team Leader’s passive-aggressive bullshit. To be exact, I’m not compatible with any kind of bullshit, so this part was easy to identify.

The professional part took me some time, but here it is: the TL’s motives for assigning tasks are not what they should be.

We agreed about five weeks ago that I should do a spec that was assigned to our team, not knowing that my sick leave would get extended this far. I also missed most of the trainings regarding the task because I had to run around the city arranging my housing, banking and such matters in the start of the assignment. At this point I can safely say that there’s no chance whatsoever for me to complete the spec in time, especially since there’s a wedding party to be arranged among other things.

The TL’s decision to push me to do it anyway is a prime example of his lack of professionality. The spec would take until the end of year to complete, and by then I would have wasted two thirds of my assignment on everything else but building up a functioning team in Bangalore. If the TL himself thinks I won’t have time for a honeymoon trip due to this spec, how in hell could I have time to teach people what to do here?

By looking at the situation rationally, there is no possible reason to assign this spec to me. After all, it could be more efficiently done by local workers, with about 20% of the cost and with way better end results than what I can pull out of my hat in this timeframe. On top of that, I would be available to help others and could use my valuable time with the tasks I was hired to do.

I’m not going to analyse what the TL’s motives for this idiotic decision are, but I’m surely going to take action to prevent him from damaging the whole team this way. As much as I would love to take this to a higher level, I think I first have to tell him what he is doing wrong.

Not that I am complaining for having to call his bullshit.

Tags: colleagues from India, oh bugger, ways of working, what?, 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