Beau Geste, Mon Ami

Everybody Has One

2011-09-18T18:09:00.002+02:00

These giant clamshells come from the Philippines but can also be found in the waters around PNG.

People said, "You're going to Pakistan!" "How exciting!" "How dangerous!" "What a fantastic experience it will be!" "You are so lucky!" And they were right. It was exciting, there was an element of danger and it was most definitely a fantastic experience!

People said, "You're going to Rome!" "How exciting!" "How wonderful!" "What a fantastic experience it will be!" "You are so lucky!" And, again, they were right. It was both exciting and wonderful. The two years I spent living and working in Rome were a truly fantastic experience!

People say, "You're going to Port Moresby, uh huh. Where is that exactly?" "Papua New Guinea!?" "Isn't that where one of the Rockefellers was eaten by cannibals?"

Let's be clear about one thing right away, while it's pretty certain that Michael Rockefeller was in fact eaten while in Papua New Guinea, the jury is still out on whether he was dined upon by his fellow man or consumed by a salt water crocodile. All the current research indicates that the cannibals down there haven't eaten anybody in ages. Headhunters are another story, but no one claims that Michael was a victim of those gentlemen and no evidence that he was has ever appeared in any of the souvenir markets hanging by its hair from a pole marked, "All Items Reduced For Fast Sale!!" However, a bit of headhunting does, apparently, still exist in the course of tribal warfare in the Highlands.

Papua New Guinea also has the distinction of being the last place that Amelia Earhart was seen alive, making it appear that flying off aimlessly into the uncharted South Pacific in a tiny two propeller aircraft was preferable to spending another minute on the island.

After people have googled Papua New Guinea, they come back to me and say, "Are you nuts?"

In fact, people now seek me out to give me what I have come to think of as 'The Bad News of the Day'. People outside the Foreign Service quickly become experts on the deplorable living conditions, the poverty and, more specifically, the high rate of violent crime on the island. "Do you know," they'll ask earnestly, "that Port Moresby is the worst capitol city in the world?" Again, in the interest of accuracy, Port Moresby was identified by the Economist magazine way back in 2005 as the 137th (with #1 being the very best) out of 140 capitol cities surveyed. It was clearly better than three other world capitols and, therefore, could hardly be considered the 'worst' as it didn't even qualify for the bronze medal. More current surveys rank Baku, Azerbaijan as the world's dirtiest capitol, Harare, Zimbabwe as the world's worst capitol to live in and on the 2011 list of the most dangerous capitol cities (with #1 being the most dangerous), Port Moresby ranks way down at 7th. There are neighborhoods in Washington DC that rank above 7th for crying out loud!!

People seem to feel it's their duty to seek me out to share their opinions with me. However, opinions are, indeed, very much like belly buttons; everybody has one and other peoples' are only of passing interest to me. I fully anticipate having a blast while I'm there.

My Foreign Service colleagues have the added benefit of being able to do 'research' (by which I mean that they listen to and/or create gossip, rumor and innuendo) regarding the embassy in Port Moresby. "Do you know," they'll ask earnestly, "that every single one of the Locally Employed Staff have quit to go work for Exxon?" (Our LEStaff are the backbone of our embassies and we could not function without them. To lose any of them is awful, to lose them all is an unthinkable disaster) Well, in fairness, not all of them have quit, we still have the ones that Exxon wouldn't hire! From the legions of people who have never been there, I have learned that the embassy staff are unmotivated, untrained and unwilling to work. Morale, they assure me with whispered sincerity, is low. "As you have never been there, how would you know that?" I ask. "I know a guy in Tokyo who has a buddy in Frankfurt who heard it from a friend in Jakarta and Jakarta is really close to Papua New Guinea." Ok then, as long as the information is that reliable I'll consider it. I have no idea what the situation is like at Embassy Port Moresby and I won't know until I get settled in down there. Part of me hopes that it isn't running with the efficiency of a Swiss watch because I'd much prefer to go into an embassy that needs some help and try to improve things than to go to one that is functioning perfectly and screw it up!

Whistling into this storm of negativity are the handful of folks who have actually served at our embassy in Port Moresby. To a man, or in several cases a woman, they are uniformly and enthusiastically positive about their time and experiences at the embassy and in the country. Some go so far as to call it the best tour of their careers.

Housing is somewhat of an issue in Port Moresby. About a year ago, right after I accepted a handshake for the job, I contacted post and asked them to reserve a specific house for me in our compound of six leased houses. I had the advantage of knowing someone who had just finished a two year tour there and she told me which house to request. "Make sure you get House #1," she said. We have six houses in the compound and three of them, including House #1, have balconies that face the sea. So I, dutifully, sent off my housing request to the Management Officer and GSO appealing to their sense of Management Brotherhood. I carefully mentioned that I have committed to three years at post and would really appreciate favorable housing. I must also confess to having a somewhat inflated sense of my own importance. After all, I would be the incoming Management Officer, a man of stature, a man of position and rank, and no longer a mere entry level officer. It felt pretty good to exercise my newfound power and I was already looking forward to that balcony with the sea view.

The utter audacity of my request apparently shocked the Management section into total silence because it wasn't until several months later, after the departure from post of the incumbent Management Officer, that I finally received a reply from the GSO. "Unfortunately," he said, "House #1 was going to be assigned to someone else. As were Houses numbered 2 through 6." Post, in fact, did not actually have a house for me, but they were looking. He felt certain that something would be found eventually and he would let me know as soon as that happened. In the meantime, I would just have to be patient. I can assure you that nothing brings your sense of self-importance back to reality quicker than having a guy who will report directly to you tell you that he'll find you a place to live when he has the time.

At post we have the six aforementioned houses, one apartment, a house for the DCM and, of course, the Ambassador's residence. We are adding several new American staff positions, a tandem (married officers who share a house) has left and been replaced by two single officers (who don't share a house) and we just don't have enough places leased to accommodate this influx of new officers. The housing market is ridiculously tight because Exxon has discovered an enormous bubble of natural gas in Papua New Guinea and is leasing up everything with four walls and a roof. In spite of that, the State Department reluctantly acknowledged that 'having a place to live' is required by the regulations and authorized the embassy to begin finding suitable housing for the additional officers.

This is a fairly straightforward procedure. Post locates suitable properties and after the Regional Security Officer (RSO) approves them for safety and security, post negotiates a lease. Finally, OBO (the overseer of all State property and leases overseas) must authorize the lease. The Housing section at the embassy found a building that is still under construction and reserved five apartments in it. As described to me, the apartments are two bedroom, two bath with balconies overlooking the Coral Sea. It's a new building right on the beach, with all the amenities, pool, gym, etc. and it'll be ready for occupancy in January or February. The RSO gave the building a thumbs up for safety and security and the leases were then sent off to OBO for signature.

