Half A World Away

It would be remarkably easy for me to become a racist. As an IT guy, I'm surrounded by Indians whose English is often difficult to understand, whose names are all but impossible for me to remember and whose presence in the market is driving down the rates I need to keep The Family Stan in good style.

I haven't joined the BNP, but I guess in my mind, I've regarded them as interchangable pieces of office furniture and I've rarely socialised, even though as fellow geeks I'm sure we'd have a lot in common.

Last Friday, I checked out of my Travelodge pod and brought all my luggage into work with me. Half-way through co-operating on a bit of Linux magic with a Indian lady, she noticed my bags and asked if I had family. Out came the pics of Stanetta and Mrs Stan and she showed me pictures of her boy, and she told me that she's been extended to the end of the year and wouldn't see her boy for another 3 months and I'll be damned if both of us weren't on the verge of making a tearful exhibition of ourselves in the open-plan office.

It's rough being away from home - I remember when I worked in Frankfurt I only managed to get home every alternate weekend - but the idea that your career needs you to be that far from your family for that long is crushing. It's no picnic either for those left behind, but that side of the story is for Mrs Stan and Stanetta to tell whenever they get their blogging boots on.

I'm a fan of globalism. I'm a fan of free-trade (it cuts prices and it stops war). And I acknowledge that problems of this generation of Indians is as nothing compared to those of their parents and grandparents. But there's a price being paid here.

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The tech company Teradata claim that they have "Operationalized the Enterprise". Anyone can inventionate a word by appendising to a pre-existioned word, but what exactly do they mean ? Apparently it means leveraging strategic intelligence to enable operational excellence. Still not sure entirely what it all means, but well done Teradata anyway.