No limits

Some days you think you have already seen all.... and then in the most unexpected place you discover that there is still a lot you have never seen before in this world.

Our addiction to mobiles is really limitless!
A couple of days ago I went to the toilet and saw a guy peeing.
Well, this is normal, special in Dutch toilets where most of the times there are multiple urinals.
The amazing thing was that while he peeing in the urinal, that person was even texting on his mobile!
Now, can you please imagine how it could be done?!?

I fear we as humanity are going a bit too far in the addiction to mobiles....

Feeling as Wandering Jewishes

It's almost 3 months that I've been working in this company, and I've already seen so many different working places in this company...
Our team is new, and many renovations are going on in the building, and many many people are all around, so we have been forced to change our working place many times.

At the beginning we were guested into the area where all our "brother" teams were located, but not enough seats for all of us were available and we were growing.
After a couple of weeks we got a new location, a bit far away but still in the same building.
They told us we should stay there for two o three weeks, but just after two days we were sent back to the previous location, and then in two other days moved to an other building.
In the new building I was very happy because there was a big terrace and on the terrace a couple of strange kind of bird were making a nest, so I'd have had the chance to watch them during the rising of the chicks.
But once again two days and then back to the old location.
In the mean time the people in the old location were increasing and even our team was growing, so finding a seat was more and more difficult. I had to come at 8:15 to be sure my favorite desk was free for me.
Last week we have been moved once more to a new location, where we were promised we would have a final block of desks all for us.
But when we got there the first morning we discovered that the block we were assigned was occupied by an other team and that we had to move to a different block in the same open space.
And then at the end, during a general meeting where we presented the result of our last three weeks of work with a big happiness about our new sweet how our boss told us that it will last just for a month and then we will have to move again....
I'm really feeling as a wandering Jewish...

Chaos in the Watermelon Field...

Building a new solution in an existing environment is always difficult.
Making it in a big company is more difficult.
Trying to do it in a regulated organization is almost impossible.
But what makes it really impossible is when everybody has it's own idea on what the new solution should be, should do and should fit into the existing landscape!

A couple of days ago there had been a meeting to try to make a bit more clarity on what the scope of our team work is, involving a number of "solution", "enterprise", "integration" architects.
I thought it would be the right opportunity to understand the big picture and learn from these "big guys".
I was wrong, totally wrong!

They started talking on a slide depicting an application flow, discussing what was the meaning of one or the other component drawn in the picture, arguing on the right sequence of the interactions...
After some minutes I started having a strong headache... and in a short stopped listening to them, or better listening just enough to catch if they were saying something not matching my vision and putting it in risk of being disrupted by their assumptions and conclusions.

The worst feeling was that they were discussing on things that we should then have to implement, but they were not taking into any consideration if such things where or not achievable.
That meeting really created a strong WE vs THEM feeling.

Lunch Groups

At lunch one more time you can see the implicit separation of the ABN-AMRO population.

While dutch people mostly buy their food at the restaurant, the indian people bring their food from home, so there is a long queue of them in front of the array of microwave ovens.

Since I keep on having my good old habits of bringing my own food from home, I always find myself in the microwave ovens queue...
And there I see that the indians look at me and at my food as if I was coming from an other planet!
My food is usually a rice tart or spinach tart slice, and I feel that they have no idea of what the hell is that.
They instead usually have rice, meat cooked in spicy soup, indian bread, "just" the usual food from an indian restaurant, spicy and probably testy, for sure filling up all the air and the oven with a strong curry smell...

Someday I'll ask them if I can taste their food!

Toilets

Even the most trivial places of companies can show differences.

So I can now easily assert that the toilet of the Orange Tree and of the Watermelon Field are different.
Of course is not that the plumbing is different or that the functionalities offered are different.
The differences are in the fact that in the Field the toilets are almost never dirty and bad smelling!

I got quite a different experience when I was at the Orange,where often the toilets were in a very poor conditions, just to use an euphemism...
And I would instead expect the opposite, because of the number of Indians here.
But don't take me wrong: I'm not racist, who knows me and my story knows that I just can't be raciest, specially with Indians.
It's that when ever I eat Indian food, the so wonderfully testy spiced Indian food, I have just a couple of hours of time before I need to go to the toilet and have a post apocalyptic experience... So I thought I would have faced the result of such kind of food.
It seems that my Indian colleagues don't have my issues!

When they talk to me...

When I meet someone I don't know, most of the time he/she start talking to me in Dutch.
Why?

The number of foreign people here is maybe not as high as on the Orange tree, but not so much less to justify the assumption that all here are Dutch.
No, there is a very big percentage of foreign people and it's not possible to ignore it.
And the people here are not dumb, so they could as well talk to me in English instead of Dutch.

