Life Update And New Beginnings in 2018, New Office Location at WeWork – #OfficeLifeSeries

Hi all,
The year 2018 is finally wrapping up. How have you guys been feeling? Today’s post is going to be a bit different. This is not a beauty or skincare related post. Its going to be more of a personal life post. As the year is going to end, am going to share some of the major changes that have happened in my life recently. Yes, my life recently got a lifestyle upgrade from the universe ????. And it all had to do with my office shifting to a new location. So that’s what I will be talking about in this post, the shifting process, my new office life, the facilities here and my work changes. Read on if you are interested ????

To begin with, I had no idea what the universe had in store for me and that too at a moment when I least expected. When they told in my office, they were going to shift to a new location, I was rather sad. Because workaholics like me are emotionally attached to our workplace environments as much as we have emotional connections to our home. The last day in our office before shifting, I actually cried, as I knew I was going to miss this lovely place. So many things have happened for me there and my heart was still in that place.

On September 3, we shifted to our new office in WeWork, Embassy Tech Village. So WeWork is actually an international co-working space and they have their office locations across the world including US, Australia, Italy, Japan, Canada, Russia, Spain, just to name a few. But I had no clue about the international standards that were going to be part of our environment. When I entered the building on day 1, I felt like walking into an airport lounge ????. Not just me, many of my colleagues felt the same. I have worked in a MNC company before, but well, I haven’t been much impressed ????. But here the standards were very different, really international in every way. It takes some time to get used to coworking offices.

To start with, I was greeted cordially by the WeWork team members who gave a quick rundown on which floor my office was and also that they were serving breakfast today since its the launching day. The cafeteria looked really cool and there were some mini pizzas to start the day with. I headed to my office in the first floor where the inauguration function was going on. Some really happy moments and photo clicks followed.

Since it was the first day, we were still setting up things – wifi, cables, lockers etc. Our monitors hadn’t arrived yet and we were working with our laptops only. But the mood in the office was everyone super happy and excited with the new work environment. And in the afternoon, we were served some yummy buffet lunch as its the launch day. As I was biting into those delicious gulab jamuns, I was anything but surprised and happy for this moment.

For the first few days, work hadn’t begun in full swing as we were still waiting for our monitors to arrive from the old office and coding was a pain without the monitors. I was taking this time more to explore the campus and the facilities. Our meeting room where we have our daily scrum looked so cool. The interior decors were just maintained in super international standards. And the coffee! Oh my God! If you know me, I am a person with a lavish taste for coffee and heels ???? And I can’t function without a cup of good strong coffee in the day. I have had bad experience with coffee machines in my previous MNC offices where the coffee is diluted, watery and is made from milk powder or unboiled milk or bad coffee beans. Well here, it felt like the universe wanted to match me up with the perfect coffee for me. The coffee here is just like the ilks of one you’d find on this website! No kidding! Not even CCD level I would say. Way better than that. Made from organic coffee beans from a brand called Tokai. And they have all options like Cappuccino, Latte, Machiatto (which is like a super bold shot for bold people ????), Americano and Espresso. On the first day, I thought maybe as days pass, they won’t maintain the coffee machine properly or change the coffee beans to local brands. ‘Coz it happened in my previous offices. Coffee machines if don’t maintained properly can produce the worst coffee ever. But till now I am still having the awesome coffee. I see that WeWork employees are really doing a good job in the maintenance part.

For tea lovers, there is a Chai Point tea machine. And they have cardamom and masala powders separately which we can add to our tea if we wish. Also we have a variety of Twinings tea bags – English Breakfast Tea, Darjeeling Tea, Assam Tea, Lemon Ginger, Green Tea, etc. Yeeee! I sometimes take some tea bags home to do face packs ????. Also brown sugar packets which make an excellent body scrub when mixed with coconut oil. I have seen brown sugar packets served only in five star restaurants ????.

Also we have fruit detox water. They have a big fruit infuser vessel and each day they use different fruits – watermelon, pineapple, mosambi, guava, pomegranate and even kiwi sometimes. This is a super healthy option for employees and am glad that WeWork has come up with this facility in office. There’s also a cookie jar and hershey’s chocolate syrup to pour on the cookies and eat. And a variety of exotic sauces and seasonings.

The lockers here are number lockers, so we don’t have to bother with losing keys ever. I store my snacks and munchies in one draw and my laptops in another draw.

Now coming to the most unique and exciting thing about WeWork, they have an event every evening. There are all types of events ranging from work-related workshops to hobby-related workshops like photography basics, cupcake making hands-on, rock painting and also physical activity sessions like zumba, functional training, meditation, yoga. These are really useful sessions. Download the My Yoga Teacher app and you can have a class with an expert. Then we also have fun sessions with games like musical chairs, housie housie, quiz, etc. This was the first I played musical chairs in office and it was so much fun and laughing. We even had a movie friday evening where they telecast Lion King movie with some popcorn. WeWork has an app which all employees need to download and we get a notification everyday on the event for that day. Some days they just send a notification that there is a surprise waiting for you in the lobby. And when we go down, they do have some cute surprises. Once we got Polar Bear icecreams, another day tender coconuts, live chaat counter, brownies, mini pizzas, blueberry muffins, hummus strips and all sorts of pampering stuff 😀

Facilities provided by our own office (above are of the co-working space) have also increased after shifting here. Every evening they are providing us snacks, a different variety each day – cutlets, samosas, paani puri, sandwich, fruit salad, etc. We just love going and seeing what snacks are waiting for us everyday at 4 pm. And our pantries are also stocked full with cup noodles, cookies, haldirams, soft drinks and stuff. Plus, for this Diwali, they had arranged a splendid grand buffet dinner for us. And we all got a luggage trolley as Diwali gift. I was so happy to receive the huge box and was grinning from ear to ear when carrying it home. The trolley was even tied with a nice ribbon to make it appear like a gift.

Work-wise also, there have been improvements in my life. Am now doubling up as a devops. After the previous devops quit, am now handling all the client deployments. They have also involved me in a new iOS project and I have been given a MacBook for developing. I guess that’s a milestone in a software engineer’s career. So now I have 3 office laptops – linux for coding, windows for deployment and macbook for ios app coding ☺. Am really happy with these new roles and there’s lot of interesting work happening these days.

Am just infinitely grateful and thankful to the universe for all these things. This year has been very hard and frightening for me as I lost my dad. I still haven’t recovered from the shock and cry thinking about him many times. But sometimes I feel that my dad is there in heaven and he is the one clearing up my path and creating these wonderful opportunities for me. As its said, a dad and daughter’s love is timeless.

Hope you liked this personal post of mine! If you would like more personal posts, like a day in my life, etc, let me know in the comments below.

Also checkout:
* My Beauty Wishlist for 2018
* My Beauty Wishlist for 2017
* Beauty Favorites of 2017 | Best Beauty Buys in 2017
* Best Beauty Launches of 2016
* The Survivalist Guide to Eating on the Go
* Enjoy a Cuppa Coffee with Beanstalk & Leaves
* Review of Rejoov Cold Pressed Juices – Part II
* Review of Snalthy Healthy Snacks