Waiting Game

John Le Carre wrote, in one of his books, that “Spying is waiting”. The same can be said for job searching.

I am told that a big shot in my bank has expressed surprise that my bank cannot find me a position in Bangalore. It would be nice if the surprise materialized into concrete action.

I had a telephonic interview with a financial research firm the day before yesterday. The interview was scheduled for 7:30 pm. I did not hear anything until 8:30 pm, and then e-mailed the guy asking whether we were going ahead. He immediately replied apologizing for the delay, and said he was just going to call to let me know that his call would be delayed by an hour. I said it was no problem at all.

Their website says that timely delivery to clients is one of their strengths.

The interview was ok. He said nice things about my CV, but said he could not see a direct fit between my background and their business. Anyway, he would discuss internally and revert. I thanked him for his time.

I have three leads on hand. I assess my chances of landing a job in these 3 places as 20%, 25% and 40% respectively. Individually, the picture looks somewhat bleak. I take refuge in probability, and calculate that the mathematical probability of not landing a job in any of these places is only 36%. That looks better.

Job searching is waiting.

Driving South Island

The boys were eating sandwiches at a Subway on Camp Street, Queenstown. I was loitering around on the pavement outside, having just finished some delicious take-way Thai chilli basil stir fry when Mohima came walking briskly down from a few shops away, the colour drained from her face, and asked if I had "felt it". Felt what, I queried. She told me that there had been just been an earthquake - she had just been looking at some things in a shop window when the whole display started quivering, and she thought she was having a giddy spell. But then it went on for a few seconds, and the shop assistant told her it was a quake.

The tremor in Queenstown was mild, and we shrugged it off and continued enjoying our day. It was only as the news came in over the media over the rest of the day, that we realised that Christchurch had been hit by a major earthquake. One of the chilling images was of the damaged cathedral in the town centre, reportedly with tourists trapped inside. Our camera had pictures of us taken in front of that building, from three days before. Another piece of news, of hundreds of passengers stranded on the Tranzalpine railway from Christchurch to Greymouth, a journey we had done a couple of days before, was another reminder of how narrowly we had missed great distress, if not worse.

It has been a fantastic holiday in the backdrop of New Zealand's hour of grief - there's really no other way to describe it. In the last nine days we have driven round the South Island - Christchurch, Greymouth, Franz Jozef Glacier, Queenstown, Te Anau, Milford Sound, Dunedin and now in Timaru. We have been taken in the most breathtakingly beautiful green countryside dotted by white specks that reveal themselves to be sheep at closer quarters. We have landed in a helicopter atop a glacier, boated our way through the darkness of a cave lit up magically by glowworms hanging from the ceiling, seen fur seals lolling on the rocks by the side of the fjord alongside our cruise vessel, strolled around the cafes and sidewalks in beautiful Queenstown, slept in a campervan around holiday parks in NZ, stopped at a wayside playground on a cold damp day and cooked Maggi (masala flavour) for lunch. This holiday will be hard to beat.

In a few hours we will be driving back to Christchurch and from there it's back to Sydney in the morning.

New Year, new beginnings

It’s going to be an interesting year. Before moving on, a quick glance of the rear view mirror for some memories of 2010:

- Mum in law vacated 14/4 Shakti Nagar after 40 years – for me, a place that I loved going back to no longer existed.
- Mum in law moved into a nice apartment that I think I will get used to with time.
- Completed a Learn to Swim course, and thought I could swim
- Almost drowned in a pool in Fiji
- Last office Christmas party in Australia – will miss the familiar crowd, the banter and dancing to songs I’ve never heard.
- Saw test matches live with Kanishk in two countries – India vs Aus in Bangalore and England vs Aus in Sydney. Australia lost both in a disastrous year for Aussie cricket.
- Started laying foundation for R2I – most importantly, found a school we hope the kids will like.

