I will be back

This is another draft I found in my laptop these days. It is from the same period as the previous one, when I was leaving India.

I think India was the challenge of my life and it’s now when I start having contact with my world when I notice how much this experience change me. I remember I use to cry because the life is unfair, because the things are not as I want them to be. I was always fine after maximum one – two days, I was always keeping the head up and go on, but I always had that bad feeling about the unfair thing happen to me.

A lot of the trainees get very frustrated in India and one here always has ups and downs. Almost all my internship I loved India, but I know I had days when I hated it, when I couldn’t understand it, when I didn’t want to accept what is going on around me, there were days when I was 100% convinced I want to go back to my pink world and days when I was truly sure that I can live here for longer and enjoy being here.

Now, when I see my luggage already done, I know I want to go back home, I want to stop blaming India for all the bad things are happening to us here, I want to remember how is at home, which things are really underdeveloped here and which ones are our frustrated invention. I want to see how the western world is.

I miss

Cleaning my laptop I found an old draft post for my blog, from April 2010, when I was still in India, missing home:

I miss:

• Skating when it snows and listen to Christmas songs
• Warring short skirts and transparent blouses
• Taking sun or enjoying the warm summer sea
• My Tae-Bo trainer
• My breakfast from home: cheese and bacon with a cup of milk with Nesquick
• Wearing gloves
• Running after trams in the morning and getting pissed off for waiting another 5 minutes for the next one
• My soft and big bed
• My welcoming messy room
• To hug and kiss my boyfriend on the street
• The joy to see that the spring is here
• The wonderful feeling of wearing boots
• To horrible wet cold from autumn which always ruins my birthday plans
• I miss my peaceful city
• I miss Sage and the hot chocolate with cinnamon
• I miss the boiled wine after skating
• I miss cherries
• I miss walking and seating on a park
• My body creams

Don’t know what I will miss from India. I think it is too early to realize. I still don’t believe I’m leaving in some days. My internship is over. I always say: ah, it’s still a long time to go home. I will come back to India after my trip, for some days. Will bring you presents, will have a farewell lunch, dinner, party for me. And I will be back. Soon!

Happy Independence Day, India!

For the one that has been my home country for more than a year and for those who have been my guides and made my Indian experience unforgettable:

Happy Independence Day, India!

Happy Independence Day India!!!

India, love and hate relationship

Last night I was checking the Facebook updates and I found Alexandra Birladeanu’s post: India and I, which inspire me to write this reply post.

My Indian experience is over since 3-4 weeks already, I lost the count long time back.

It’s been more than a year in which lots of things happened: legislation, hospitals, police, borders, new holidays, traditions, rules, new friends, old friends, babies, weddings, love stories, life stories, dirt, rats, pollution, monsoon, heat, beaches, faith, love, fights. Some of them can happen being at home as well, some of them are normal for an internship abroad, but after reading Alex and Romeo’s blogs, I think there are things which can be lived only in India.

We all come to India with lots of enthusiasm and adventure spirit. We expect it to be harsh; we expect the bugs, heat, monsoon, illnesses, uncomfortable bed, crowd, mosquitoes to be there; and we come with enough open heart to go beyond this, or at least that’s what we think. Therefore at the beginning, we are fascinated about the traditions, festivals, cloths, jewelleries, relationships, myths. We really love India. I did it! I was happy there. I was excited to play Holi, draw rangoli, decorate the house for Diwali, eat sweets, wear a salvar kameez, saari and so on and so forth. But somehow something happens on the way.

It’s like passionate love, or a love at a very young age: you live it too intensely and it consumes faster. If you don’t learn to live it with the right persons and in the right way, it goes away or even worse, it’s becoming suffocating and you start hating it. We experience too many extreme things that we’d never done in our countries: living in a very bad neighbourhood, travelling with “Personalul” (slow train, cheap and unsafe for girls in the night) from Iasi to Bucharest to save money (I don’t think anyone of us ever thought about it), or eat from unhygienic places; just to give some few examples. And after living a couple of months like this, and adding some new elements as heat, pollution, climate, friends who are far away, one doesn’t have the same open mind to bear with bureaucracy, crowd, new people, and even worse, starts being rude in situations in which normally is not.

