A new update from a new city

There has been a lot happening around me that I should have written about but I guess I have been just plain lazy. It is difficult to put pen to paper, or finger to key when you are engrossed with so much else that is going on in your life.

For starters, it has been nearly two weeks since I have permanently moved to Mumbai. As if that was not an event enough, I decided to follow it up with changing my role from that of a Relationship Manager for High Net Worth Clients, who I used to advise on their investments. Going forward, I shall not be doing anything of the sort. Instead, I am supposedly going to be working with the business head of he wealth management unit of my company.

The work that I need to do, however, is not really very well-defined. Even though I am supposedly going to be involved in the overall strategy of the firm, as per the job description doled out to me, I always believed that I will be required to work as a floater. Having come here and spent more than just a couple of late nights in office, I think I can say with fair bit of certainty that my job details are pretty uncertain.

Right from trying to improve productivity in a tough year, to working towards some new businesses that the firm is launching, to some very mundane stuff like preparing excel formats for various purposes, there is quite a bit of variety in life. The good thing about this variety is that it keeps me on my toes almost all the time and that I do not get those pangs of boredom that I was so susceptible to, in my previous role which offered me the luxury to relax and not do anything, every now and then.

The bad thing about this job, however, is that it takes me far away from much of human contact. Since this is more of a brains rather than mouth kind of a job, I do not get to interact too much with people, either internal or external, which is something I had not anticipated or factored in and therefore, terribly miss. The change of location has not helped, either, since it is now a new set of people at work with whom I can't even have cordial, meaningless, unrelated-to-work banter without some amount of effort.

Since it has always been difficult for me to put in that effort, I , more often than not, remain at my desk, at times doing something I am engrossed in and at others, just plainly gazing across the window towards the sea, whose view my seat so graciously provides.

It has been just a few days here, and there are so many things that one still needs to understand about the job and people here that it is quite unnerving at times. But herein lies the opportunity, and I am sure of it, to shape a career. It will be left, however, completely to my own resourcefulness and ingenuity to identify and capitalize on the opportunities before they get out of my grasp.

Amongst other stuff, I visited Singapore with my family (parents and sister) on my first offshore trip paid by my own money. The experience was very nice, and doubly so because I had the good fortune of being able to enjoy the company of my family on this vacation. Following it up was this felicitation in Goa organized by the company for some top performers in a certain category. I took Papa along but had not really anticipated how much he will like it and neither did I anticipate the positive feedback that I received from peers and colleagues who liked the novelty behind the idea of taking your parent along to a place like Goa. Novelty? Coming from a culture as rooted to the family concept as India's, that did come in as a surprise factor.

Well, I have finally moved in to a well built and well provided for place that I can call home for the time being. This place is in Santa Cruz, a 2 BHK, furnished house where I have moved in with Priya, my sister. It is still early days and even my stuff has not reached me from Delhi but first impressions seem quite favorable as the house is fast on its way to being called home.