The job search has begun and as always it is not an enjoyable process. The world economy grows, the Indian economy grows even faster, businesses complain of skill shortages, and yet it is never easy to find a job. There is a feeling of déjà vu as I pore through websites and re-establish personal contacts. This time round, I have made things a bit more difficult for myself by restricting myself to a Tier 2 city rather than a financial hub. Also, there is the added weight of a few more years of “seniority”.

There is the temptation of settling for a job in Mumbai, but I don’t want to yield. What is life worth, after years of education and work experience, if we cannot make a basic choice like where we want to live? Unfortunately, despite all the advances in office communications, conventional businesses are reluctant to let go of the advantage of physical proximity to their employees.

Somewhere in a city of five million people, there must be a decent job for an educated, presentable man willing to put in an honest day’s work. I just need to find it.

Dubbo and Back

Last evening we got back from a three day trip in our car to Dubbo, a town in interior New South Wales, a few hours drive from Sydney. The pictureseque drive winds through the Blue Mountains and across the countryside. With not too much time left in Australia, I try and soak up every remarkable experience. Here, it was the vastness of the countryside – miles and miles of green expanse with no sign of human habitat. Every now and then, we would pass through a settlement – some place with a quaint name and a sign that declared the population of that village/town – usually no more than a few hundred.

Dubbo is best known for the Taronga Western Plains Zoo. We hired cycles (Mohima and Mitaansh on a tandem) and went around the 6 km circuit. The zoo is remarkable not so much for the collection of animals (which you would find in most zoos) but for being well designed and visitor friendly, offering various options for transport – foot, cycle, electric cart and car.

The weather which was cloudy when we arrived, cleared up during the day, giving us an opportunity to witness the starriest nighttime sky at Dubbo. Amid mosquitoes the size of wasps, the local astronomer pointed out constellations, galaxies, Jupiter and its moons, using a neat laser pointer with a sharp focused green beam that pierced through the night sky like a light saber from Star Wars.

On our way back, we visited the Old Dubbo Gaol, where convicts were locked away in the 1800s. It is now a heritage museum with many interesting exhibits, including varieties of a hangman’s noose. The walls have pictures of its inhabitants over the years, locked away for offences ranging from chicken-stealing to murder. The building is very well preserved, and has a solitary confinement cell for visitors to experience the feeling of being alone in a pitch black chamber. We were informed that the prisoners spent the time in those cells tearing the buttons off their shirts, and scattering them around. They would then crawl around the cell looking for the buttons, and resume the game all over again when these were found.

*************************************************************************************It was only recently that I learnt that the word “Gaol” is said the same way as “Jail”. Apparently this is the British form of the word found typically in older books.

Job, satisfaction and the six day work-week

If money wasn’t a consideration, I would spend my days in a mix of leisure with family and friends, playing sport, writing, watching movies and travel. None of the jobs I have had so far provided these in significant measure. Some of them did involve writing and traveling, but not of the sort I would happily choose to do. I can’t recall that any of them actively encouraged the pursuit of leisure, sport or cinema.

When people in the corporate workforce profess a great passion for their jobs or satisfaction derived from it, my eyebrows involuntarily rise in skepticism. I can understand a musician, sportsperson or social activist being able to happily combine making a living with living a fuller life, but struggle to see what paper-pushers or sellers of products that people really don’t need find so exciting in their jobs.

Early in my career, I learnt that very few are blessed with jobs that provide the satisfaction one seeks. A job is of course enormously important in that it finances one’s necessities, but it is also vital that one’s job does not leave one “money rich and time poor”. It is only when one is left over with sufficient time to indulge in personally satisfying pursuits, that the drudgery of the everyday office routine seems worthwhile.

How much personal time does one need? At the start of my career, six days of my week i.e. 86% of my waking hours were pledged to my employer. Thankfully, things have progressively improved, or perhaps, I have sub-consciously sought out employers who are less greedy for time. My second and third employers had a five and a half day workweek, while the fourth had half Saturdays with alternate Saturdays off, which was even better. Eleven years and four job changes into my career, I finally found an organization with a genuine five day work week, and none of that “half day” nonsense. Not having to pledge that extra day or half day to one’s employer is literally like getting a fresh lease of life, something that is immeasurable in monetary terms.