And we want to live everything. At least I did: I wanted to see everything was to be seen travel all across India without caring how – I was sure, I will not be back to this land soon. But after being everywhere I wanted to, after doing everything I wanted to, eating, trying everything crossed my mind in a year, living in cheap rooms with bed bugs, getting allergy, I think I learn to listen and understand why my colleagues in office were always telling me: “we don’t do that, we don’t travel like this”. Every country will have good and bad things, beautiful and ugly places, and if we want to love a place, live there (for a year internship one needs his/her own Indian home) and enjoy it, it has to be a nice one, and now, I found it unfair to blame Indians for the frustrations we get due to the way we decide to live.

I also think we are too young, immature and ignorant when we come to India. After I came back from my South-East Asia trip I think we should do that before living in India. We should have a live preparation about Asia culture and lifestyle of a month or so, and afterwards going to Incredible India. Most of the times we have no idea how different can be this continent, or that Europe is a pink and wonderful world, but the only one and it is just a very small part of the world. Therefore me and others to don’t say all of us (those who stay for a year especially), come to India and when we get tired, start blaming India for a lot of things. Don’t know if higher salary is the solution, guess a better and more open AIESEC India will mean less frustration too.

All in all, I haven’t heard stories so intensely lived as in India. As Indians like to say: “India has everything!”, and it can’t be just love, it is love – hate relationship.

Cultural shocks after internship

I remember having a discussion in AIESEC Iasi about what happens after internship, about reintegration, post traineeship cultural shocks and here I am, more than one year later living my own cultural shocks after my internship in India.

1. Malaysia and the value of money

After more than one year in India I forgot the value of the money, everything is so cheap…so, just imagine myself in Kuala Lumpur International Airport on the money exchange office (I knew that a ringgit is like a leu): 45 USD = 154 ringgits, aka my budget for 5 days in Malaysia which is like 154 RON and suddenly the strongest (at least till now) cultural shock after India:

What?! Anca!!! This is an insane small budget!!!! In Romania you can live only 2 days with this money and now you are in a foreign country… You are mad Anca!!! I really don’t know how you are going to make it…

At the end I manage it to be in budget, here you can know how: Malaysia, amazing country!

2. Indians are the most helpful people I met in my life

Since I land in India till present I always thought and said Indians are the most helpful people. In one year I got used with people helping me and now it’s time to face the reality:

At the end of my trip in Malaysia I was out of cash and the bus dropped me at the other end of the city and people around me were saying:

“How can you don’t have ringgits?”

“What are you doing in this country?”

“Haha! Let’s see what you do now”

Me to myself: ”What’s wrong with you people?! It happens! What can I do if you don’t have ATMs or money exchange offices in Kuala Tahan which is one of the most tourist places?!”

At the end I found someone to help me to reach KL Sentral from where I could take my bus to airport for which I already had a ticket.

3. Too much cloth or too less?

We are always complaining that the dresses of Indian women have too much fabric and I was really eager to wear shorts and short skirts and one night I just wake up in Khao San road, Bangkok, Thailand:

Hey you girls! Dress up!!!

Your bra is showing horrible!!!

Is that a dress or top? It’s quite short for a dress…

Where are your pants?!

What is that haircut?!

4. Right, left and cross!

Thailand – Cambodia border just passed the Thai border, going to clear the immigration from Cambodia side, but wait a second, something is wrong, the office should be on the other part of the road…

Oh! They are driving on the left as us!! Oha! This is cool! Like home!