OBO looked at the bottom line on the leases, gasped, clutched dramatically at its small flinty heart and told post to "sober up and go find cheaper apartments." Post carefully explained to OBO that any acceptable properties in this dangerous city were going to rent for a king's ransom or more thanks to Exxon's entry into the housing market. After a bit of back and forth, which may or may not have included inviting OBO to "come on down and find a damn place yourselves", the apartments were leased. Ironically, several of those apartments are reserved for the OBO personnel going to Port Moresby to direct the construction of the new embassy compound scheduled to break ground early next year. Much more importantly, however, one of those ridiculously expensive apartments is mine! I'm fully prepared to be quite happy there.

A good friend of mine sat in on the internal negotiations for the apartments (which were conducted in Washington between OBO, post and the bureau) and sought me out to ask if I'd heard about my new place. "Sure," I said, "it sounds great! Ocean view, brand new building, brand new furniture and appliances package, indoor parking, secure and located right next to the new embassy site. What's not to like?"

He just shook his head and said, "Yeah, but they're small, very small."

"How small can they be?" I asked. "They have two bedrooms and two baths!"

"Yes," he said, "But they are very small bedrooms. Japanese small!"

So, apparently, I'll be living in a brand new 'cozy' two bedroom apartment with a view of the Coral Sea sunsets! Go ahead, try and make me unhappy about that. Of course, I'll be staying in a hotel for the five months just prior to occupying my new place, but I can live with that. Room service can be a wonderful thing!

Speaking of apartments, the woman who owns the one I rent while I'm at FSI has thoughtfully provided it with a treadmill. The treadmill, a state-of-the-art Reebok gym-quality machine, sits in the corner of the living room just by the tv. This apartment is a 'cozy' one bedroom, one bath and the living room holds the couch, the dining table, the tv and the treadmill. Lying on the couch to watch tv puts the treadmill directly into my line of sight. I am fairly adept at ignoring subtle offense, however, the treadmill goes too far. It questions my resolve, it assumes an air of silent disapproval and rolls its nonexistent eyes at my natural inclination towards laziness and sloth. I'll be resting on the couch minding my own business, happily watching reruns of Hillbilly Handfishin' while the treadmill assumes an air of mute superiority right next to the tv. A lesser man would undoubtedly succumb to this constant badgering and even I have been tempted to find my sneakers, put them on and begin exercising once again. But, I will not be bullied into submission by an inanimate machine. Instead, I realized that by turning the couch slightly and placing the pillow on the opposite end I can now watch tv without seeing the treadmill at all. Finding a non-aggressive solution is a key to good diplomacy!

I was told by several of the people who have served there that I would definitely need a vehicle in Port Moresby so I bought a Toyota 4-Runner online from a used car salesman in Japan. It's a 1996 but looks brand new in the photos and has fewer than 50,000 miles on it. The used car salesman's explanation for this suspiciously low mileage was that "Japanese people just don't drive that much." I suppose they prefer spending all their time in their tiny little apartments. Quite a few Foreign Service Officers have used this company when they've transferred to countries that require vehicles with righthand steering. The car, including shipping and insurance, cost a few thousand dollars but I can recover the shipping and insurance fees when I get to post because State will pay to ship a vehicle to post whether it comes from Maine or Tokyo. Generally, since we import the vehicles duty free as diplomats, we can sell them easily when we leave post. We're prohibited from making a profit but we can almost always recover 100% of the original cost of the vehicle. So I wired my several thousand dollars to Japan and have just received a notice from the company that my Toyota will arrive in Port Moresby on October 18th. That'll be perfect. As a rule, we tend to purchase vehicles that are low profile and won't attract any particular attention. Gray, white or black and no-frills are the norm.

This is my low profile Toyota 4-Runner in electric blue with fog lights, sun roof and bull bar!!

There will, no doubt, be things that I won't be able to easily acquire in Port Moresby. Odds and ends that might serve to soften the hardships at this critical needs post. Papua New Guinea is not one of our more sought after posts. It is, officially, a "hard to fill" post and anyone committing to spend an additional year there automatically earns a further 15% differential. The money is nice, make no mistake, but life must also be lived there during those three years so I just sent off my air freight shipment (UAB) packed to the gunnels with the necessities. Four boxes of cigars, a new iMac computer, a shower head to be installed in my bathroom that simulates an Amazon rain forest downpour, a full set of professional quality poker chips, a carton of sealed playing cards, three new bathing suits, a pair of flip flops and 20 pounds of Skippy creamy peanut butter. Bring on those hardships, I'm ready!

In the past month, Washington DC has experienced an earthquake that damaged the Washington Monument and rattled the desks at FSI, a hurricane that caused massive damage up and down the east coast and a flood of biblical proportions. I'm not referring to the flooding that accompanied the hurricane, that was unfortunate but manageable. I'm talking about the flooding that took place in my apartment when I inadvertently left the kitchen sink running while I sat on my balcony reading a good novel and smoking a cigar. The faucet in the sink has a lever that you push towards the water spout to turn off the flow. I was distracted and slapped at the lever but didn't realize that I hadn't completely turned the water off. It seems that the drain chose that exact afternoon to develop a block and, while I sat enjoying myself on the balcony, the sink filled and began to overflow. My conservative estimate is that it overflowed for approximately an hour or so before I wandered back in to get a drink. Water was everywhere! It took several bath towels to mop up the floor and every drawer in the counter by the sink was filled to the brim. The plastic garbage pail under the sink is a ten gallon model and it held the full ten gallons. Water had seeped under the exterior wall and soaked the carpeting in the hallway for twenty yards in both directions. The occupants of the apartment below me built an ark. It was not my finest moment but I coped with it by denying any knowledge of a problem when the building superintendent came down the hallway knocking on every door to find the source of the water. However, as the next natural disaster in line will certainly be a volcano, when one erupts in the middle of Arlington, I can assure you that it really won't be my fault.

I only have two weeks left in Washington and then I head out. I'll fly non-stop from here to Tokyo and lay over there for about six hours. Then I'll catch the non-stop flight on Air Niugini down to Port Moresby. State travel regulations give me the option of either using the Business Class lounge at the lay over point or breaking my journey and staying in a hotel. I prefer to just get there once I start going, so I'm opting for the lounge in Tokyo. Door to door, the trip will take about 30 hours and I'll arrive at approximately 4:30 am on a Sunday. Regulations also allow me to take the next workday off to recover but, unless I'm flat out of it, I'm pretty eager to see where I'll be working for the next three years so I plan to go in on that Monday.

I read in the news this morning that a French diplomat was partially eaten by a shark just off the beach in Port Moresby as he was sail boarding. The shark, for reasons that are not immediately clear, took a bite or two and then swam away. The Frenchman was flown to Australia for patching and repair and will recover. Two thoughts immediately came to mind when I read this piece of news. First, sharks, apparently, do not respect diplomatic immunity and second, I wondered where he lived and if his spacious and roomy apartment might now be available!

