Welcome to Posh Life

Here's me in my salwar kameez. My roomate gave it to me, as she didn't care for it. I'm missing my orna (shawl) to cover my chest. This is the view from the room where I am (temporarily) living. The apartment Kat and I will be moving into is not ready. It currently houses 25 mattresses, 20 boxes of dishes, 10 refrigerators, 15 tvs.... Keep reading to hear more about the apartment saga.

So, I've been on the job two days. My, it's been an interesting two days. First, let me explain what I do. I am the "concierge" for a new women's university. My job is to make faculty and staff happy. I am the "go to" person for problems with faculty housing and questions relating to living and working in Bangladesh. I will also help to make sure visitors and guests of the university are happy.

What does this job description mean in the present moment? I am helping to speed along the completion of an apartment complex where the faculty will live. There is no rhyme or reason as to when this building will be finished. It is a very fancy building known as "Panchlaish"--or "Posh Life." The problem is, Posh Life is not yet totally posh. About half of the apartments are occupied, some by soon to be undergraduate faculty and administration, others by outgoing faculty for the preparatory course (preparing the women in English skills for academic study). The other half are being worked on. There is no particular order to the operations (that I know of yet. All may be revealed soon...but I doubt it.) There also was no apparent order to moving people into specific apartments, as there are a litany of problems in each apartment.

Don't get me wrong--I never expected to live in an apartment this posh. It really is top class. But people were moved into (or moved into and then out of) apartments that were not quite finished yet. So my job is now trying to get the apartments totally finished that people are already living in, and to get the ones not yet lived in to a liveable state. Whew!

Yesterday was my first day on the job. I went into work at the main university building and got to meet people. We also had a staff meeting, so I got to put faces to names and positions. Although, to be honest, there are a lot of positions for each name. There are a lot of people that do a lot of things. In some ways, my job is to make things easier for people. But, of course, what is does not always appear to be...meaning, there has been some questioning of just what I am doing here. This is not easy for me to answer, as I am not totally sure. But things are slowly clearing up.

I think I am a glorified micromanager for the time being. (Kat, I know you think I am PERFECT for this task). I am in charge now of making sure stuff gets done. This means acting like an overseer. This means standing in a kitchen where the cabinets need to be cleaned. I point to the cabinets and say "please clean" to the cleaning ladies. I go off to check email at a table, they work, and then come get me for inspection. I open up the cabinets, and there are piles of dirt inside the cabinets--I had not specifically indicated that the INSIDES of the cabinets needed to be cleaned. So they come in to correct that. Then I point out that the shelves below the cabinets haven't been cleaned. And before letting them correct that, I think ahead and look below the counters to see...more uncleaned cabinets. You see where I am going with this. Eventually ALL the kitchen cabinets got cleaned. But it took a while. I think next time I will pull out my "Mr. Brasso" (= Windex) and muslin grocery bag (they don't use plastic bags here--the muslin bags work great as cleaning rags) and go to town myself.

In the course of two days I have had two people's internet fixed, two doorbells installed, had a washing machine moved to a bathroom and installed, had another washing machine installed, have had putty put on toilet bases (to stop bad smells--I realize that's not gonna stop the problem), and am on the trail of missing keys. This is BIG stuff. It is very interesting, too, realizing that here is this white woman in a salwar kameez telling 5 or 6 men (all working on one thing at a time--multitasking is a foreign concept) what to do, standing nearby while it's being done, then checking the final product to make sure it's ok.

When I get some time, I will make a list and check off my accomplishments. For the time being, I am too busy making more lists of things that need to be repaired and checked on, and trying to figure out just who it is that I am supposed to contact to have the things done...

Photos are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/summerbclewis