So why?
Because I'm not the "typical" foreign for them.
Strangely enough for most of them I look much more Dutch then foreign, even if I'm not tall or blond...

It's that I look much more Dutch then Indian, and since 90% of the foreign here are Indians I get classified as Dutch!
So both Dutch and Indians (if they are able) try to talk with me in Dutch.... I have to learn Dutch quickly...

Please just listen to each other

It was sometime happening even on the Orange tree, but here in the Watermelon field it's the standard way of communication.
During meetings, discussions, work sessions, each participant talks, talks, talks, but almost never listen to what the other are saying!
I keep on observing this pattern and it makes me crazy: two persons (if not more) talking of two different things, arguing and not agreeing just because they do not understand that they are not talking of the same thing!
So one says one thing x about A, the other object with an other thing y about B, both true (maybe), not in contrast, probably compatible, but since x is not y the two persons think they disagree.... so frustrating... specially when you try to make them understand that they actually agree but of course they don't listen to you!!!!

Age...

I feel I'm a bit an exception in this environment...

Why?
Because of my age and because of my nationality and because of my area of expertise, or better because of the three of them together.
Let me be an engineer for a moment...

If I divide the colleagues by area of expertise, age and nationality I would got eight groups:

1. Techy, Young and Dutch
2. Techy, Young and not Dutch
3. Techy, Old and Dutch
4. Techy, Old and not Dutch
5. Non Techy, Young and Dutch
6. Non Techy, Young and not Dutch
7. Non Techy, Old and Dutch
8. Non Techy, Old and not Dutch

Not all the groups have the same number of representatives, and some groups are almost empty.
This is obvious, but... which are the empty or almost empty ones?

I'd say that the empty one is "Non Techy, Old and not Dutch", while the "Techy, Old and not Dutch" and the "Techy, Old and Dutch" are almost empty.

So the old people are mostly in the "Non Techy, Old and Dutch", and this is natural: the Dutch are the one who control the company in most of its aspects and they need Tech people who are mostly young, and a lot from India.

I'm old (yes I am, no doubt about it), I'm not Dutch (or at least not yet...), and I'm a technical person.

This combination is quite rare here, and this makes of me one of the few old techy...

I'm one of the few survivors of the age of the IT Dinosaurs still risking his life on the keyboard! 

The most precious item in the Field

Depending on the place where you go different items have different values.
Here in the Watermelons Field the most precious one is the PEN!
Yes: the pen, the simple easygoing good old writing pen!

I've to guard mine as if it was a special item, a sweet candy, a drop of water in the desert....
I've checked yesterday and discovered that in my working place (a group of 8 desks in a bigger open space), I'm the only proud owner of a pen 😄
So it often happen that some of my colleagues steals it, and I of course get really upset because I'm very jealous of my pen... but on the other side it's very easy to find it again: it is the only one standing around!

Going Dutch...

One "big difference" between the Orange tree and the Watermelons field is that here in the field I'll probably learn more Dutch then on the tree.
The percentage of people from out of Netherlands is not lower then the one on the tree, but here most of them are Indians and many of them has learned to speak Dutch, so often the conversations are in Dutch...
Why?
I mean why have so many Indians learned to speak Dutch? Why here there is this wider tendency of speaking Dutch?

On the tree sometime it happened that two persons from different countries started talking in a common language for the two of them, like often an Italian ex-colleague of mine speaking in Spanish with an other Spanish colleague. But not so often a non Dutch was speaking in Dutch with a Dutch...

I don't have an answer yet, but I feel that I will learn more Dutch now than in the past 6 years!

A new habit

New places and new colleagues mean even new habits and rules of behavior.
For example here there is the habit, when you go to take a coffee or a tea, to ask all the colleagues if they desire something too.
It's nothing special, but it creates a sense of kindness around and that's very nice.

But I'm missing my massages, me going to colleagues and making some little shoulder massages to them....
It's not yet time for that, I'm still too much new here and still feel I'm not fully part of the environment.

It's always about vegetables...

One week in the Watermelons field has passed and what can I say: that at the end it's always the same old soup, it's always about vegetables!
Yes: the Orangery and the Watermelons field are not so different, there are always the same problems and dysfunctions.
For example in both the Orangery and the Watermelons field there are problems with the toilets!
In the Orangery the problem was that they got stoked and water was flooding all around, while in the Watermelons field they are simply under reconstruction, since the second day I got there, and with an advice on the door saying that they will be under reconstruction till the 14th of April.. that's more then a week ago!