With creative decorating and the strategic use of some mirrors, this apartment will look huge!!

Arrivederci Roma

2011-05-27T20:14:00.003+02:00

Piazza San Marco - Venice

I ran the 5K Komen Race for the Cure on Sunday. The Race is an annual fund-raising event in Rome to benefit breast cancer research and it is a point of pride for the U.S. Embassy to field the biggest team of runners each year. There were almost 500 of us this year and several of us were very nearly competitive. In spite of that, all of us participated and enjoyed a great day. I have to admit that a lot of my motivation and desire to excel in the race took a hit when the first runner to cross the finish line (technically, I suppose, the 'winner') did so before I was able to cross the starting line. There were thousands of people in this race and as a fund raiser it was a huge success. For someone who had trained for the event by running tens of yards on a treadmill and visualizing himself, arms in the air, chest thrust forward, breaking the tape at the finish line, it was a bit frustrating like forcing a racehorse to pull a plow! However, after much shuffling forward with the masses, I managed to break free of the pack for ten or fifteen feet and sprinted up to the back of the group just ahead of me. Another small impediment to my competitiveness was my four year old running buddy, Claudio. Claudio is my friend Silvia's son and I ran with him today. I'm proud to say that I could easily have lapped him if I wasn't responsible for holding his hand! By the end of the day, of course, I was sitting on a curb weeping in pain and he was running in circles around me. My own modest estimate is that I finished in the top 100,000.

Since the day I arrived in Italy, the departure clock has been ticking and the list of 'places to see' and 'things to do' doesn't seem to have gotten any shorter. On the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, a friend and I decided to fly up to Venice for Easter and return on Monday. It might actually have been a good idea or it might have been the bottle of Prosecco, we'll never know. At any rate, bright and very very early Easter Sunday morning we were in a limo headed for Fiumicino with EasyJet tickets to Venice clutched in our hands. Although we didn't have a hotel room, we weren't worried because every human being in Italy was in Rome to see Pope John Paul II beatified. Every human being in Italy that is except for the 400,000 extra visitors to Venice this year. The crowds were overwhelming, the sidewalks and bridges were jammed to capacity and the hotels were booked solid. With a bit of luck we managed to find a room in the very upscale Hotel Danieli on the Grand Canal just a bridge or two down from Piazza San Marco. The room wouldn't be available until later in the day so we went out to see Venice with the crowds.

I decided to buy a couple of the famous Venetian Carnival masks as souvenirs to take down to Port Moresby with me. I checked them out in various stores and stands but didn't see any that looked just right to me. Finally, as I was walking aimlessly down a wide street, I spotted two masks in the window of a small shop that seemed perfect. They were the classical theater masks, one with a smiling face and the other with a frowning face. They were painted in brilliant reds and golds and had fools brocades with bells all around them. I knew that they would be more costly than the 25 to 30 euro masks I'd been seeing but they were much nicer and I was prepared to spend a bit more. I wasn't really prepared for the 250 euro price tag, but a chair and a cool glass of water soon revived me and I got down to haggling. The shop owner explained that the masks I'd been seeing in the souvenir stands were made in China out of plastic but the masks I wanted were authentic Venetian masks made of paper mache, painted with gold leaf and crowned with real Italian brocade. "Go and look," she said, "you'll see the difference. Then come back and we'll talk." Damn if she wasn't right. I think the masks will look really good on a wall in Port Moresby and I'm perfectly willing to talk to you about that bridge you have for sale in Brooklyn!

The mask on the right reflects my expression upon learning how much the shop owner wanted for them!

We enjoyed a great dinner in a small osteria, a coffee at Cafe Florian and a stroll around town that night. We took a water taxi back to the airport in the early morning on Monday and flew back to Rome. All in all we were gone for 23 hours! When we added it all up, between us, counting all transportation, food, drinks, lodging and souvenirs, we spent approximately 3,000 euros. It was as nice a way to see Venice as I could imagine and, based on the availability of Prosecco, I plan to do it again some day.

A good friend of mine owns a really nice wine bar in Assisi. She is a certified sommelier and her place is stocked with an excellent selection of regional and national wines. It's cozy and comfortable and located right in the center of town. It's called Bibenda and it's a great place to sit and relax with a glass of wine while you're visiting Assisi. My own personal level of wine expertise allows me to confidently differentiate between red and white wine and I can tell if it has or does not have bubbles. Beyond that, I rely on my friend to educate me in the nuances of flavor, color and aroma. As part of my ongoing education in wine appreciation, I accompanied her to a gathering of wine folk at the Hilton Hotel in Rome. I believe I was the only person in the room who didn't a) own a winery b) own a vineyard or c) have a master sommelier's certification. We tasted 24 very special Italian wines and listened to an expert describe each one in great detail. Way too late in the process I learned that the plastic bucket alongside my wine glasses was so I could take a small sip of the wine and then pour out the remainder of the glass. I have a vague recollection of trying to make plans to go to Venice again, but that might just be my imagination.

As one of the guests of honor, my friend had places reserved for her and her guests right up in the front of the room. We were each given a small booklet that listed the 24 wines we'd be tasting that night. The others took copious notes based on the expert's opinions, then tasted the wines and modified their notes according to their own taste preferences. I put a little star next to the one I liked best and I was quite proud of the fact that I was still able to make a little star after tasting 24 wines!

These three were red wines!

When all is said and done my car will be shipped back to Maine, I will also have one air freight shipment to Maine, one surface shipment to storage and then on to Port Moresby when I move there in the Fall, one shipment to storage that will remain there until I finish up in Port Moresby and one air freight shipment from Washington DC to Port Moresby in the Fall. Now much of my time is spent trying to figure out what I'll need where and when I'll need it. The movers are coming on June 6th and 7th to pack me out and I'll need to be organized by then. It's a grueling experience that will require me to point at various belongings and state where I want them sent. Actually, upon reflection, it's not so much grueling as it is effortless and hassle-free. Over the years I've moved in every conceivable manner, from having a couple of friends help me put everything into a VW bus and then carry it all up four flights of a New York walk-up to sitting with a cool drink while others did the packing, hoisting and heaving and I can state without fear of contradiction that the later is by far the easier way to do it.

