Well, I've got my residence permit. Six months after applying, I have a work permit and a residence permit which allows me to work on my work permit. My case is unusual, but at the same time not so crazy that it should have taken six months. The bottom line is I had a valid residence permit already which technically didn't allow me to work - but I had a work permit on paper which overruled that. So the immigration office saw no rush in giving me a fresh one - and to some extent, I didn't either.
The mechanic has just reported that our car is running fine, except for some small vibrations in the engine. He still wants to find a new head for the car and replace it - but he's bringing the car back to me today. He'll want to take it back once he finds a new head. I'm thinking - what's a vibration when we don't know whether we'll be here after another year or so? It's chivalrous of the guy not to charge me before the work's complete, but I'd like my debt with him to be settled so we can be back in control of the car - then give it back to him if need be and pay him for whatever work arises after that.
Also, we have been making plans to go on a "cruise" boat trip in the Volta Region next weekend. That's a two-hour drive each way and I do want to make sure the car's up for that. If not we'd have to look for public transportation. It's very hard to make plans when you're not sure they'll be possible. If the car shouldn't be driving for two hours straight on this warped head, I want to know that, and I don't know if I trust this mechanic's word one way or the other.
Anyway, I do have my residence permit, which is a huge burden off of my shoulders. And we might have a working car again.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, December 12, 2011
Harmattan is coming!
At this time of year at home, I know Coke should be rolling out the ever-so-traditional Santa Claus commercials. I remember the old days when the hushed, excited choir would murmur, "Santa packs are coming! Saaanta packs are coming!" Santa Packs were, of course, the limited-edition printed boxes of Coke cans that came out at Christmastime. Then, a good few years ago, it changed to "Holidays are coming! Hooolidays are coming!" Part of me appreciated Coke's acknowledgement that December didn't only mean Santa (and therefore Christmas), but a bigger part of me always knew the hat-tip was hollow. Where in any of the Coke commercials have you seen a Solstice celebration, a single hanukiyah in the gleaming windows, or the Kwanzaa colors of red, black and green?
Harmattan is the dusty season. It's caused by sandstorms in the Sahara and lasts from December to February. Harmattan is a time which brings a bit of cool relief from the hot season (it has been sweaaaa-tee around here lately). It also brings low humidity, hazy days and thus bad photography conditions and cancelled flights, and I've heard it is the time when most locals catch their colds.
For the past couple of weeks, sunrises and sets have been getting ever pinker, oranger and hazier. I've started to see mist high in the skies along with the sparse clouds. Streetlights (when they work) have been illuminating columns of particles in the air above the roads. And then, this morning, I looked out from my balcony towards the city, and realized I couldn't see any of the farther-away landmarks I'm used to spotting.
Anyway, Coke's little earworm is the tune I'm imagining when I read the title of this post.
Harmattan is the dusty season. It's caused by sandstorms in the Sahara and lasts from December to February. Harmattan is a time which brings a bit of cool relief from the hot season (it has been sweaaaa-tee around here lately). It also brings low humidity, hazy days and thus bad photography conditions and cancelled flights, and I've heard it is the time when most locals catch their colds.
For the past couple of weeks, sunrises and sets have been getting ever pinker, oranger and hazier. I've started to see mist high in the skies along with the sparse clouds. Streetlights (when they work) have been illuminating columns of particles in the air above the roads. And then, this morning, I looked out from my balcony towards the city, and realized I couldn't see any of the farther-away landmarks I'm used to spotting.
Yes, harmattan is definitely coming. I'll be away for two weeks of it over Christmas time, and I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like with the enthusiasm of someone who's never seen it before!
Work's been crazy - we had a hardware issue last week and were disconnected from the internet until Friday. There's a huge project HQ wants us to complete which is above and beyond the annual targets HQ themselves set for us, and means we'll need to process about 1000 extra files, and the system we use to deal with those files was the only one that still functioned. So we used the outage time for a lot of people to do preliminary work on a handful of those files to help me with my impending case load.
It's like my colleague explained to my seamstress (working hard on my choir uniform, which looks gorgeous!): imagine you have no power; you can do a bit of work sewing by hand, and during daylight hours, but a lot of your bigger capacity is gone. It was a four-day blow in a very busy office, and now we are totally backlogged.
We've got a choir show coming up on Thursday; any readers who are in Accra should come see. Goethe Institut, 7 PM, entrance 5 cedis to benefit Street Girls Aid (check them out at www.said-ghana.com). It won't last more than an hour. We've been working very hard on these songs and it will really be a treat.
Last but not least, I took my German exam last week... we'll know this week how I did. Although I definitely made a few mistakes, I also think I did a pretty good job. Which would mean that next year (if I choose to continue) I'd be starting an advanced German course. Advanced! I feel like I could do with a repeat of the past level or two just to solidify my knowledge... I haven't been a very good student when it comes to doing homework, learning new verb tenses or studying at all outside of class time. Though I can read magazine texts, children's stories and comic books with little assistance, I don't have the confidence to speak. Hoping that two weeks in Germany will help with that - knowing that people will understand me if I just open my mouth, no matter if the pronoun ending doesn't agree with the number or whatever my worry may be.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
the birds, the birds!
