My Colleagues

It has been one & half month since I am living in Sweden. I am working with Swedish as well as Indian colleagues. I have found some of the Indian colleagues are working with Swedish people since 5 years. But Swedish people doesn't know our culture. It was strange.

When I was in USA, we used to tell our American counterparts about our culture and festivity. And they were very curious to know about this. That's how we respect each others culture and know each other better.

I started sharing about our festivity with Swedish colleagues and they appreciated and informed that they were not aware of it. My managers also appreciated this informal move and termed it as a wheel for better relationship.

Coming back to my Indian colleagues, we belong to different geographies in India. Most of them are from South, 2-3 people are from North, 1-2 from West and rest are from Eastern part of India. So we all are from different cultural and educational background. What I find common about all, they provide all free unwanted advises to new person like me in this country as well in project. I am tired of such advises. I just could not figure out, how to get rid of such advises. To me there are two option either not to talk anything or just don't discuss anything with them. I do not know which one is feasible.

My internet installation delay is also owe to advise of my one the colleague, who informed that I can have it very cheap and he can help me. Though he took me to one of the shop, but he could not get one cheap. Ultimately I decided myself to go for one with the help of my manager, who is an exception.
one day, I was telling my colleague about trouble I got in finding a bank, due to one wrong turn. Oh..God I did a big mistake. I just received number of advises, which was not required at all. I just got fed up and decided not to talk any more.

The other day, an issue was raised by client...it was a critical system issue...at that point of time, we forget that we belong to different cultures or geography and all tried to resolve the issue ASAP.  At that time, only single thing was in mind ... resolution.... That's the way I like it....we were helping each other and worrying about escalations... But thank God...We were successful....it was Just In Time :)

I have volunteered to give training on a topic which is not applicable in our project. However, it would be new knowledge for the team. I have already learned that in my previous project. I asked my colleagues of previous project if they can provide necessary information so that I could prepare the training material. But my request was not  granted due to one or the other reason. These colleagues used to spent most the leisure time with me in past. However, one of my colleague understood my needs and provided me information which I needed for training. That is what I classify as exemplary help.. I think God always create one human among the crowd who crosses the line and help you out from the deep trouble.