On June 6th a crew from the appointed moving company will arrive at my apartment and begin to wrap, cushion and pack my belongings. I'll be in the way most of the time in a purely supervisory capacity. It shouldn't take them too long to get me packed up and then on the 7th they'll return and load my stuff onto the truck and start it on its way. My sole responsibility will be to determine what goes where. You'd think I'd be right on top of that and, of course, you'd be wrong. I'm still wandering around my house pointing at stuff and not having a clue where it would best spend the next three years. Final decisions, in my case, are usually made by the packers as they randomly put stuff in pre-addressed boxes. Of course, this method of decision making results in increased levels of anticipation when I arrive in Port Moresby. It also absolves me of responsibility when things I desperately need, such as bedding and silverware, are in storage in ELSO and my five dollar custom-made wheelbarrow from Islamabad is first off the truck in Papua New Guinea. "What were those crazy packers thinking?" I can fume in righteous indignation.

When I packed out of Islamabad, most of my things went into ELSO until I arrived in Rome and then were sent to me here. Imagine my delight when I unwrapped my kitchen garbage pail complete with its Islamabad kitchen garbage! Fond, albeit mummified, reminders of meals past. In Rome, all my garbage containers will be emptied before the packers arrive. It's the least I can do.

So, on June 10th I'll leave Rome and head for Maine where I'll assume my customary position on the porch of the beach house. There I'll smoke the occasional cigar and begin to think about my upcoming job in Port Moresby. The beach in front of the house is absolutely perfect for walking. It's a three mile round trip from end to end at low tide and the sand is hard packed and gives the working class families from Boston a firm enough surface for their bocci games. So I'll walk the beach and think about the Financial Management course that I'll begin at FSI in July and the work ahead of me in Port Moresby as post goes onto the ICASS cost allocation system and also begins work on the New Embassy Compound. In addition to these two fairly complex and interesting projects, there will be all the usual day-to-day responsibilities of the Management section to oversee.

The Management section provides all the support functions for the Embassy. Housing, maintenance, logistics, human resources, finance, travel, transportation, shipping, IT, health services, language training and so on all fall under the auspices of the Management section. I find it to be, personally, the most satisfying place to work in an embassy, no two days are ever the same and the challenges test your abilities daily. While I'm sitting up at the beach in Maine, I'll be reading up on the State Department guidance for building a new embassy and the requirements for converting to ICASS. I'll be thinking about undertaking the financial responsibilities for post and all the million details that that will require. But mostly I'll be doing what we all do between posts, I'll be preparing to complain about my housing assignment.

There is a famous piece of sculpture in Rome known as the mouth of truth. It's supposed to bite your hand off if you tell a lie. I wasn't willing to risk it so I put my hand in the 'mouth of small fibs' instead!

One very important function that Management serves at post is to help new arrivals settle in and then to assist departing employees with their outbound move. Once we receive our TMFOUR (our orders), we can have our tickets issued. However, prior to actually taking possession of those tickets we have a check-out list of things to do and signatures to acquire. All of our ID cards, ration cards, CAC cards, MFA cards, parking permits and security badges must be accounted for and turned in to the proper offices. Our commissary account must be settled up and closed. All our telephone and two-way radio equipment must be returned and all bills paid in full. Our health unit folder must be picked up and hand carried to our next post. We must schedule and receive an outgoing briefing from the RSO. Our State Dept. computer account must be transferred to our onward assignment. Our apartments must be inventoried and inspected and any damages must be paid for in full. Our home internet and cable bills must be settled and our accounts terminated with those companies. Our local bank accounts must be closed. We have to appoint a sponsor who will assume responsibility for covering any unpaid bills after our departure. We must complete our final EER and ensure that any EERs that we are required to do for others are completed. The check-out list is extensive and only when it is completed and signed off by each of the various sections, can we be given our tickets.

The Management section in Rome has done an excellent job of organizing out briefing seminars to help guide us through the details of our departures. They have produced a guidebook and a series of checklists and sent individualized countdown spreadsheets to each of us that sit on our computer desktops and can be accessed every day. The guidebook even has a detailed list of suggestions on what to pack in your air freight shipment, what you'll need on home leave, what might go to storage, etc. I really hope that the packers have a copy and that they've studied it!! While the lists and guidebooks are helpful, if the Management section here was really interested in helping me they would simply assign someone to do it all for me.

Someone said, "Give me five reasons why you enjoy working in the NIV section." Okay.

I've completed my language training and can now muddle through simple conversations in butchered Italian. I've discontinued my volunteer work at the animal shelter and taken my final trip up to Bibenda in Assisi for my wine lessons. I've seen as much of Italy as I'm going to see on this trip and am already making plans to come back. My ride to Fiumicino Airport is scheduled for the morning of June 10th and my tickets are sitting in the HR safe waiting for my signed check-out sheet to be released. I'll spend this weekend seeing some friends and next weekend getting ready for the packers. I'll miss Italy and all my friends here, but I'll be back. In the meantime, I have one heck of an adventure ahead of me in Papua New Guinea. I just hope they give me a really nice house!

I'm quite certain that white ties are not required after Labor Day even in Port Moresby.

Everything's Negotiable

2011-02-06T09:17:00.000+01:00

After bidding and lobbying and hugs and handshakes and finally, at last, paneling, you would think that you'd be finished with the entire process and would be all set to move on to your next post. You would, of course, be wrong.

Now you have to negotiate your transfer details, aka your orders, from your present post, or losing post, to your future post, or gaining post. It begins with the actual timing of your move but it doesn't end there. Your itinerary, any required or desired training, the shipment of your UAB (Unaccompanied Air Baggage) and HHE (Household Effects), the shipment of your POV (Privately Owned Vehicle) and your Home Leave will all have to be determined. You begin the process by filling out a TMTWO form online and hitting the 'submit' button.

The TMTWO is the form you use to carefully craft your plan to cover all the details of your move and it's surprisingly interactive, coherent and easy to complete. When you have completed the form to your satisfaction, you hit 'submit' and it's automatically routed to all the parties who need to approve it: your supervisors, the HR sections at both posts, the Bureau assignment officer in charge of your move and HR in Washington DC. Then the games begin.

The losing post doesn't want you to leave until your replacement is physically pushing you out of your chair, while the gaining post wants you to arrive ten minutes after you've been paneled. In addition to the losing and gaining posts, you must also receive the Bureau's blessing on your transfer plans. So getting everyone to agree to the timing of your move seems a logical place to start.

In Rome I worked out a departure plan with the NIV Section Chief and our boss, the CG. Based on my arrival here in August 2009 I would be, theoretically, expected to depart from Rome in August 2011. My rotational tour had me working in the Econ Section for one year and then transitioning into Consular for my second year. However, because the officer I was replacing in Consular left post early, I was pulled into the NIV section in June instead of August. I was quite happy with this arrangement because I enjoy Consular work and this would give me an extra couple of months working with a great group of people.

I'll be the Management Officer in Port Moresby and the DCM there recommended that I take a course in Financial Management (FMO) at FSI before I report to post. The course is nine weeks long. I also have to take mandatory Home Leave after Rome. This is leave time we are given in addition to our regular annual leave. It must be taken in the US and is designed to ensure that Foreign Service Officers spend time in America between tours. I have over thirty-five days of Home Leave on the books.

