It seems I may not be the only one these days who is frustrated about the results of the Foreign Service assignments process. Yes, directed assignments to Iraq for mid-level officers were announced after business hours this past Friday. Welcome to the State Department version of the draft, which as far as I am aware has not ever been used on those above the entry level (i.e. those who are in their first few years of service, and who don’t have a choice in general).

Don’t worry - I’m not in the running to be a “prime candidate.” That is reserved for those who have achieved a level within the organization so as to (except for now) allow them to more or less choose where and to what positions they want to go. Not a category I fall into.

It’s that time of year again.  Americans are buying candy, carving up pumpkins, and trying to decide what kind of person, creature or comic book character they wish to pretend to be for a night.

Halloween on the military base is perhaps more surreal than Halloween in general, because it’s sanitized.  Whereas elsewhere this is a holiday for kids to be cute and adults to wear things they’d never dare to wear in real life, here the second part of that equation is markedly absent, and everything is focused on the kids.  Even if you haven’t got kids, you’re supposed to hang out with a family that does have kids, so as to partake  of the cuteness.  And if you do find a gathering of adults, the gathering is short (so as to get back home to the kids) and the costumes, while semi-required, are only slightly more racy than your average stereotypical schoolmarm.

Halloween falls this year on a Wednesday, so it appears that most people are celebrating tonight, Friday the 27th.  Am I among the celebrants, you might ask? Perhaps. There’s a gathering of mostly adults at the residence of our embassy’s Marine security guards this evening.  But I have no costume and no time to get or make one.  And given only a few hours, it’s certainly harder to invent a modest one from what I’ve alrady got in the closet than it is to modify some things and make up one that is on the racier side.  Any suggestions?  Maybe I’ll just avoid the whole incognito thing altogether…

I made a comment a while ago about the list I submitted to the department and how I didn’t want to jinx things by disclosing the list. I shouldn’t have worried. My list was:

1. Kathmandu, Nepal, GSO, Jan 2009
2. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, GSO, Feb 2009
3. Port au Prince, Haiti, POL, Oct 2008
4. Kingston, Jamaica, GSO, Aug 2008
5. Frankfurt, Germany, POL, Jun 2009
6. Accra, Ghana, ECON, Sept 2008
7. Chennai, India, GSO, Oct 2008
8. Sarajevo, Bosnia, GSO, Jan 2009
9. Kyiv, Ukraine, ECON, Feb 2009
10. Maputo, Mozambique, POL, Mar 2009
11. Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, POL, Oct 2008
12. Dubai, United Arab Emirates, GSO, Mar 2009
13. Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, GSO, Apr 2009
14. Lilongwe, Malawi, GSO, Jan 2009
15. Bamako, Mali, ECON, Sept 2008
16. La Paz, Bolivia, GSO, Jan 2009
17. Port au Prince, Haiti, CONS-ECON, Nov 2008
18. Bangkok, Thailand, POL-CONS, Mar 2009
19. Bujumbura, Burundi, POL, Feb 2009
20. Toronto, Canada, ECON-CONS, Aug 2008

Note: Each of these is a 2-year tour, and those jobs with a “-” between two descriptions indicate one year in each embassy section listed. Key to section abbreviations: GSO = management, i.e. real estate, motorpool, repairs and maintenance, logistics; POL = political work, i.e. your stereotypical diplomat; ECON = almost like political work but focused more on economics - also kind of a stereotypical diplomat; CONS = consular work, i.e. visas, visas, visas (like i’m doing here), and dealing with U.S. citizens who get into various situations abroad. You’ll note that I specifically avoided bidding on any 2-year consular tours at all, no matter how nice the location might be, because the job really does not suit me.

What they gave me:

Kingston, Jamaica, CONS, Sept 2008

No, it was not on my list.  I hadn’t even considered it as an option for my list.  Also, still no guarantee that my husband will be able to be posted with me (they tell me, “but the commute from Kingston to D.C. is at least shorter”).

I’m, um, not elated.

This is the second time in a row that something similar has happened to me in the assignments process, and I can’t help but compare my experience unfavorably with that of most of my colleagues. I feel evil for feeling resentful, but every time the assignments people try to tell me about “equity” (this being based exclusively on the perceived hardship of where you are, not whether it was a job or place you wanted), I want to throw things.

Today I submitted a list to the State Department.  It’s a list of the 20 places/jobs from a list of 423 places/jobs that I think might not be bad for my next tour of duty.

There were a lot of factors to consider: Is the post big enough to be able to have two jobs so I can live together with my husband? Is the job something that’s not going to drive me to a nervous breakdown? Is the location a place that I might be able to see myself living? Does the timing work for when I’m supposed to leave Seoul? Do I speak the language? Does my husband speak the language? What kind of training will I need? Will any of the jobs still be there when they get down to the last-priority people on the list (aka: me)?

Thinking about all of these things at once and trying to sort them out has kept my mind pretty busy over the past couple of weeks. But now it’s over. The list has been sent, and it’s in the hands of a higher power now. (That would be the assignments officer, in case you’re wondering.)  So: fingers crossed.  Think good thoughts.

When two Foreign Service Officers get married, there’s a lot of paperwork to be done.  They’ve even got a guide to what you need to do and forms you need to submit.  Basically, in the absence of this paperwork, one or more governments might consider you to be married, hospitals and lawyers and whoever else might consider you to be married, but the State Department will not consider you to be married to one another.  Not without the appropriate paperwork.

We thought we were on the ball with the paperwork.  We even submitted some of it earlier than we needed to.  But we found out this week that, somehow, the documents sent by our officiant to the county to officially register our marriage did not actually make it to the appropriate office at the county.  We wouldn’t have realized this for quite some time had the State Department not insisted we provide the actual official copy of our marriage certificate.  So we find ourselves actually somewhat thankful that we have to jump through all of these hoops and submit all of this paperwork.  It’ll be a major pain to fix the problem, considering the people who need to sign things are now in three different locations, each separated by several time zones, but at least we know about it.

Now if we could only encourage the powers that be to consider allowing us to live in the same city, we’ll have made some great strides . . .

Today I took a guided tour and got out of Bangkok (not far out, but out nonetheless). For those who know me well, you’ll be impressed to learn I actually got up and ready on a weekend morning in time to catch the bus at 6:45 at a hotel down the street. We went to the royal family’s summer palace and a place called Ayutthaya (a former capital of Thailand that was almost completely destroyed during a war with the Burmese), then got on a boat to come back down the river to Bangkok. Without further ado . . .

I got out and did some sightseeing in Bangkok today…

Here in Thailand, the commonly-used term for white people is “farang.” The origin of the word (according to the lovely old woman who instructs some of my fellow officers here in the Thai language) is from the days when the first white people came to Thailand. These white people were apparently the French, but the Thai people seem to have had some difficulty saying the word “francais.” She tells me that the best approximation was something like “farans” which was so close to the word for guava (farang) that the latter soon became the commonly-used term. And it has remained the commonly-used term. So: I am a guava. Yum.

I’d like to highlight the most amazing thing about my first day of work at the consular section in Bangkok: people here are happy! I mean, actually happy! Not glum, not dour, not resentful and worn-down-looking, not concentrating on their ailments, trials and tribulations. They smile. Spontaneously, not only in response to a compliment or some ironic statement. And this applies to the officers as well as the locally-hired staff. And it even applies to the visa applicants, even when they don’t end up qualifying for a visa. It is so refreshing. And I think (at least I hope) it might be contagious.