It is always a challenge starting in a new working environment, firstly you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you so there is a very quick learning curve as you get to know who does what on the project and where you fit in to the project. I am no stranger to working in International teams and understanding the mentalities of people from different countries. Except here 90% of the team is made up of local people and I am very much in the minority. In fact there are only three in a team of thirty who are not Pakistani nationals.
I’m the first to admit and I’m not the best with languages and like most Brits, are spoiled by the fact that many overseas nationals will speak some form of English. This always gets interesting when working in a region where English maybe the second or third language. I have discussed previously in my book Do we need Architects, A journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture, the notion that English is not English when working in the Middle East, here there is another form of English referred to by locals as Asian English where English words are used but not necessarily assembled in any coherent order, particularly in the written form, where entire reports are essentially meaningless to anybody outside of the room, and of course nobody takes too kindly when you start trying to correct their English, and like the mentality displayed on the road everybody knows best. As with every team there are those characters that seem to turn simplest discussion into a full-blown argument except that in this office there are many.
The planning team numbering two, have to become experts in urban economics, transport, waste water, hydrology, and infrastructure as none of the team seem to be able to give a straight answer on anything. All of this means that as a team leader there is no time to stand over members of the team to make sure that they are doing their part, which opens up the possibility of things go wrong, In fact, in this environment it’s not a 50% chance of something going wrong it is more like 100% chance, except that you don’t know this at that time. What are invariably happens is after repeated attempts to delegate a piece of work to members of the team you still end up having to do it yourself.
This is a very noisy office with conversations and discussions happening at full volume simultaneously in three and possibly four languages depending on which group is having a discussion. Urdu, Punjabi with elements of Arabic thrown in along with the local version of English or in many cases English words merged with the local language, meaning that you get to overhear conversations that sound something like this:
‘GG yum yum yum urban planning, yum yum yum tikka, yum yum G’
Which sounds like they are talking about food all the time. Of course they could be talking about food, as it seems to dominate every conversation, particularly when people insist on referring to different zones or individual elements of the project or indeed their workload as portions that makes the project sound as though it is chicken. Based on the fact that every meal seems to involve varying combinations of chicken and oil it comes as no surprise.
Of course at the same time could also criticising the work of the planning team or committing the planning team to more work that they are not aware of, or it could be something else entirely, probably related to politics. All the while making it very difficult to concentrate and as a result much of the design work takes place in the guesthouse throughout evenings and weekends.
Lessons being learned in the office are not surprisingly, mostly concerned with communication, nobody tells you when they have finished a task, neither do they tell you that they have not been able to complete the task and just sit at their workstation chatting with friends, or chatting on facebook on their phone, waiting for you to tell them what to do next. It is not until asking for at least the fourth time that you learn what has or has not been done. Everything that would be expected to be easy in a modern working office seems to be a major problem even something as simple as sending a document to the printer...
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