So, sitting down with a calendar, an abacus and a slide rule, I worked out my itinerary. My proposed itinerary, or TMTWO, had me leaving Rome in June, taking most of my Home Leave before the FMO course, taking the course, then taking a final week of Home Leave in September to attend my son's wedding and finally heading down to PNG immediately after the wedding in the beginning of October, hungover but happy. The officer who will replace me in the Consular Section is already in Rome, working in the Econ Section. Therefore, leaving early isn't as much of a problem as it would otherwise be and so, Rome agreed to release me in mid-June, approximately two months early, based solely on my enrollment in the FMO course.

Upon discovering that I would be leaving Rome in June, PNG promptly asked me to forgo the training course and report to post immediately after Home Leave to cover the early departure of the incumbent Management Officer. Rome coughed discreetly into its hand and withdrew its approval for my early departure because I would no longer be attending a training program... and, I was back to square one. Now I would have to stay in Rome until August, not receive the Financial Management training, take my thirty-five days of Home Leave and still arrive in PNG in early October. Rome, it seemed, was willing to accommodate PNG when it came to training schedules but mere staffing shortages warrant no sympathy between posts.

In fairness, PNG is a very small post with fewer than a dozen American officers so gaps in staffing can have an exaggerated effect there. The current Management Officer was scheduled to depart in September but is, I would imagine, being pressured by his onward assignment to report there early. Once Bureau realized that I would either arrive in PNG in October with Financial Management training or I would arrive in October without it, they weighed in and re-set my original itinerary so that I'll arrive in PNG in October after my FMO training. The timing of your transfer will require some give and take all around.

Next on the list was negotiating with HR in Washington DC for the shipment of my car. State shipped my car to Rome for me and on my TMTWO I asked them to ship it back to the U.S. when my tour ends. It's a left-hand drive vehicle (as so many American cars tend to be) and PNG follows the British habit of driving on the left (or as we commonly think of it, the 'wrong') side of the road so I don't want to ship my old Mustang down there. I explained this in my TMTWO and stated that the government wouldn't incur any storage expenses in the U.S. because I'd put the car back in my garage.

I received a brief message from HR advising me that they "would not ship my POV back to the States simply so I could use it for Home Leave". Realizing that there had been a miscommunication somewhere along the line, I decided to call the HR tech and explain the situation a bit more clearly. Silver tongue'd devil that I am, I was certain that I could sort this out in a couple of minutes on the phone. After all, my car would require special permits in PNG, post recommends against shipping left-hand drive vehicles and I wouldn't feel comfortable driving a left-hand drive vehicle in a right-hand drive world anyway. Therefore, if it wasn't going to PNG, the only option left would be to send it back where it came from...to Maine.

I suppose that my biggest failing is that I lack imagination. HR correctly brought to my attention during our conversation that a third option does indeed exist as noted in 14FAM615, the rules and regulations that govern our moves. "If you don't want your POV to go to your next post, we will ship it to our storage facility in Brussels (ELSO) and hold it until your post after that and then, we'll ship it there". "But", I said, "PNG will be my last post because I have to retire at the end of that tour". "In that case", the HR tech replied, "we'll ship it from ELSO back to the States when you retire"!

Somehow, shipping my car to ELSO, storing it for three years and then shipping it to the States made more sense to HR than simply shipping it to the States when I leave Rome. Helpfully, my HR tech reminded me that I could, in fact, purchase a right-hand drive vehicle at my present post and a) ship my old car to ELSO, b) store it there for three years, then c) ship it home, and they would d) ship the new vehicle to PNG. Yep, it's all right there in 14FAM615! Fortunately for me, those same regulations allow me to ship my POV to "an alternate destination" using 'cost-contruct'. This means that I can choose to ship the car back to Maine and pay the difference between the cost of that routing and the cost of shipping it to PNG or shipping it to ELSO and storing it for three years. Under 'cost-construct', the least expensive option is to simply ship it home so, in the end, the car will go back to Maine and I won't have to pay anything out of pocket. I have to make these arrangements with our Transportation Dept. in Washington after my orders are cut. Why, you may well ask, can't that be put on my orders? Beats me.

I honestly believe that they still think that I'm trying to scam them into shipping my car home so I can use it for Home Leave and somewhere in the dark suspicious part of my psyche, I believe that if I weren't going to the U.S. between posts they would have shipped it home without batting an eye!

The remaining chips on the table are the pack-out and shipping of my personal stuff, some from Rome to the U.S. and then to PNG and some from Rome directly to PNG, an approved access to the storage facility in Hagerstown while I'm at FSI, my request to use one week of my Home Leave after the FMO course and the actual routing of my trip to PNG. This last point is important because, depending on the routing, the trip to PNG from the east coast of the U.S. can take up to 40 hours!! Why do I suspect that the only acceptable routing on my orders will require me to row in the economy section of a small boat from Hawaii to Guam?

In other good news, my Class One Medical clearance will need to be renewed prior to my departure for PNG. That means a full fluids, filters and working parts tune-up before I leave Rome. In anticipation of this medical examination, and in full recognition of the deleterious effects of nearly two years of Italian food and enough gelato to pave a hockey rink, I have re-loaded the C25K program on my iPod and begun to run again! I, of course, use 'run' in the figurative sense of the word. I actually amble, meander, saunter and stroll on a treadmill in the gym in my apartment building. Breaking into anything more than a trot makes it almost impossible to hold my cigar and turn the pages on my book.

I took a trip up to Siena a few weeks ago and managed to climb the bell tower! I was somewhat surprised and moderately disappointed when post refused to send a helicopter to bring me back down!

Here's the view going back down the 479 steps.

For Christmas my son, the soon-to-be chef, gave me a brownie pan and five boxes of brownie mix. The entire NIV section in Rome thanks him.

Thanks!!

I have four months left in Rome (assuming my orders will finally be approved) and reservations for the guest room are now difficult to obtain as family and friends all jostle for a last visit to the Eternal City. I will stop volunteering at the dog shelter next week and I plan to spend my remaining weekends seeing as much of Italy as I can before I leave. I'm pretty sure that once HR discovers that I intend to use my POV to travel around the country, they'll insist on shipping it to the States immediately. Anyway, it sure will be nice to have it back in the States so I can use it while I'm on Home Leave!

PNG'd

2010-11-19T23:47:00.000+01:00

I knew I should have copyrighted my name!

During orientation in the Foreign Service, among the many things you learn are dictionaries worth of acronyms. PNG'd, for example, is a bad thing. It means that you've been declared "Persona Non Grata" by the country in which you serve and you must leave. Diplomats can be asked to leave a country for violating its laws or in retaliation when host country diplomats are expelled from the U.S. or simply upon the whim of a dictatorial head of state. In either of the latter two instances there is a certain cachet in being PNG'd but in the first case, it is never thought to be career enhancing.

