First day at work

Because I am a professional--and a lady--I will by and large not be blogging about work. Which is to say, I will not be complaining, whining, bitching, mewling, or otherwise grumbling about my job in a public forum (unless you get me boozy). However as today was my very first day in this new job I thought it might be worthwhile to give y'all a sense of what, actually brought me to Delhi and what I'll be doing here for the next year.

As many of you already know, I'll be working with Lawyers Collective, a NGO which focuses on health issues and on women's issues. The organization has been around for over 30 years and it's fairly well respected both within India and within the world of international health organizations. I'm a member of the "UNSR" team, which stands for the "United Nations Special Rapporteur",  because my boss is the current Special Rapporteur, and in addition the the specific project I was hired for--expanding the database of cases worldwide relating to health and human rights (http://www.globalhealthrights.org/)--I'll be helping out with the bossman's mandate.

I met the bossman today for the first time. He is epic.

With three office locations and a comfortable two floor presence in Delhi, it's probably one of the larger NGO's that I've worked at (though by no means a behemoth). It is, I believe, the first NGO I've worked at with a dedicated administrative team, which I take to be a good sign. It is also the only NGO I've worked with that has its very own chaiwallah, who comes around and serves chai several times a day.

Side note: I love chai. I will get fat off of chai.

The office space itself is . . . perfectly suitable. I get my very own cubicle (where I've figured out how to open one of the three desk draws), but have yet to locate my own phone. I think I'll choose to bring in my own laptop, although some older desktops would be available for my use if I so desired. There's a kitchen at the back, the bossman's office at the front, a mini reception area, a mini-conference area and, today at least, about 10 attorneys working in the middle. (I was told, however, that because tomorrow is a holiday here, the office was emptier than usual). Many of the cubicles are empty--a new development because the entire women's issues department has just moved to a new floor (which, I must say, is a bit nicer than where they've left us UNSR folk).

It's been, in fact, 8 years since I last worked in a cubicle/bull pen stye office. The extravert sociable Kate thinks this will be fun and good for meeting people/making friends. The I-MUST-HAVE-ABSOLUTE-SILENCE-WHEN-I-WORK-DO-NOT-TALK-TO-ME Kate thinks it could be a bit challenging.

The work itself, I think, has the potential to be really interesting, which is obviously the most important thing. I suspect it also has the potential to be quite frustrating, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the interesting outweighs the frustrating.

And finally, the general working hours are Mon-Friday, 10-7pm, every other Saturday 10-2pm. I can find no rhyme or reason for the requirement to work half days every other Saturday instead of simply working 9:30-7pmish during the week. And considering that my new apartment is a like a 45 min commute, I am, in fact, a bit irked by the half day Saturday requirement. So inefficient.

But considering that I used to be on call pretty much 24/7, I guess I can't complain about half day Saturday work every other weekend. Right?