But of course there are even little penetrating differences...
As the strong smell of curry when you arrive next to the cafeteria, even if I still have to understand if it's due to the kitchen and the dishes of Indian tradition they serve or instead because of a critical crowd mass reached by my Indians colleagues at lunch time.
Or even maybe because of their own food that the same Indians colleagues bring from home for lunch.
This last is an interesting opportunity that I've leveraged too: in the cafeteria there is a set of microwaves that you can use to warm up what you have just bought or what you brought from home, and you can even mix the two source of course!
Today for example I've brought from home two slices of spinach and rice pies, and I've wormed them up using a dish I got from the cafeteria, and then eat using fork and knife always from the cafeteria.
It's very convenient and practical.
I have to let my fantasy wild to prepare more different dishes for my lunches!

Keeping my Ornge skin inside...

When I had the goodbye party at CECI, my colleagues gave me a lot of orange object telling me that I should use them in my first days in the Watermelons Field.
Sorry friends, I've not done it...
I've thought about it, meditating on which level of provocation I could have used, but at the end I have not had the courage to challenge all the watermelons... I'll have to spend a lot of time there, and starting with such a provocation would not be a good move.

Am I becoming a watermelon myself? Probably in the long run it will happen, I've not moved into the hell where all the people are bad and the smell of sulfur is in every bit and byte...
The people here are normal people, not with three legs or two heads, and they are showing the same defects and merits as everywhere, so slowly I will become one of them too.
But for now I have to keep my orange skin hidden and just for me... for the moment I still feel the alien, the stranger, and I compare every corner, every little place with what I was used to in the Orangery.

So for example: even if there is a lot of light, the building is a bit more dark, as if the tones of the colors were dimmed, washed away from the time.
Yes, there is a bit of an old fur on the things, a light fog in the air...
And this is a strange feeling in contrast with the quickness and efficiency with which I've been involved into the working activities.
Is it maybe that here the watermelons take less care on the looks and more on the substance?
It's too early to judge, let's hope my positive feeling will not be betrayed!

Just one more note: the building is what is being said an "intelligent building", one of those building that decide if and when the curtains of the windows must be opened or closed, do that when you are not expecting it the building turn them up or down so that you are unexpectedly in the dark or flashed by a sudden sunshine!
I've to get used to it....

And the first day has passed!

First day in the Watermelons Field, and I should say that it has been a good day.

I expected a slow starting, with a lot of device delivery, software installation, configuration check.... Instead in just a couple of hours I was ready and active!
A new laptop, the secure card configured, the email account activated, the access to Jira up and running, what else? All working and with just a little help from the new colleagues which have been all very kind and available to support me in my first steps in the new environment.

Strange feeling: how long will I take to feel myself not an alien in this place? How long will my skin take to became green?

The place is quite different from the Orangery: a bit more closed, with less colors and fashion places... And from a statistical point of view with less women and more Indians....
In the Orangery I was used to have many women around, compared to usual IT/DevOps environment, so from this point of view the ratio here is more "normal". What a pity... 

But most of all yes: there are really a lot of Indians around, even if they are not the only nationality present.
In my team at the moment we are: 1 Italian, 2 Indians, 1 Iranian.
In the neighborhood there are even 1 English, 1 French, 1 Spanish, a number of Dutch, and many many other Indians too.
But the real evidence of the wide presence of Indians, bot physically and virtually (that means working from remote in India) is that all around the building there are many wall clocks on the timezone of Mumbay!

One little problem: I don't have a locker, and the desk policy is of real "open desk policy" so I have no place to store anything, not even my mug and my tea bags... How can I have my good tea instead of the standard company taste-less one?
I'll have to find a solution to bring with me everyday my mug and my tea without occupy too much space in my backpack!

Last day on the Orange tree...

Well.... tomorrow I'll start a new adventure, after almost six years spent in the International Carbon Emissions Committee (also known as CECI).
 

Which are my feelings?
Most of all I got the perception of experiencing the last moments of my experience in CECI.
So many times I've told myself "this is the last time I'll use this toilet", "this is the last time I'll use my badge", "this is....". At the end it could have been a very depressive and boring day, but instead I've been very happy: all the good friends passing by and saying hello, exchanging a hug (not the last I promise... just a little break of time till the next).

I was even a bit sad because all my most direct colleagues would have been at an offsite, where of course there was no reason for me to be.

I was scared specially of the lunch time, because I feared I would felt alone...

And instead such an amazing lunch: the yearly Bingo session with all gifts received for Christmas and redistributed as prizes!
Such a nice way to say not goodbye but see you soon again my friends! 

 

And I'm sure of only this: inside I'll always be CECI....

But tomorrow?

Will I be thinking of my empty desk among the other desks in CECI?

Probably I'll have too much to do and think about, probably I'll have time only in the evening after that all the exciting things of the first day in the Watermelons Field will have calmed down...