In my orientation class, we looked amongst ourselves and tried to guess who would be the first to become an ambassador and we reached an almost unanimous consensus on one candidate. He has not disappointed us and is well along the right track. When I suggested that we might also take a shot at forecasting who would be the first to be PNG'd, the opinions were more varied. However, I say with pride that I won the vote, if only by a narrow margin!

As of Monday last, I have been officially PNG'd. Fortunately for me, however, PNG is also an acronym for Papua New Guinea and that's where I'll be going next. I was offered and have accepted a handshake to be the next Management Officer in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, just made her first trip to Port Moresby in what I can only imagine was a visit to prepare them for my arrival. It was thoughtful of her to do so.

The bidding process for my first mid-level job, which began on August 5th with the release of the summer bid-list, is over. My goal was to find a Management Officer's position at a smaller embassy or consulate and the position would have to be non-language designated because I didn't want to spend any more time at FSI learning another language. So, from the more than 2,000 positions available on the original bid-list, I had between twenty and twenty-five spots that met my criteria. These had to be narrowed down to fifteen because that's the maximum number of bids we are allowed to submit. I picked fifteen jobs, prioritized them according to my own personal preferences and began to lobby.

Between August 5th and the end of the bidding process I sent and received 276 bid related emails. In addition to these were the emails sent directly from posts and bureaus to my various references and the subsequent responses. I can't imagine that there were fewer than 30 reference related emails. In addition to the 300 or so emails sent and received, I made about twenty telephone calls and had four telephone interviews. Lobbying is a serious business.

Because the decision on who will be offered which job is a collaborative effort between the post and the respective bureau, a candidate has to lobby both ends of the pole. This is especially important for first time mid-level bidders because many, if not all, of the people who control the job won't know you yet. So you introduce yourself and attempt to convince a group of total strangers that you are a well qualified and serious candidate for their vacancy. It is a time consuming and frustrating process.

There is a date, in our case November 8th, before which no handshakes can be offered. This is to ensure that everyone has a fair and equal opportunity to present their strongest effort for the jobs they want. In reality, however, many posts/bureaus have already pre-selected the candidate of their choice and will let you know early on that you "haven't made our short list of candidates". While it isn't pleasant to hear that, it is a reality and it allows you to focus your efforts on jobs that are still actually available.

Towards the end of the process I had a realistic shot at four positions. After doing some more research (which consisted of tracking down people from each of the posts and soliciting their frank opinions), I removed myself from consideration for two of the jobs and received offers of a handshake on the remaining two. Port Moresby was my top remaining choice and I accepted it. It was just a simple as that!

As the Management Officer, I'll have responsibility for the infrastructure, finances, human resources and all the other services the embassy provides to its employees. I'll have most of the embassy's locally hired staff and three or four American officers reporting to me. Oh, and I'll be responsible for the embassy yacht.

Embassy Port Moresby has a 42' motor yacht that serves as an Emergency & Evacuation vessel and can be used by Embassy staff on the weekends. The waters around the country are filled with tropical reefs and several World War II wreck sites. There are all the usual South Pacific pleasures to enjoy: scuba, fishing, sailing, drinking cleverly named beverages filled with fruit and little umbrellas, and watching spectacular sunsets. On the flip side, Papua New Guinea does get fairly negative reviews in the media due to a sky high rate of violent crime, astronomic unemployment figures, crushing poverty, cholera, cannibalism and a bit of headhunting. At least it won't be dull.

The native dress seems to consist of something called "a penis sheath made from a dried gourd" which, I assume, I will only be required to wear to formal State functions. I am uncertain as to how one goes about being fitted for his gourd. Does one size fit all or are they individually tailored? Is there a choice of linings or only whatever it is that is on the inside of a gourd? The only photo I could find online showed a gentleman wearing his with panache and a white tie. I have a white tie.

I have spoken to several colleagues who have served there and to a man, or in one case a woman, they have enjoyed the experience without reservation. The biggest drawback to being there is that it takes about 40 hours to get there from the U.S. However, there's a rumor making the rounds that Continental might begin a direct Port Moresby - Guam flight which will cut 10 hours off the journey. It just keeps getting better!

This is either the Coliseum or one of the better hotels in Papua New Guinea.

I am still working as a Consular Officer in Rome adjudicating non-immigrant visas. Things became slightly more interesting here this week when a young woman came to the security check point and put her bag on the x-ray belt. She was wearing red leather boots and a long black coat. Standard procedure in this case required her to open her coat for a quick visual inspection. When she did so, it was noted in the duty log that "she was wearing red leather boots and a bulky black coat, no other clothing .. at all". Madam, your visa is approved!

Taking the castle in Assisi by storm.

My friend Mary came down from Embassy London for a quick visit to Rome and we did all the usual tourist stuff; visited the Coliseum, drank Prosecco, toured the Vatican and ate chocolate. Much of what I've enjoyed about living in Rome is the willingness of my friends to come here to visit. We had a perfect day for a drive up to Assisi and found a great little osteria in which to have lunch. It was one of those places where you just ask the waiter to bring you whatever is good that day. The meal was incredible. After lunch I told Mary that the guest room in Port Moresby would be hers for the asking and she said, "40 hours, cholera, cannibals, and crime, are you crazy!" Hey, I have a boat!

Mary tossing her coin in the fountain and wishing to come back to Rome. PNG... not so much!

Knowing myself as well as I do, I fear that I am already drifting into the "that's interesting, but what does it have to do with Port Moresby" mode. This seems to be a fairly common occurrence in our lifestyle because we usually find out where we're going next long before we've finished what we're doing now. I still have a lot of things to finish at work and there is still an awful lot of Italy that I haven't seen. I won't know for a while yet what my actual date of departure from Italy will be and it's dangerous to lose too much focus on the job I'm doing now because, although I have a handshake on the PNG job, I still have to be paneled for it. Paneling makes the offer final and official and it can take place any time up to two months after the handshakes are given. Situations can and do arise prior to paneling that cause handshakes to be broken so until you are paneled you don't pack your bags. After I'm paneled for the job, I can begin to work out my travel orders which will then determine when I'll leave Italy, where I'll go from here, how long I'll stay there, what training I will require and when I will finally arrive in PNG.

I'm not finished with Italy by any means, but I am beginning to imagine what life in the South Pacific will be like. I'll be there about this time next year and there's a lot of stuff that has to happen between now and then. I'll have to get ahold of a comfortable dried gourd for one thing. So, pack up your red leather boots and plan on coming down for a visit! Did I mention I'll have a yacht?

