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Moving to India. Step 6: Making Arrangements

08 Aug, 2008
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Working abroad has been a wish of mine for some time now. Xebia offers me the opportunity to live and work in India. Through this blog series I will keep you informed of the progress and challenges of this project.
“I love it when a plan comes together!” This famous quote expresses what I feel about this project right now. It’s been more than a year now, since I started thinking about moving to India. I’ve slowly brought everybody up to speed and started to make preparations. Now things are coming to a completion. At the moment I’m in India to make the final arrangements.

Contracts
Just last week, we finalized the contract with the Xebia NL. That contract has now been signed, providing a solid foundation for our situation in India. The employment contract with Xebia IN will have to be adjusted a little bit to comply with the latest agreements. This will be done this month. My first working day with Xebia IN will be October 1st, but that will also be the day that we move from our old place in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, to the new place in New Delhi, India. I’ll take the first few days of to settle into the new surroundings.
Housing
I hope to find housing while I’m in India this month, so that we will know where we land October 1st. I’m now focusing on the South Delhi region, more specifically Saket, Shivalik and Hauz Khas. Through the internet, I have found a few housing agents that advertise with houses in the area. Our office manager at Xebia helped me arrange a big house hunt for this weekend. Both on Saturday and Sunday I’ll be visiting several options in the area with agents. One of my colleagues offered to join me for the hunt. I’m really pleased with this arrangement, since finding a suitable house might be a little tricky, and local intelligence will help me circumvent the pitfalls. I have to say that the whole team of Xebia IN has been very helpful with all steps in this process. I hope I can express my gratitude.
Moving
The office manager of Xebia NL is arranging moving of our stuff to India. We’re planning to take only the very necessary and leave all other things behind. We decided to go for air cargo as opposed to shipping, since it will take less time and, for the amount we are planning to move, is not that much more expensive. After requesting some offers from door-to-door shipping companies, we decided to choose local handlers. That way we can do the packing ourselves and the handler will move our stuff to and from the airport, making arrangements with the airport handlers. The arrangements still need to be finalized, but I’m confident it is in capable hands.
Learning Hindi
One of the things I also want to arrange is learning some basic Hindi. I find it very important to be able to understand some of the conversations around me and also be able to interact with people that are not so at ease with English. I’ve found a tutor here in Gurgaon and hope to have my first lesson this week.
Role and Tasks
In my last ‘Moving-to-India’-blog, I mentioned that I would be discussing my role within Xebia India with the various people involved. The first thing I did was discussing this with my Business Unit Manager. We came up with some areas of interest and some concrete goals to achieve. I felt rather pleased with this meeting and was steaming confidently ahead with this new assignment. A few days later I spoke to the General Manager of Xebia and his view on the topic was quite different and to me rather unexpected. He suggested to do nothing for the first few months… His point was that I would need this time to get comfortable in my new job. After he had opened my eyes, I decided to take down the pace. We did have the other meetings I had planned, but I refrained from setting any concrete goals.
So, on this topic there isn’t anything to report, really. From October 1st I will be working for Xebia IN in the same role as I now have with Xebia NL.
The next step in this project will be finding a suitable house. I’ll get acquainted with the housing situation in South Delhi this weekend and will tell you all about it in the next blog.

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