Having two out of seven days to oneself is the norm in the Western world, but unfortunately a luxury to many in India. Having tasted blood in the form of the five day work-week, giving up any more of one’s time to the organization seems unthinkable. A positively backward career move.

R2I: First hurdle cleared

Top of the to-do list on the family’s recent trip to India was finalising a school for the boys for the planned move next summer, an aspect that undoubtedly features among the top 3 worries of prospective “returners”. We had shortlisted a couple of seemingly “low stress” schools over the last year, and at the top of our list was Prakriya Green Wisdom, which we had previously visited and liked. I called Prakriya, and was told that I could bring in Kanishk, the older one, for observation, for three days, but they had no vacancies in Class I, ie. for Mitaansh, unless a vacancy was created by an existing child leaving, in which case they would inform us. Pfffttt…..all the images we nursed over the last several months, of our boys soaking in the earthy environs of Prakriya went up in dust. We were really keen on both of them joining the same school.

Off to a forgettable start, we fixed an appointment for the next school on our list, Greenwood High, the next day. We reached, at 12 noon, spoke to an admissions co-ordinator, looked around, had lunch there, and by 2 pm, our kids had got admission! No tests, interviews, etc – I like it! I re-confirmed with the lady that if we paid the admission fee, we would actually be assured of “seats”. and she confirmed this. I guess being relatively new, they still had vacancies. The fact that I have a friend (Nimish, you have been immortalized on this blog) who has kids who have survived this school for a couple of years provided some comfort. The kids liked the look of the school and I guess the prospect of driving 30 kms from my parents’ house through insane Bangalore traffic for the next 3 days for teachers in Prakriya to put Kanishk through an observation from 8:30 am to 3 pm also contributed to the speed of the decision.

So that was the first major hurdle on our return cleared. Sadly, finding employment will not be as easy!

*******************************************************************************
Cheese is clearly not part of the staple diet in the far north-western reaches of Delhi. Going around shops in Rohini asking for a pack of Amul cheese slices, I was asked by a shopkeeper if I meant Pepsi’s mango “Slice” soft drink. Clearly, Paneer rules here.

The politics of seat sharing

It isn’t only in politics that seat sharing offers a fascinating study. On most days I board the 7:48 City via Chatswood train at Epping. I make my way to the lower deck in search of a seat. The aisle splits the two rows - 2 seaters on one side and 3 seaters on the other. Usually there are only a few seats available. The choice is between picking an empty seat on a 2 seater or a 3 seater.

As anyone with some experience in seated train travel knows, the worst seat is the middle position in a 3 seater. You are sandwiched between two passengers, shoulders cramped together and no room to manoeuvre. It is very inconvenient to read a newspaper or work on a laptop, as both shoulders are clamped close to the body, but the hands need room to spread out to hold a newspaper or type on a keyboard. The general appearance is of someone frozen midway through a breaststroke, or mimicking a praying mantis.

On the rare occasion when there is a 3 seater occupied by just one person, grabbing this is a no-brainer, because 1.5 seats per person is way better than just 1 seat per person. But so unpopular is the middle seat, that most people, myself included, will stick to the aisle like a leech, and when faced with the prospect of sharing the seat with a third occupant, will either stand and make way or pull back one’s legs to the maximum to allow the newcomer to slide in to the dreaded sandwich position.

Very occasionally, one comes across the do-gooder, who will not stick to his or her aisle seat, but actually slide inwards to the middle seat, and offer the aisle to the newcomer. This is the supreme courtesy in train travel, and I wonder what stuff these altruists are made of. If one followed them around, one may discover extraordinary lives spent on selfless service of humankind.

The one thing I have noticed is that such people are more likely to be female than male, and also more likely to be old than young. Not sure if that says something about decency among humankind in general.