Thursday, June 17, 2010

The work

Well, as you know, I work here for a company called Idex. The company has about 100 workers around India, most of whom are doing an internship I think. If I have understood right, it's basically an organization which arranges three kind of things: voluntary work, internships and educational...umm... 'trips'. Voluntary work means for example working in a hospital in the Himalayas (read some stories, they claimed it was €£$@# cold up there), internships are the kind of things I do ('regular work') and educational trips are for high school kids from different countries who come here for maybe half a year to study in a school in English. That sounds actually really cool, why wasn't I offered a chance to do part of my high school education in India?

The same day I arrived also arrived another Finnish girl Leena and a German guy Denis (or at least something close to that). Idex has only just started these 'educational trips' and Leena's job is to supervise the first group which arrives in a week. 22 kids from different countries. Denis' job is as a volunteer worker in a local school, teaching...something. And my job? Well, I'm the (or THE) IT guy. I am 'the' because I'm the only IT guy in the company. Before me they just oursourced all IT stuff. So now my email is it@idex.org.in. Cool, huh? :) (One of my assignments is to get rid of that .org there in their email addresses.)

Our office. So, nothing special here.

Basically I will be doing all sort of general stuff. Making some feedback forms electric, maintaining the company server, testing some outsourced applications and so on. Of course I don't know yet what all I will be doing, but slowly I'm getting some sort of a picture. I was also told that I can basically outsource almost anything I want - if I want, I can just hire others to do my dirty work and just supervise the thing. Sounds like an interesting option but will have to see how much I want to do that. I guess the costs of outsourcing some IT development are quite low here.

I will be doing most, if not all, of my work at the Idex main office here in Jaipur. The office is actually quite decent, maybe I manage to attach a picture of it here. One of the founders of Idex who is also my nearest boss, Ninad, has a separate office in the building. The building also has some other working rooms, a kitchen, a meeting room and a lovely top terrace where we enjoy our lunches.

My lunchbox, Leena and Denis having a lunch at the top terrace.

My Indian collegues, at left is Gaurav but unfortunately don't remember the other names (yet).

It seems it's dinner time now. Let's see what there is to eat. A Finnish guy who is working at the office (yes, there seem to be quite many Finnish people around) warned me that the meals are always almost the same and he got really tired of that within a month. I hope my hosts have a bit more imagination than his hosts. The guy is actually thinking of renting an apartment with some girl near the Idex office and partially hinted that I could maybe join the place. The total rent was about 400e a month, but the place is something like 130 square meters. An interesting option, at least. He was also complaining that he has been really bored as there's really nothing in his room, no fridge or tv or anything. It's actually the same here. But will have to see how things evolve, hopefully I won't be spending evenings much home anyway. But now for food!

p.S. Thank you for my dearest girlfriend Kristine for sending me encouraging text messages. It has been a bit wild settling here, having at least something familiar helps :)

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