Huh!…I never thought the day would come that I actually would wake up, put on a shirt, working pants and a tie to go to work. Still unable to iron my own clothes, I put on what I consider half-iron shirt and headed to work. Same old londoner taking the tube and all. But instead, this time I am travelling out of London into High Wycombe. I must say that its a very nice town from what I have seen yesterday, and I really don’t mind moving out there when I come back to Sri Lanka.
So its kindda strange that my 3 months break where I have seen a significant increase in carbon footprint has finally come to an end. And yes, strangely enough I am quite glad that I will be entering a more routine life. I am glad that I took 3 months off. I don’t think I would ever be satisfied to go straight from finish studying to entering work. Whats more? I don’t actually think that my holiday is over…3 weeks from now I will be on the plane to Colombo. Never been there, don’t know what to expect. But I think I will like it.
*** 1 week later…. ***
Can you believe this? 1 week of working life just gone…like that. Its been a crazy week in terms of commuting. You see, my office is in High Wycombe, and I live in central London. So it takes me around 2 hours to get to work. Sometimes its faster with a bit of running. But you know what? The fact that I can still wake up every morning at 6:30am with a big smile on my face, looking forward to the 2 hour commute is remarkable. The office is very spacious with large desks for about 100+ of us in the office. Of course big bosses get their rooms with glass doors whilst we hardly get a desk for ourselves. Its very different from what I am used to. Surely, there are supervisors who share the same floor space as us, but there is an atmosphere of freedom in a motivating way, which no other jobs had given me. Perhaps is the fact that there are 6 of us starting and its quite a good group culture here.
I can’t wait until I get a car and be able to drive to work. In a way, I could see myself starting a life here in this little town called High Wycombe. I have experienced the big cities like London, lived in satellite cities like Atsugi and now is a nice change to a small English town on the suburbs. Perhaps its the initial excitement. Nevertheless, I am excited about learning new things, but moreover, it is the structured training which I like. Its unlike AK when I was free to do anything, and that nobody cared if I was not working or that I had too much free time. Over here, I get the right amount to keep me going. Going to talks and presentations on different departments, learning about warehouses and finance. Its the flexibility and the technical knowledge I am acquiring everyday. Now I’m learning Oracle, PL/SQL, I will be learing C# later, and before you know it, I will be an Engineer who programs.
I am grateful for everything that happened in Japan. I am grateful to my housemates who helped me grow as a person. I am grateful that I could take 3 months out to do what I had always wanted to do, and do it for myself. It will inevitably make me a better person and a more sucessful person in the future. I am excited and optimistic.