Reflections From My Cage

2010-10-10T20:05:00.000+02:00

Air kissed but not handshook.

The past month has been pretty interesting. Since the bid list came out on August 5th, I've been lobbying various Posts and Bureaus in an attempt to find my next job. Initially, all my lobbying was done by email and one of my good friends at post kept encouraging me to call the Posts in which I was interested. "You've got to set yourself apart," he said, "and let them get to know you a little more personally. You've got to let them know you're really interested. "

"Look," I said, "I've bid fifteen jobs and my references are really strong. I've written a decent letter of introduction to each of the fifteen Posts and to each of the Post Management Officers at the responsible Bureaus. I've followed up with another letter explaining why I want that particular job and why I'd be a good match for it. I think I'll just wait to see what happens." My rationale was that, surely, out of fifteen jobs, I'd get one on the strength of my experience, my EERs and my references.

What happened was that, in short order, I received notification from four of the more interesting Posts on my list to "direct your energies towards other positions because, due to the volume of interest we've received for our Management Officer vacancy, we will, unfortunately, not be able to further consider your bid." I even failed to make the short list for a Post that only had five bidders! The whole process seemed to be open, transparent and above-board in a closed, secretive and pre-determined sort of way.

There is an online bid list that we can access to see how many total bids there are for each job to date. The problem here is that our bids don't have to be submitted until October 12th and many people spend a lot of time lobbying prior to actually submitting their list. So, you may be looking at a job that only seems to have five people interested in it and feel you have a pretty good shot at it, but twenty other folks might be calling and writing to the Post expressing their interest prior to putting in their bids. Posts and Bureaus begin to cull their lists of candidates long before the bid lists are officially submitted. Although no jobs can be offered or accepted prior to the date stated in the bidding instructions (in this case it will be November 8th), in reality many decisions are made long before the bids close on Oct. 12th.

Since I wasn't being considered for jobs that were at my grade, I realized that the 'stretch' bids on my list were not going to even be a remote possibility. That took care of six more bids and, suddenly, I was down to five potential jobs out of the original fifteen. It was time for some drastic measures. It was time to follow good advice and begin making phone calls.

As I mentioned once before, the object of lobbying is to get a 'handshake' which is an official agreement between the Post, the Bureau and yourself that they'll offer you the job and you'll accept it. Handshakes can only be given after November 8th this year. How, you may well ask, does one begin to narrow the field down and focus on jobs that are actual possibilities? The easy ones are the Posts that let you off the hook early by telling you that you haven't made their short list. Then, much like at a high school prom, you begin the process of trying to figure out where you stand with the ones that are left. When I was in high school we sent our ambassadors out to find out if one girl or another would actually consider dancing with us before summoning up the nerve to go and ask her. In the Foreign Service we use phone calls, but it's the same concept.

I began calling Posts and Bureaus and soon learned which jobs were, in fact, positions that I would be competitive for and which weren't. In this phase of lobbying, both bidder and Post/Bureau try to determine where they rank on each others list. And, just like in high school, you don't want to be the guy who tells all the girls/Posts he loves them. Only one Post can be your top choice, it's a fact. At some point in the process you have to make that decision and then you let that Post know. Then, if all the stars are properly aligned and the gods smile down upon you, the Post let's you know that you are their top choice too. Then, my friend, you have just received an 'air kiss' otherwise known as a 'wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more' (the Foreign Service is eternally in Monty Python's debt).

Nothing is official yet, so you continue to lobby for other jobs but with the understanding that, should your top choice change, you will immediately let the first Post know and they will do the same for you. Closer to the handshake deadline, commitments become much firmer and Posts might actually tell you that they intend to offer you a handshake and they want to know if you're going to accept it. This is a 'hug'. Hugs really do make you feel warm and fuzzy, they're nice. Still, a hug is not an official offer either and all that those who have received them can say is, "A Post seems to be interested in me now but I'd better wait until handshakes are given before I say any more."

There are a couple of Posts that seem to be interested in me now. I am in a fortunate position because I don't have any strong preferences about where I live. I am much more interested in landing a job as a Management Officer than I am in trying to go to or avoid any particular country. There are one or two places in the world that most people do not want to go to, so I have a pretty good shot at a couple of those countries. One of them is so remote that Telecom Italia doesn't seem to be aware it even exists and doesn't have its country code in the system. Making that call was an interesting experience. I am, apparently, the first person ever to attempt to call from here to there.

If I don't get a handshake on one of the remaining positions on my list, I'll be asked to re-bid from what's left or I'll just be assigned somewhere, so I'm taking my air-kiss very seriously.

Reservoir Dogs?

This photo was taken at Marica's wedding by one of her guests and she sent it to me with a note that said that it reminded her of that movie, "Pond Dogs". Before anyone begins to mistake the characters in the photo for Quentin Tarantino type tough guys, the guy on the left got lost in a tunnel on his way home from the reception. Admittedly, it isn't all that common for people to get lost in tunnels, but I managed to do it. I blame my GPS.

There is a tunnel in Rome, or rather on the outskirts of Rome, that leads, I am sure, to the River Styx and the gates of Hell. Virtually every tunnel I've ever driven through has been a pretty straightforward experience. You enter the tunnel, you drive a while, eventually you see the aptly named "light at the end of the tunnel" and you exit the tunnel. After leaving the wedding reception late in the evening, I followed my GPS's directions and drove into a tunnel I didn't remember driving through on my way to the reception. The tunnel was a long one and the road curved steadily to the left. Ten seconds after my GPS announced that it had lost satellite reception (because I was in a tunnel), I rounded a curve and saw that the road forked. Who puts options in a tunnel? And, if you're going to build in options, don't you think it would be polite to put up a sign or two? Whoever built this road didn't think it was necessary at all.

I randomly chose left and began an odyssey that lasted over half an hour because that wasn't the only fork in the road in the tunnel. None of the forks had signs and none of them led to an exit. It was about 2:00am and mine was the only car in the tunnel, so following someone else in the desperate hope that they knew how to get out of there wasn't a possibility. Eventually, after making a completely random series of rights and lefts, I wound up on a ramp leading out of the labyrinth and broke free into the dark night air. I was in a part of Rome that was totally unfamiliar to me. My GPS clicked back on and said, "Re-calculating. Make an immediate U-turn and drive 25 miles." Making a U-turn would have 'immediately' put me back into the tunnel so I opted to ignore the annoyingly insistent GPS, drove through the deserted streets of Rome for another hour before I saw a familiar road and finally got home. When I described my experience to my colleagues at work they said, "Oh yeah, well, when you go into that tunnel you just turn right, then left, then another left and then go straight a bit and make a hard right, then go past the sign that looks like it's warning you not to go that way but it isn't and you'll be fine." Simple when you know how.