Why can't work be more like Angry Birds?
I submit to you, readers: guilty as charged! I am an Angry Birds afficionado. But nothing more. Lately I've found myself slingshotting the adorable and talented flightless avians towards captive exotics' cages and evil monkeys while waiting for lunch, stuck in traffic (in the passenger seat only!), or taking a five-minute disengage break from the daunting number of tasks and the implications of sub-tasks at the new job.
In Angry Birds:
Tasks are clear. The objective is directly in sight. (Free the birds/kill the monkeys!)
If you make a mistake, you can start over immediately. Especially helpful in that window of time between you knowing you missed that last monkey, and the moment the game picks up on that and taunts you with soul-tamping evil monkey laughs and "Level failed."
Every sub-task has a clear function (each bird has its own specialty).
When you get tired of it, you can close it - or revisit any level you know you kicked ass on.
Learning curves are clear; they show you the trail of the previous bird you've fired so you can easily modify your next try.
Maybe this post should be titled "Why Angry Birds is perfect for people with ADD," instead.
In my new job:
Many tasks are clear, but the path is not. Three months from now, I need to have delivered a deliverable. Some steps along the way are enumerated, but the onus is definitely on me to organize myself, hold myself and others accountable, and keep delivering. Having lazed around for so long, with no one but myself and Jens to be held responsible to, I'd forgotten how it feels to be working for others.
Still, after five days in the job I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. It'll be a challenge the whole way through but I'm coming to terms with the pace of the day and how to talk to others. Also I have to take initiative - which lately has become harder and harder for me, but in a new environment is easier.
As I've suddenly switched from zero commitment to 11-hour days (8:30am at work to 7:45pm finishing German), we have had to reconfigure who does the errands. Jens, despite suffering an unknown bug all week, has been a saint in picking up our bagels, topping up the electricity, going shopping and anything else needing to be done during business hours. I hope we can figure out a way to share the duties better, but this first week it's been a godsend. And I'm finally motivated to get to bed early because I know I'll need all the sleep I can get to survive the week!
Jens has also committed to making tiramisu this week to use the mascarpone sitting in our fridge. We've been looking for ladyfingers around here with no luck, so he's making those from scratch too. Last night wasn't his best for baking but he's going for it again tonight. You should be jealous of me, 'cause I'm about to have homemade tiramisu!
I submit to you, readers: guilty as charged! I am an Angry Birds afficionado. But nothing more. Lately I've found myself slingshotting the adorable and talented flightless avians towards captive exotics' cages and evil monkeys while waiting for lunch, stuck in traffic (in the passenger seat only!), or taking a five-minute disengage break from the daunting number of tasks and the implications of sub-tasks at the new job.
In Angry Birds:
Tasks are clear. The objective is directly in sight. (Free the birds/kill the monkeys!)
If you make a mistake, you can start over immediately. Especially helpful in that window of time between you knowing you missed that last monkey, and the moment the game picks up on that and taunts you with soul-tamping evil monkey laughs and "Level failed."
Every sub-task has a clear function (each bird has its own specialty).
When you get tired of it, you can close it - or revisit any level you know you kicked ass on.
Learning curves are clear; they show you the trail of the previous bird you've fired so you can easily modify your next try.
Maybe this post should be titled "Why Angry Birds is perfect for people with ADD," instead.
In my new job:
Many tasks are clear, but the path is not. Three months from now, I need to have delivered a deliverable. Some steps along the way are enumerated, but the onus is definitely on me to organize myself, hold myself and others accountable, and keep delivering. Having lazed around for so long, with no one but myself and Jens to be held responsible to, I'd forgotten how it feels to be working for others.
Still, after five days in the job I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. It'll be a challenge the whole way through but I'm coming to terms with the pace of the day and how to talk to others. Also I have to take initiative - which lately has become harder and harder for me, but in a new environment is easier.
As I've suddenly switched from zero commitment to 11-hour days (8:30am at work to 7:45pm finishing German), we have had to reconfigure who does the errands. Jens, despite suffering an unknown bug all week, has been a saint in picking up our bagels, topping up the electricity, going shopping and anything else needing to be done during business hours. I hope we can figure out a way to share the duties better, but this first week it's been a godsend. And I'm finally motivated to get to bed early because I know I'll need all the sleep I can get to survive the week!
Jens has also committed to making tiramisu this week to use the mascarpone sitting in our fridge. We've been looking for ladyfingers around here with no luck, so he's making those from scratch too. Last night wasn't his best for baking but he's going for it again tonight. You should be jealous of me, 'cause I'm about to have homemade tiramisu!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
New floor, new roommate
The tile layers might just be finished. They came yesterday to re-tile our bedroom. The bed's pushed to a corner and we aren't supposed to move it for a couple of days. One thing they left behind is dust. Lots and lots of dust, as well as some dusty handprints on doors, doorframes, and walls, and spatters of grout on a couple of walls and windows. I suppose their job isn't, technically, to clean up after themselves (let alone to try to work cleanly in the first place). Another facet of customer service lost here...