Yeah, right! Just watch me:

• Trying to get into a minibus, after some days: Hey miss! The door is on this side!
  To myself: Aiii, why did you change the side of the door?!
  Of course it was on the right side, because the wheel was on the left.
• In a tuk-tuk and motorbike: “Nooo!!! We will crash!!!!”
  No, it’s just driving on the other side of the road. Remember Anca? Like home…
• Crossing the street: right, left and… crooo… beeeeeeeee beeeeeee … sss?!! Ah! This is really confusing!
  Let’s try again: Left, right and Crooossss!!!!

Guess how long I’ve been in India according with Indian emigration authorities

Responsibility? Quality? Efficiency?

These are words which are unknown for the big Indian mass. The intention of this post is not to criticize, nor raise a question mark for the Indian citizens who use their brains.

This week I’ve been once again to FRRO (Foreigner Regional Registration Office) to extend my visa and first of all my visa application was rejected because: “the AIESEC logo is black and white instead blue, and even if it has the stamp and the signature in original it is not an original, it is a fax”. Excuse me!!!??? Who told you it has to be blue?! Who are you to certify that a document is brand aligned or not? How it matters for you if it is brand aligned or not if it has the signature and stamp in original? And what do you know about the brand AIESEC to say how it supposes to be?

Finally I succeed to convince the ladies from FRRO Mumbai that it can be black and white as well and I promise next time I go I will gift them the page from the AIESEC Brand Toolkit which says how can be the logo in a document. Well, if they insist, then will teach them about the brand AIESEC.

In India the security is a very high concern because of objective reasons, so the authorities need more information about everyone is in India than in my country for example. Very reasonable and understood able. And now guess something:

What is the information that Indian Emigration Office has about me?

According with The Indian Emigration Office I have been in India for 3 years!!!! My visa was issued in 2007 and it expires in 2010, but my passport was issued in 2008.

Me to the lady from FRRO: “This is a mistake! How can this be possible?!”

The lady: “Ah, it is just a typo, you must be inserted wrong, it is fine, and we will modify it”.

For sure I didn’t write that my visa was issued in 2007!!! And even if that will be true, you have to verify it. It’s insane!! It is an official document! How can you make such kind of mistake??!!! It is not your personal diary where you can make mistakes, it is about people, immigration documents, legal documents, lives!

I will never stop to be amazed about how some Indians can justify everything; absolutely everything can be forgiven and justified. They don’t think: “oh, uh, i made a mistake I should be more careful”. No! Excuses, excuses and excuses! I’m sorry guys, but there is no excuse for a mistake as saying that I’m an Indian citizen in an official exam record, or write in a visa application of a Canadian citizen that is Indian and because of it her visa gets rejected and after she needs visa to enter in UK, or saying that I’ve been in India for the last 3 years.

All this is called incompetency, irresponsibility, not using the brain!

What if the Indian authorities have the same wrong records about those who are involved in illegal things?!

Talent management in India

Raise your hand those who have seen The Secret!

I always been fascinated about the unwritten and inexplicable law of attraction, about how some things can attract other things, how can someone attract you and someone else let you completely indifferent, how can you be so close of something and nothing happens or so far away of achieving something and suddenly everything starts adjusting in such a good way.

But, this post is not about the law of attraction, I was just remembering that movie and I was thinking to use it as introduction for my serious post.

On Friday we (my team) had a discussion with our managers about multiple things. One of points touched during the conversation was about the employees’ motivation and long term perspectives offered by the company.

I’m looking around and it is quite sad what do I see: after 2-3 years in an project, people want to move out, want to do something different, a lot of them don’t know what they want, where to go, they just know they want something different or an opportunity of being transferred abroad for a period of time. I don’t know if I’m an idealistic because on the last 3 years of my life I’ve been working in an NGO or as a trainee, but I think we should have an HR person who should help the employees to find out their role in the company.

