Two Years in India, Week 7: A Wild IPO Appears

"You use SHOW HIM AROUND. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!"

Now that I have the super-nerd title out of the way... As the title implies, the new IPO arrived this week. I'm not here to talk about my coworkers, so I'll pretty much refrain, but I will say, it looks like we'll have a good two years together. I've been told by some of the 'old hats' that approximately 1 in 10 posts I go to will have some sort of personnel friction. In a 20 year career, I'm looking at 7-10 posts... so here's hoping I never have any problems! 

The new IPO spent most of the week taking care of paperwork and spinning up on what's going on around the post. He has some great ideas for things to work on while we're here, so we should stay busy. Not to brag... but I'm totally going to. He'd mentioned that he was a little nervous working with a first tour person, but when he got here he was relieved to find I had everything under control. He said he was impressed with how well I was doing so soon after starting (end bragging).

Other than that, the week was pretty standard. I got to spend another night at the airport (hooray!) and I'm now officially sponsoring the last arrival for the summer season. It'll be an interesting learning experience, since they've already started asking me questions that my extensive seven weeks of time here haven't taught me! Fortunately, there are plenty of people I can ask. 

The week ended with one of the three mandatory holidays in India. Friday was Independence Day. We were warned (a little) by the RSO and (a lot) by our all-arounder to avoid crowded places, since they can be targeted for terrorist attacks during the holiday. We decided to heed their warning (nothing happened) and hung out around the house. We spent the afternoon at one of our friends houses that has a nice yard for the kids to parallel play (at least my son just rode someone's balance bike around and otherwise ignored the other kids). I also caught up on sleep from my overnight pouch run.

Seven weeks, or 7% down... 93 more to go. We didn't take advantage of this three day weekend, due to my late night working this week, but we're currently trying to figure out what we're doing for our next couple long weeks. We're hoping to make an overnight trip somewhere (or somewheres). 

One last thing, our new (permanent) driver, Subramani, started this week. He's been good, but my son keeps calling our car "Sundar's car" after our last driver. Also, every time we go downstairs he says we're going to see Sundar... He really liked Sundar, too bad we couldn't (and didn't try to) steal him from my sponsor! Fortunately, he seems to be warming up to our new driver also.

Two Years in India, Week 6: Acting IPO

I sipped from the cup of IPO power this week, and it will be hard to let go. Actually, it was pretty much the same as every other week. I continued doing the day-to-day things that justify my presence in country, but as a bonus this week I got to go to the section heads meeting. (Note to self: when representing your section at a section head meeting, prepare something to say about your section.) Anyway, I spent the rest of week six cleaning up our space in preparation of the actual IPO's start date on Monday.

Fun fact: I've now shredded/disintegrated around 100 kgs of unneeded documents from the '80s, '90s and today (read: 2000s)!

Fun fact 2: I found a bunch of gas masks circa 1985... they're expired, so we have to destroy them (in case someone tried to use them in a real emergency and they didn't work... leading to government liability). Anyway, the fun fact is that oxygen cans from 1985 smell awful.

Two Years in India, Week 5: First VIP Scare

Well, it was quite the exciting week. My entire post was in a frenzy because a VIP scheduled a last minute visit with 7 days notice... Oh yeah and it's 350km away in Bengaluru (Bangalore). I've been told you normally get somewhere between 2 weeks and 3 months notice for this kind of thing, so we had our work cut out for us. As the only IMS currently assigned to Chennai, I had the dubious honor of going to Bengaluru to support the visit. Saturday found nearly as many of us at the Consulate as on a standard workday. Everyone was scrambling to get things done, in my case, to prepare the computers, phones, and printers that would be accompanying us. Sunday, the motor pool convoy left with all our equipment.

Having never been to Bengaluru, my family decided to come and hang out at the hotel. We were staying at a five star hotel with a very nice garden (one of the perks of supporting a VIP visit in the State Department is the fancy digs).