There are also a couple of tiles that sound loose in the kitchen; however, the tiler explained that because their grout isn't cracked, they'll never shift or tent like the ones in the other rooms. We'll see how that prediction works out.
The work day at Esoko tends to go from 9:30am to 6pm. This is an issue for the German class I'd like to take, which runs 5:30-7:45 four days a week. Finally, the opportunity to be taught by a German again, and I may have to show up to class an hour late every day! Not to mention, I'd essentially be on the go 12 hours a day. I'm hoping we can work out a compromise where I get to work around 8:30 and leave at 5:30, then get to German half an hour late every day. Most of the people in the class are familiar faces, but there's one new guy who last night asked me to help him perfect his American accent in my free time, gave me a hair-raising car ride most of my way home, and today called me to ask if I have any books in German. There's taking advantage and then there's taking advantage of new contacts. Like the time the neighbor downstairs asked me to do "anything I could" by asking my boyfriend to get the neighbor's son a job at Google. The kid had almost finished his certificate in IT.
At the job, there's a lot to get used to and I have to get up to speed really quickly, so I'm having meetings daily with heads of departments to walk me through how everything works. It will be a challenge. At the moment, not fully familiar with what I have to get done, I'm nervous- but if they say I can do this first project in three months, then I can do it.
We have a new roommate: a 10-month Google intern. Not much more to say on that front!
There are also a couple of tiles that sound loose in the kitchen; however, the tiler explained that because their grout isn't cracked, they'll never shift or tent like the ones in the other rooms. We'll see how that prediction works out.
The work day at Esoko tends to go from 9:30am to 6pm. This is an issue for the German class I'd like to take, which runs 5:30-7:45 four days a week. Finally, the opportunity to be taught by a German again, and I may have to show up to class an hour late every day! Not to mention, I'd essentially be on the go 12 hours a day. I'm hoping we can work out a compromise where I get to work around 8:30 and leave at 5:30, then get to German half an hour late every day. Most of the people in the class are familiar faces, but there's one new guy who last night asked me to help him perfect his American accent in my free time, gave me a hair-raising car ride most of my way home, and today called me to ask if I have any books in German. There's taking advantage and then there's taking advantage of new contacts. Like the time the neighbor downstairs asked me to do "anything I could" by asking my boyfriend to get the neighbor's son a job at Google. The kid had almost finished his certificate in IT.
At the job, there's a lot to get used to and I have to get up to speed really quickly, so I'm having meetings daily with heads of departments to walk me through how everything works. It will be a challenge. At the moment, not fully familiar with what I have to get done, I'm nervous- but if they say I can do this first project in three months, then I can do it.
We have a new roommate: a 10-month Google intern. Not much more to say on that front!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
New Job!
My parents' visit came and went, full of adventures, experiences and learning opportunities. I'm trying now to cut down the photo album - so far, I've picked out 90-something photos from the first week, though there won't be as many from the last few days of the visit once I download those.
Today's my first day on the job at Esoko, a company which runs an internet- and phone-based system connecting farmers to local market prices for their goods and helping them keep inventory. I will be keeping tabs on the Partner team, which stays in touch with Esoko's on-the-ground partners who train the farmers and implement the system. I'll write the newsletter and update the training materials for new partners. It provides not much structure and lots of freedom, which will be a big challenge for me.
From my building, I can see the fountains in Nkrumah Circle (locally named just Circle). Streams of gushing foot traffic cross the road on a pedestrian overpass. Several times a second, the street noise is punctuated by eloquent honks. On the other side, I glance down Ring Road to Busy Internet, a locally-founded internet cafe and now provider that's made itself into a landmark. Behind the building rises Asylum Down, a neighborhood with as many highrises as one-story cement houses. It's a vivacious but more business-oriented part of Accra and I'm in the thick of it.
Looking out from the rooftop garden (a tiled plaza bordered by scrappy cement planters) onto one of the chambers of Accra's thumping heart, I saw all the essences of life bustling below me, and I told myself - I can't let them down. I am going to thrive here.
Today's my first day on the job at Esoko, a company which runs an internet- and phone-based system connecting farmers to local market prices for their goods and helping them keep inventory. I will be keeping tabs on the Partner team, which stays in touch with Esoko's on-the-ground partners who train the farmers and implement the system. I'll write the newsletter and update the training materials for new partners. It provides not much structure and lots of freedom, which will be a big challenge for me.
From my building, I can see the fountains in Nkrumah Circle (locally named just Circle). Streams of gushing foot traffic cross the road on a pedestrian overpass. Several times a second, the street noise is punctuated by eloquent honks. On the other side, I glance down Ring Road to Busy Internet, a locally-founded internet cafe and now provider that's made itself into a landmark. Behind the building rises Asylum Down, a neighborhood with as many highrises as one-story cement houses. It's a vivacious but more business-oriented part of Accra and I'm in the thick of it.
Looking out from the rooftop garden (a tiled plaza bordered by scrappy cement planters) onto one of the chambers of Accra's thumping heart, I saw all the essences of life bustling below me, and I told myself - I can't let them down. I am going to thrive here.
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