Too many people just don’t know what to do with their career; they grumble and complain because their managers don’t want to give them permission to try out another project, or they jump from a company to another because the new one offers them 40-50% higher salary.

But the topic is not about what should be done in TCS in order to have employees more motivated, more productive or happier, it is just about a different reality, or the problems faced by Indian companies in this moment.

Coming back from work, on Friday, when I checked my personal email I’ve seen I got a new newsletter from Gallup and one topic attract my attention:  Creating a Talent Pipeline in India.

It is like the continuation of the discussion we started in office, but with researched information and solutions. I wanted such kind of article since long time ago and it came exactly on the right day (that’s why I was mentioning about the law of attraction on the start of my post). The article reveals the root cause of the consequences related before in the post.

While in Europe the recession fronses everything making almost impossible getting a good and well paid job because almost nobody is hiring people, in India there are a lot of recruitment processes going on because all companies have to cut costs, and how can you do that better than getting cheaper labor? India is an enormous pool of choices for the western companies because of the huge amount of people.

Therefore, in times of recession, big companies are coming here and run recruitment campaigns for masses. Some companies have a certain daily schedule for interviews and one has to go there with her/his CV and wait on the line. It may be good for a recent graduate because you can get very easy in a big company, but I cannot say the same about those who have some experience and knowledge about their career aims. Personally I will never go to an interview when the interviewer didn’t have the courtesy of reading my CV before, and is sending me a mass invitation to an interview.

Personally, I totally disagree with this way of recruiting; I found it less of respect for my person and for my professional preparation, and for sure such kind of companies don’t deserve people who prepare for an interview and who work later for the growth of the company.

All in all, the companies still recruit masses of people to can make more money, more projects, but the truth is that if you don’t give attention and importance to the individual, she/he will not do it either to you. What all this big empires seems to don’t understand is that sometimes, less might mean more.

I’m looking at my team and after almost one year I believe it is the perfect example of my affirmation. Why to have 100 people who don’t do too many things, when you can have 20 and do a great jobs, have higher salaries and the managers can have more time to allocate to individuals not only to masses.

A big mistake that the companies do in their race of making more and more money, is recruiting all kind of engineers (mechanics, electronics, etc) for IT jobs and freshers join projects without having the minimum knowledge about programming and they are expected to deliver a complex and qualitative project, but they finish losing countless time in preparation and mistakes, without ever reaching the performing stage.

In their article Shakun Khanna and Vikas Chaturvedi from Gallup, reveal the current problem faced by India and solutions to it. Here you can find the article: Creating a Talent Pipeline in India.

Pictures from my trip to the North of India

And after 3 months… here it goes:

Anca’s photos from Anca’s crazy trip to the North of India!!!

Mumbai -> Varanasi -> Agra -> Jaipur -> Delhi -> MCleodGanj -> Amritsar -> Haridwar -> Delhi -> Mumbai

http://picasaweb.google.com/anca.onuta/NorthIndiaTrip#

Enjooooooooy!!!! 🙂

PS: If you like them, let a comment here!

For curious this picture is made by an amazing nice and cheap guide at Taj Mahal. If you want the contacts just ask me.

Seven months and a little bit

It’s been a little bit more than 7 months since I’m in Incredible India. It seems the time stopped there, in April, when I left, exactly one week before Easter and it is waiting for me to come back home, one year later, in the same period, but this time, to spend the holidays at home with my mom and family. It must be because at home we use to measure the time on seasons, and here there is no season, it is like a continuous summer that sometimes it is a rainy summer. On the other hand I’m looking back and it doesn’t seem to be yesterday the day when I land in India. It was a long time ago. Such a long time that I cannot believe it ran so fast. I came here with a lot of plans and enthusiasm. The plans still there, the enthusiasm changed…

When one goes in an AIESEC internship, ICPS (InterCultural Preparation Seminar) prepares you to adjust to other cultures, how to handle it in your firsts days, how to beat stereotypes, how to be a good ambassador of your country, but what they never tell you is that an internship is more than a cultural and work experience.

