We went to the warehouse this afternoon with the outsource agent. They flew into South Carolina this morning. Two of them flew in from Cleveland, Ohio while the other flew in from Boston. We will be meeting them tomorrow and discuss the details. I think we will be moving forward faster now than before. The project has a few nuances because the application supplied by the outsource company have to interface into the new system AND the legacy system that will be replaced in a few years. So it will be tricky project to do. Most of the people in the room have met a few times already and I am the new kid in the block.
It was a good day and I attended my first team meeting. It was with my boss and the rest of the team members. My boss asked me to introduce myself and I told them about my life in the company and the projects that I used to do. I think my boss liked it and asked the other members if they could share stories about themselves in the next meetings. I think it is a good idea to create rapport in the group. I think there will be a lot of challenges in the coming months and working together will be key to making the project work. In the meeting this afternoon, there was a moment when my boss was saying something about driving the project and I am not sure if he was sending out a signal.
I did not feel excited because it is a very straightforward project. I am just getting used to the way people work here. I see that democracy is a living breathing experience and not an abstract concept. It permeates everything here in the way people work and relate to each other. My experience in Asia is more authoritarian. Here every body's opinion counts and everyone is given his time to talk and people listen and judge the merits of the argument. A decision is made after all the views are weighed in. For me it is a different way of working and I have to get used to it in order to succeed in my projects.
My wife just called and said she is seeing a specialist in the hospital. She has not been well for the past 3 weeks. The fact that we are not together is putting pressure on her as well. I think the separation is affecting her health. I hope she becomes better. She needs to sleep and take a rest but I think that moving here to this new place is affecting her in more ways than she can understand. I think she will be better when we are here together as a family. I think I am lucky with my family compared to most people; talking to one of the outsource agents in the car this afternoon for example, I found out that they have foster children because they don't have any kids.
The meeting with the government agency went well. The staff processed m application after I expressed remorse. I hope it will turn out like these for the rest of my stay. I cannot seem to enjoy myself here and be at ease with this sword hanging over my head. It's like I am a criminal and one day my secret will be exposed and I will be disgraced. Everyone in the office will loath me and shun me like the plague. Anyway that is my fear although I learned to handle these challenges in different streams so that I will not be paralyzed by my fears. There are too many things running at the same time that one can lose focus.
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