About first days frustration, 4 digit permutations, Ansku likes and escalators

My first day at office was very very boring. I arrived to the office early, took accidently the wrong lift as they are divided between floors and ours is in 24^th (penthouse again) and with the first try I got only to 15^th, went to the reception, got an ID with key and sat down to open office to attend a virtual orientation. After that I got my laptop and all related accessories, updated my email signature, read few of the introduction decks I had received, took a cup of coffee, said “hi” to couple of busy looking colleagues feeling so much like the new girl in town, installed printers and finalized some bureaucracy around my transfer and then sat there for a while without knowing what to do next. I HAD NOTHING TO DO!!!!  *freaking out* YOU HAVE HIRED ME AND I HAVE NOTHING TO DO!!!!! Feeling extreme frustration I decided to leave around 3pm but realized I had managed to forget the pin code for the cable lock and was stuck. Shitshitfuckfuck, I am stuck. The IT guy said the pin codes are not stored anywhere so “you need to remember it by yourself, ok?” Ansku: “Sure, of course”. I remembered that it had 0, 1, 2 and 3 but forgot the order because he never showed the code, just said it quickly and I have a visual memory. So I spent the last hour of my first day listing permutations of four digits (I can promise you it wasn’t the most efficient or logical way I did it) and finally managed to crack the code. Pheeew.  A bit after 4pm I left the office disappointed for not having anything meaningful to do but relieved that I didn’t need to go back to the IT guy and admit that I had forgotten the pin and my laptop is stuck with the table. I tend to panic with the IT support people and communicating with them is overly uncomfy for me although most of the time they are really nice. I believe like dogs can smell the fear the IT support guys see immediately your IT handicap and realize that most of the time I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And yes, I happen to work in a very IT driven company, haha!

My second day was almost equally boring. I updated my CV, the internal I mean, not like I would’ve been so disappointed that decided to leave ASAP ;) and did bit of pending e-learning. I also met the senior manager who interviewed me back in March. Felt so good to meet a person who knew I had just started and welcomed me warmly! Jei J He was super nice again and said projects in mining are not the most interesting professionally (I see a pattern here) and that I should try to get myself somewhere else but was afraid I didn’t have a say as the demand there is so huge. So I started to prepare for the option of being The Last Season Girl. So not my style, really. Third day more bombarding of new joiner bureaucracy which for my amazement seems very unorganized…anyways I have filled in tons of different forms, updated different systems, sent emails to my new enterprise contacts (so far I have been faster than their processes) but am still postponing the darn transfer allowance excel that seems complicated. Another fault of mine; Instructions Dyslexia. I have severe learning disability what comes to different technical instructions and I try to avoid reading instructions as much as possible. For example, in this excel there is instruction of “go to cell A15 and click Window, Split. Repeat cell A11 on Detail Sheet”. Wot? *closes excel without saving the changes* And this piece of valuable information was marked as “Helpful Hint”. Sure! Anyways the highlight of my third day was a long coffee break with a more senior colleague who had transferred from Johannesburg 3 months ago. We were sharing our new joiner experiences and had immediately a common ground…including the experience of frustration of the first day (she didn’t get the allowance and therefore no excel hell for her). It was a good coffee break with lots of laughter.

Today I was supposed to meet with my boss but she seems to be a very busy bee indeed. Instead I had a call with my scheduler and she reassured the message of Last Season being my future. Nothing is set in stone yet, but most likely my new project will start August 1^st. All in all my first week at work has been very useless and boring. I have no purpose of life here (the Accenture purpose of life I mean, The Ansku purpose of life is to live a happy, fun and loving life and make babies) and am missing my colleagues a lot. On the bright side this is the first time ever to be on the bench so I better enjoy while it lasts. Also it’s good to get some routines in place and now I’m finally forced to get my sleeping in order to have less painful mornings in the future. Babies do sleeping schools, are there any for adults?

And do not get me wrong, although the first days at work have been a bit dull I am extremely happy to be here. There are plenty of good things in Australia and Brisbane that bring happiness every day. Things that encouraged me to jump high. Most importantly the sun (sun does miracles for your soul), laidback atmosphere and friendly people. I like the vibe here. I cannot chew it in pieces or analyze yet, but I like the feel of Brisbane. It’s all so new to me and I love novelty. Then is the good thing of fresh, tasty, healthy and cheap food around. You can get an excellent sushi lunch with 6-8 dollars. I think I have eaten sushi almost every day during my 2 weeks stay and it seems impossible to get bored with the variety here. Another lunch favorite is SumoSalad (spotted this one already 2006). They have good selection of healthy salads and you can get extra portion of avocado with 1 dollar. So my diet is mainly build on sushi, salads, avocado, fruits and white wine. Healthy isn’t it? Then on the materialistic side are various organic cosmetics brands at Myers and David Jones, lots of very feminine fashion brands with nice flashy edge, not to mention excellent sneaker selection at Hype. Hype is a store for limited edition sneakers and a heaven for a girl who has an addiction for sneakers and high heels. Jumping to high heels; I won’t have difficulties with filling in my to-be shoe cupboard. All the shoe stores are stuffed with high heels of 10+ cm. Ansku the Human Tower™ look of 174 + 9 cm is nothing here. There’s a definition for *uck Me Boots and I can promise you some of the Aussie heels deserve the same label in the high heels category. To make it clear, I am not into heels with *uck Me statement (prefer the more chic ones) but coming from the promised land of practical clothing I am very happy to see that heels are the thing to wear. So, in no occasion from this day forward I will feel bad about being 174 cm tall and wearing high heels. And for all of those vertically challenged guys who have ever negatively judged my high heels addiction let me spell it out:  IT’S NOTHING and please don’t bother visiting Australia, ever. Period.

Still Australia is a bit difficult for a girl with very limited sense of direction. The left side traffic I mean. My brain does not bend with it. It applies here for escalators too. It seems I am always standing on the wrong side and people trying to pass are rolling their eyes and shaking their heads and I am apologizing for being a tourist with no sense of direction. I thought I would blend in easily to Australia because this is a melting pot for cultures and blue-eyed blond Scandinavians are not a rare sight here…but nope, I have it in my forehead that I am not local as I’m always standing on the wrong side of the escalators. I would make a terrible spy I think. I have couple of times really tried to go on the right side (which is left) and still got it wrong. I was all focused and going to the opposite-side-where-I-would-stand-in-Finland. Got the eye rolling and head shakes and excuse me again as I was apparently remembering the Finnish standing side incorrectly. Go girl and use the stairs! So I created a rule of thumb; I should stand on the side of my hand with no wrist support. A rule of thumb for the thumb that is ok. It means I have four weeks time to learn this by heart as in four weeks I’ll hopefully get rid of this thingy. No, in reality it shouldn’t be this hard. No, I certainly won’t even consider driving a car here. And yes, I am often wondering how on earth I have ever managed to get a job if simple things like this seem overly difficult for me.  

Anyways, I have a job, am officially part of the Brisbane office, I haven’t done anything useful yet but still think I deserve the Friday pub and few glasses of wine. Ansku The Human Tower™ goes weekend.

With capital L and X

//Ansku

PS: This is my last blog post of homelessness and can’t wait to move in to my apartment next Tuesday. In between I will go to Kaija's as they welcomed me to stay with them so that I don't need to book another hotel for the last 3 nights. I haven’t packed yet so I am expecting tomorrow morning to be quite painful with aftermath of Friday night and getting my life stuffed into a suitcase again. Ugh.