Monday morning, we headed to the airport for our very first domestic Indian flight. Flying in India is a little different than in the US. First off, my wife and son's (one way) flight to Bengaluru was ~$55 for both seats, booked within 24 hours of takeoff. Second, you have to show your tickets or itinerary to even enter the airport. Then we went through a line to scan our baggage. After scanning, they placed a zip tie (or sticker!) around the zippers to stop it you from adding things before taking it to the check in counter. Our next surprise was the separate security lines for men and women (10 men's lines vs the 1 women's). The flight took around 45 minutes and our luggage was waiting at the carousel when we got there. However, Bengaluru is known for it's bad traffic and our hotel (The Leela Palace) was on the far side of town. It ended up costing more and taking longer to get from the airport to the hotel, than from airport to airport.

Once we arrived, one of my LES and I began setting up what would be the control room for the visit. Honestly, this is what I'd expected most of my job to be when I got hired. Hooking up laptops, printers, and phones was no problem. We also had to organize rental vendors and help all the FS officers with their remote-access "Go Tokens." Although I wouldn't say we were very busy, we were busy enough that I did not regret having two of us present. Monday ended looking like everything was on track for the visit...

I awoke Tuesday to news that the visit had been cancelled. The rest of the morning consisted of a decent amount of breakdown and packing of our equipment, followed by salvaging what was left of our holiday (Ramazan). It was too late to get flights back on Tuesday evening, so we ended up getting a mini-vacation at the hotel. (Shucks!)

Between returning to Chennai and taking my cats to their quarantine inspection, I missed work on Wednesday. I spent Thursday and Friday resolving all the problems that had been ignored for the last week due to the potential VIP visit. Nothing really major, but I do want to brag a tiny bit:

This week I got my first real "victory" at work! I've been feeling a little strange being put in charge of people that have been doing their jobs (in some cases) for longer than I've been alive. I often feel like I'm not really adding any value to the consulate's operations (excepting in the functions of my job that LES can not do). However, this week (late Friday afternoon, none-the-less) I was able to resolve a problem the mail room had been having with funding approval for one of our courier services. This had been an on going problem for weeks and the manager of the mail room was unable to get it resolved.  In the end it wasn't the biggest deal in the world, and I doubt I'll be winning any Nobel prizes for it, but I was glad to finally feel like I was able to help my staff, rather than just taking credit for all their hard work!

Next week I'm in for a new adventure: I will be acting Information Programs Officer (IPO). The IPO we had been borrowing from Delhi is headed home. I've been handling almost everything anyway, under his guidance... but it's still a scary thought! He did give me a pretty strong vote of confidence with the Management Officer and it's not like he (and all the rest of the IM team) aren't just a phone call away in Delhi. Anyway, next week I'm in charge of all the Information Systems for the consulate... if we fall off the map you'll know who to blame!

PS: I didn't name the VIP because the visit was never officially announced.

Two Years in India, Week 3: First Pouch Run

You know, when I originally applied for the Information Management Specialist position with the Foreign Service I thought I was signing up to install and maintain computers. What I didn't realize was that we were in charge of ALL information going to and from the post. Anyway, this week I got my first taste of one of the forms that information takes.

One of our many jobs at post involves packing, tracking, and escorting secure mail from our facilities overseas to the airplanes that take them out of the country (and back, for incoming packages). As far as I can tell, this is generally called a pouch run. Being a consulate (and a relatively small one at that), this isn't a common occurrence in Chennai. However, we wanted to make sure I got a chance to do one before my predecessor shipped out on Thursday. I expected it to be quite exciting, I mean, we get down on the tarmac with the plane and watch them unload and load cargo. Sounds cool, right? Yeah... it's not as cool as it seems. In the end, it was just a long, sleep-depriving night.

In other news, my predecessor did in fact leave, ostensibly leaving me as the only IMS in Chennai. However, we were loaned an Information Programs Officer (IPO) from Delhi to help me manage things until my boss gets here. On the one hand, I think I would have been fine without the help, but I'm definitely glad he's here. Aside from the work benefits of having an experienced hand to help me, he's also just nice to have around from a social aspect! Who wants to be locked away by themselves all day?

I had one final revelation about my job this week. For years, as a government contractor, I was so pleased and proud of the fact that I never really received a lot of e-mails. I thought it was a good indication that I was actually getting work done. This week I realized that the majority of my job now consists of reading and answering e-mails. Sure, I do things also (apparently a lot of things, with how fast the time seems to go at work), but a lot of my job is now just making decisions that other people implement. I don't know how I became a manager, but it just feels weird!