I never tough an internship can be such a strong experience. I came to India to challenge myself. For me India has been like a war, a mental war with my own person which, if I win it will be the great experience of my life, otherwise the worse one. I imagined it is about contrive live with ants, flies and other insects, or with the corrupt and slow system. I though it will be about dealing with the heat and illnesses. I supposed it will be about managing to travel in the crowd. But all this fears were just the small part of the war.

Everything that happens here is stronger, it affects you more, and one is more sensitive here because is completely out of his comfort zone; therefore the relationships one ties in this incredible country are more powerful. Surviving India is more than insects, crowd, system, misery; it is more about making friends for ever and after having the strength to let them go to follow their own path somewhere in the world, the world to which they belong to.

From home it seems so easy… so natural to leave and go back home at the end of your internship, but when I am here, I use to cry for every friend is leaving; I use to hate Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport because I’m leaving my friends there. But after a while one learns to say: “See you sometime, somewhere in the world”, wipe off the tiers and go on stronger! Reopen your heart to make new friends, friends that you will leave one day..

I already got beyond the half of my internship. My time to leave India is coming fast – almost 4 more months. It is a very strange feeling; before you have 6 months out of 12 here, you count the months and it’s seems to be a looooong way to go; after you start discounting them, or you just forget to count them.

During 6 months I supposed it is very easy to leave; the worst part is to stay. Now, after 7 months in I which I visited everything I wanted to, in which I enjoyed Indian culture as I never imagine I will do it, in which I laugh as I never did it in my life (and watch out, I’m laughing a lot), in which I passed from agony to ecstasy, from anger to happiness, from disgust to fascination, when I’m about heading to my last trip in India, I know surviving India is not about don’t getting too frustrated and wanting to book the first fly back home; it is about enjoying every moment, learning and valuing everything you have in such a way than when you will be going home you will can share your experience adding value to whatever you do.

We are BIG!

Long time no writing on my blog. No, I didn’t forget it. I just promise I will write about my trip to the North of India. I started. I swear. It is on draft. But it has to be a big post, coz my trip was big, and with a lot of things in it. But this is another post. I will try to find time to show it to you. Now let’s come back to this post.

Life is weird, very weird. It is so weird that I cannot understand it. But life in India is even weirder. Aa! But Minister of Home Affairs beats all these. I don’t have knowledge about legislation and laws, but for sure it is not normal to change the legislation so often.

After 2 weeks of dealing with uncertainty and reading news, I understood that for sure they must have their very strong and reasonable reasons  to change the legislation and to ask all the foreigners to leave their country. Seams that they have too many unqualified labors, too many people are coming to India to look for a job and they want to stop all this immigration and to improve the quality of the workers are coming here.

And.. after 2 weeks in which I was booking my fly tickets to go back home, I was looking for presents for family and friends, I was making plans, I was already dreaming with the cold and nice weather from my dear Romania, dreaming with my warming room, with my warm cloths, being very enthusiastic I will can wear my boots, my gloves, my winter jacket, I may see snow… I will can eat ciorba (soup), cheese; 1 week in which I was asking myself how it will be to go back home, to wait for the green light of the traffic lights, to have a decent seat in the bus, to go by tram, to be on time, to have a silent room, without noise, to enjoy a walk in the green landscape, to don’t cover my mouth and nose with a handkerchief because of the pollution… 3 days before flying I find out the magic answer:

“Who are eligible for a Business Visa?

Foreign students sponsored by AIESEC for internship on project based work in companies/industries.”

For more information: http://www.mha.nic.in/writereaddata/12566695441_work_visa_faq.pdf

This kind of things is just remembering us how big and powerful is AIESEC. It is not easy to influence the legislation of a country, and more a country like India. AIESEC is really making a difference in the world! Congratz AIESEC in India for the achievement!