Things are beginning to pick up now in my third week at work. I’m still a long way from being a fully productive member of the engineering community here, but I’ve been slowly building up my network, meeting the important “node” people, picking up signals regarding the politics that I’m only just skimming the surface of right now, and am starting to gain confidence in the key IT systems that I’ll be working with.
I’m typically at work two or three days a week, and the commute - by train and folding bike (writing that the other way around would raise a weird second alternative to consider: by folding bike and train…) - is beginning to feel normal, even though there are regular frustrations with dear old Auntie DeeBee (DB, Deutsche Bahn). I had been prepared to drive to work by car, but found that the strike action that had threatened my rail commute had been called off, resulting in a renewed public transport rush to the station to catch the only slightly delayed - but running - train.
Once on the train, though, it was fine: I could read, gaze out of the window - the typical upsides of having someone else take care of the major kilometers, and then switching to the bike for the niggly station-to-desk portion of the trip.
