The first week back at work

The update is that I’ve finally got a job. It was very sudden, I’d been pursuing an opportunity since May and I’d not heard back from them and then one day I was called for a second interview and told I should start within 1 and ½ weeks.

Firstly yippee, I finally got a job after months of futilie searches, applications and rejections without even getting called for an interview! But the suddenness of it put paid to my 3 week holiday in India which was scheduled to start the same week  they wanted me to join. I asked whether I could join in August but they said that the opening was only now since  its a project for which I’ve been recruited and the conceptualisation stage was going on. So it was a mad week of deciding whether to join, how to manage the kids (it coincided with the start of the 2 months summer vacation!), what to do about holiday etc etc and to top it all the hubby was in Australia so I could only discuss these points with him late at night Zurich (early morning  Australia).  After a couple of discussions about salary and working hours (I barely break even at the salary offered after factoring in the additional tax and nanny costs) I decided to bite the bullet and accept the offer.

Now came the managing kids bit. We realised it may not be possible to to get a nanny so quickly and I was not keen on the girls spending the whole day with a new nanny during  the holidays so we decided to continue our planned holiday in India , albeit without me. So on the 5^th of July, I flew to Bangalore with the girls, spent 1 and ½ days with them making them comfortable and flew back to Zurich to start work on Monday the 8^th of July. The kids were with my parents and their cousins for a week and then the hubby and I flew to India  the following weekend. There was my nephew’s Upanayna (thread ceremony) which i had to attend   (the whole family had flown down for that) and  i left immediately after to get back to work on the Tuesday. The hubby is staying back with the girls in India as per the original holiday plan and will bring them back to Zurich  after two weeks. After 1 week my parents come to Zurich for a month to tide over the rest of the summer holidays and also to be around for the first 2-3 weeks of school so that the girls can settle into a routine with the school and the new nanny.

And so my holiday,is cancelled. Ok cant really complain since ive been on holiday for the last 2 and ½ years. I did manage to get one day leave and fly down for the important function and the girls are in good hands and enjoying themselves so thats fine.

And, getting back to work after 2 and ½ years, hows that been. I feel very much like my first few days at my first job. Quite lost, all the people speak German in office and I can’t really follow what they are saying. The official meetings, conference calls,  notes , ppts and emails are in English but all the informal chatter around coffee, lunch, at the worktable and even some of the discussions around the work are in german so I end up feeling quite lost!   Also the sense of amazement at some of the technical stuff is comparable to discussions i used to have with my b school batchmates about dustbins from Singapore at my first workplace.  The desks here move up and down and many of the people prefer to work standing up! The lift has no buttons and you have to key in the number of the floor you want to go to and swipe your card and the system will display which of the 8 lifts you can take (only if you are allowed access to that floor) and the lift has no buttons so you can't just randomly go to any floor. Seems too high tech for me especiallz since nobody told me that you need to have a pin number to access this compliocated system after 7 pm  so i ended up getting locked out of my desk and could only go out and home one of the nights!Also doesn't help that sometimes the swipe card  doesn’t work too well and you might just end up being stranded on a floor ! And lastly  i have the german keyboard for the computer now – so its not qwerty anymore but qwertz and there's all the äöü etc and some random alt gr function to access this function on certain keys, let me just say that i don't know what exactly i have set the login password as, only the combination of keys i have to press on my keyboard!

And coming to the work. Its pretty different from what I’ve done so far, its in a different area of banking and its a project so I’m getting to learn a lot of new stuff. Half the time I feel like a duffer since I don’t know basic terms which everyone keeps bandying about, and also since  its a project and there are many internal and external people working on it nobody has really sat down with me and told me what exactly i am supposed to do. The first week was very hectic as i was helping on an important presentation. But now that that’s over and i already told my boss i have no work am wondering whether to just be quiet and read up as much on the project as i can, or again go and seek some more work.

And how can i end without saying i must be the fattest woman in this office. All the women are impossibly thin, and since its pretty formal dressing here with shirts tucked into skirts/pants I'll have to start working on my big paunch as i cannot hide behind the blazer forever.

Miss the girls who are away in India. But last week the timings were so crazy in office because of the presentation that I’m glad they are being well looked after in India.