I leave my job at the door when I write in this blog. The upside is I don't say anything about my company to the world, which they probably appreciate. The downside is that it may produce the illusion that I am here in India on vacation.
I assure everyone I am working my tail off!
But for this blog entry let me get close to the office. Let me tell you about Raheja IT Park.
Right at the entrance/exit to the IT Park (pictured above) there is a dead zone. A dead zone for my mobile phone. Now, this seems like a small issue. And it really is. But I can assure you it doesn't seem like that sometimes.
I leave the office almost nightly still on phone calls. It is normal for me to leave the office around 6:30 or 7 and start the second part of my work day, when I connect with the US. I simply cannot stay at the office later than that. And I am often the first to arrive at the office in the morning. So, I leave "early", at 7 pm.
*Every time* I hit that exit while I am on a meeting, my phone dies. *Every time*!
I can be listening or not listening, it happens every freaking time. It starts with the voice sounding like they are under water. Then there is the tinny crackle that overlays their voices. Then my Samsung tells me "Call Dropped". And it makes some bells sounds, the kind of sounds that make you think of something going down a drain.
Now, on its own, this is not exceptional. But, there is something symbolic about this.....
In the Raheja IT Park where Bank of America, IBM, Accenture, CSC, Oracle, TCS, and Informix all have major offices the Indian infrastructure is what I call "reliably unreliable". RIght there in the epicenter of the global tech boom. It's unreal.
So, then I considered what else happens in this IT Park.
There are loads of wild dogs.
I saw two of them having the time of their life in a waterfall-based pool right outside of our building. Just jumping and playing and they looked terrible in their flea-bitten state, limping along on ill-healed broken bones. Yeesh.
And, when you leave, there is one pack of ~huge~ buffaloes that are being walked around by their obligatory guy with a switch.
To me, this is normal now. I can personally attest to the fact that the exceptional has become ordinary after two years. It would have to be something really outrageous for me to be surprised here. Remember, we've seen everything from naked Jain monks to children twisting their arms out of their socket for a few rupees.
But, how must this look to foreign visitors? I remember back a few years ago when I was one of those guys...... and my jaw dropped every time I saw water buffalo in the streets.
Boy, it's going to be a heck of an adjustment back there in orderly, clean Charlotte. I plan to keep this blog update for the first month that we are back.
Stay tuned!
