Outsource Go Live

We have now moved to the outsource support. I cannot just walkover to the infrastructure team to have something done. Mainly becuase they are no longer there or soon transfer to the outsource company. I have to raise a ticket and request for service. So I have to log into the intranet site and record all the request and problems that I receive. I am also doing a knowledge transfer from the team in India. So it has now begun and I feel that we are moving into an impersonal world like in George Orwell's book. I feel that the new structures are absurd with the many levels of approval and review.

I wonder how this would improve and simplify work. Looks like creating more layers of bureaucracy and people who have no business on the infrastructure and implementation side now have their fingers in the pie. I wonder what will happen to my request logged somewhere in cyber space. Will it be really reviewed by the approving committee. It's now all about committees and processes. Long gone are the days where rapport and meeting and discussing with colleagues are gone. Everything is now replaced with faceless efficiency and impersonal procedures. I guess that's progress for you.

I have just finished reading Niall Ferguson's 'Empire' . It tells of how the British Empire help establish globalization. The final passages talk about how the mantle of global imperialism and leadership has been transferred to USA. The author has been labeled a neo-imperialist following the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling or the American neo-conservatives like Rumsfield or Cheney. But he is a good writer and I like his ideas. The hero of this group seems to be Winston Churchill with his sweeping imperialist tendencies to lead and save the British empire. I like to read his works as well and his writing skills, visionary and strategic abilities and, should I say his resistance to tyranny are his saving grace.

I am also reading Somerset Maugham, a writer that I did not appreciate in the past. Now I understand his milieu and I love his works especially on the life of British expatriates in the colonies. It is a fitting work to read and enjoy before one departs the islands and goes to the new world. All these seem to echo the voyage in my life as I prepare for my new posting. I have increased my input of books because I can just listen to them via the audio books from the library instead of reading them and ruining my eyesight. Now I get to enjoy a book when I walk to the train station, exercise or riding the bus home.

I reserve my reading and eyesight on really important books, picture books and manuals on how to write if no audio books exists. I have increased my capacity but I have also used up a lot of my spare time. Like being in a candy store, I have opened the doors and have borrowed too much books, movies and music CDs. I know that if I leave this place I will not have the excellent facilities offered in the libraries. The library system here is probably the best in the world. This is one of the things I will really miss if I leave here so that is why I am in a mad rush to borrow everything that I can in my last few months in the island.