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I am sorry I have been away from our site for many weeks. My wife and I reached Germany in mid-Aug and it is only now that we are fully settled. There were many challenges when we started here. My work was the biggest challenge. I am coming back from an 8 month long break from employment that I took to sort my life after my diagnosis in Sept 2007. I had a good time during the break though…travelled all over India, pursued my interests , took my prescribed medication and was feeling a lot better than what I was just an year ago. As soon as I joined RLE International, my new employer in Germany, I was given a test assignment to prove my suitability for being in their design team. The stakes were high for me and I faltered in the beginning. By God’s grace I managed to hold on to my nerve and completed the test. I took an embarrassingly long time but at least I completed it and that seemed enough to ensure that I kept my job. 2 months have passed since then and with the help of my German colleagues Marco Saxinger and Stefan Kilian, I have made a lot of progress. In the meantime, finding an apartment was proving to be more difficult than we thought. Finally last week we got one in a place called Maichingen and it is so good that I feel it was worth the wait.
Another advantage here is that I found an adult ADHD (ADHS in German) support group in Böblingen which meets every month on the third Thursday. I went there last month. A writer named Uwe Metz was invited who reviewed his recently published book on the bright side of ADHD. I can understand German and speak a little so I could follow their discussions. It was a very good experience for me. The meeting this month was on 16th, a day after we moved into our new apartment. I made all the plans to be there, took down the bus route number and time and waited at the bus stop which is just 100m from our apartment. I knew which direction I had to travel but kept waiting at the bus stop on the wrong side of the road (correct side if I was still in India). I realized my mistake only when the right bus actually arrived. By then it was too late to cross the road and I missed the support group meeting for this month. How could I not realize it when I saw the general traffic while waiting for the bus!! Some things don’t change :-) But I won’t let it happen next month.
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