If you peer through this window long enough, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm being sent TDY to Naples next week for ten days. TDY stands for temporary duty and it means I'll be helping out at the Consulate there while one of their officers is away. I'll be doing much the same type of work I do in Rome and I'll get to experience life in Naples for a short while. It should be an interesting change of pace. I was up in Ravenna a couple of weeks ago with friends and saw their famous Byzantine mosaics (Ravenna's, not my friends'). Ravenna is also the burial place of Dante Alighieri or, more appropriately, the burial places of Dante Alighieri. He has a very ornate tomb with his name on it, an ivy covered mound with a sign stating that his bones were hidden beneath that dirt during the 40's and a crypt of some sort also claiming to have held some part of his mortal remains at some distant time in the past. Dead for over six hundred years and the man still has three places to sleep.

The perfectly perpendicular tower of Ravenna.

I've spent some time relaxing on my 'terrace' lately. It's really the cage that OBO built to give me access to the fire escape, but I enjoy sitting there and smoking my cigar in the fresh air. The whole lobbying process seems somewhat inefficient to me but I'm not ready to begin suggesting improvements because I haven't really completed the whole process and I'm still learning some of the steps. Recently, due to a grave oversight on the part of the responsible authorities, I was given tenure and last Friday I was promoted. As I've always said, I'd rather be lucky than good! Now, if I can just get a handshake on that job in "wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more", I'll be the first to say that the prom was a success.

Two Weddings and a Baby

2010-08-30T21:46:00.000+02:00

The bid list came out today and the smile simply means I don't really understand the process!

Bidding season is upon us. It is the nature of the beast that every one, two or three years a Foreign Service Officer changes jobs and posts. Your first two assignments are 'directed', which means that you bid from a list of positions reserved for entry level officers. Your bids go to and are evaluated by a group of Career Development Officers who then assign you to one of the spots. Neither post nor the bureau really get too involved. Your first two jobs should set you up for tenure. By the end of your second tour you should be off language probation, have served as a Consular Officer for at least one year and have received at least two performance reviews or EERs. Then, with any luck at all, you are recommended for tenure and you bid mid-level positions for your third tour.

The 2010 Summer mid-level bid list came out on August 5th and there were 2,602 positions available to bid. Of these, 1,458 were overseas and the remainder were in Washington. Out of the 1,458 jobs overseas, 934 were at the 03 or 02 grades. Further narrowing down the list, there were 130 Management jobs among the 934 positions. Of these, only 30 were not language designated and 8 of those were 02s. You are required to enter at least six core bids. Your mandatory core bids must be "in cone/at grade". That means, in my case for example, that I have to enter at least six bids that are at the 03 grade and are in the Management cone. Out of 2,602 positions, 22 were potential core bids for me. The starting date for these core bids must be realistic with respect to the end of your current tour. If the position you are bidding requires a language course or any other training, you must factor that in. So, let's say your current job ends in August 2011 and you would like to bid on a job in Cambodia that begins in September 2011. If it's 'in cone/at grade' it would qualify as one of your six core bids. However, if it's language designated and you don't happen to speak fluent Cambodian and the full language course lasts for almost one year, then you can't realistically bid the job.

So, you sort and shuffle the bid list until you identify six positions that are 'in cone/at grade' and a) require a language in which you already have fluency, b) have a built in time frame for learning the new language or c) are not language designated. Fewer and fewer jobs are not language designated, but in the Management cone you can still find one or two. Once you've identified six core bids, you may select up to nine additional jobs to bid. These bids can be in cones other than your own and can be at a grade above yours, which is called a 'stretch'. If all this sounds confusing and time-consuming, it's only just begun.

I decided for many reasons, first among them being that I'm really really bad at it, to not learn another language. I'm fluent in Italian, unless someone who actually speaks Italian hears me, so I'm already off language probation and have checked that box. I've also decided, after a tour as a GSO, another as an Econ Officer and a third as a Consular Officer, that I want to return to the Management cone for my next assignment. It didn't take me very long to sort and shuffle the list to come up with my six core bids. Then I found nine other jobs that I am interested in. So, I now have fifteen positions on my bid list.

All fifteen are either GSO jobs at larger posts or Management Officer jobs at smaller posts. The locations range from 'right next door' Montenegro to 'other side of the world' Papua New Guinea. I've ranked the fifteen jobs in order of personal preference and, at the moment, Podgorica, Montenegro and Hanoi, Vietnam are tied for top choice. Ten of my fifteen are core bids and the other five are one-grade stretches. So, if I were bidding an entry level position, that would pretty much be it. I'd send my list in to my CDO with a well thought out justification for assigning me to my top choice and I'd sit back and wait a couple of weeks for the notification.

However, bidding mid-level is a pasta of a different flavor. The first difference is the timeframe. The bid list came out on August 5th but we don't have to submit our bids until October 12th. The posts we've bid will receive our formal bids on October 18th. No positions can be offered until November 1st. What, you are justified in asking, does one do between August 5th and October 12th? One lobbies. Lobbying is the major difference between entry and mid-level bidding.

You must do several things right away in order to be a viable candidate for any position you bid. Your resume and employee profile in Human Resources must be up to date. While you're doing that, you have to line up several potential references from people you've worked for, people you've worked with and people who have worked for you. Then you have to send 'Look at me, look at me' letters to the posts to let them know of your interest. On top of that, you have to send similar letters to the Bureaus at the State Dept. in Washington that are responsible for those posts. The posts and/or bureaus that are interested in your bid will then contact you and ask you to either give them the contact information for your references or to ask you to contact your references and have them send in their recommendations. This generates another round of emails between you and your references.

You must walk a fine line between showing sincere interest in a post and becoming a stalker. Posts want to know that you're interested in the position, but they don't want to be harassed by overeager applicants writing and calling them every other day. I've decided to send an initial letter of introduction and wait to see what happens. I am, however, fully prepared to go to phone calls, candygrams, and wired money transfers if it will help get me the job I want. There is no guarantee that I'll land any of the fifteen jobs on my list. If all those jobs go to other people, I have to replace them with a new set of bids from a markedly shorter list of 'leftover' positions. If I can't land a position through lobbying, I will be assigned to any job anywhere including back at the State Department in Washington.

Since August 16th, when I sent out my first letters, I've sent and received over 140 bid related emails and there are still six weeks left before the bids close. Many of the responses I've received are basically form letters telling me where to send my references and how many to send, but the most personal response was from a post that let me know right away that I wasn't qualified. That crushing disappointment aside (by the way, when they described the job to me I agreed with them) I should know some time after November 1st where my guest room will be located come August 2011. My understanding of the process is that the dance becomes more intense as we get closer to the bidding deadline. Reference checks and telephone interviews will help posts make their final selections and job offers are given shortly after November 1st. A job offer with an acceptance is known as a 'handshake' and that's the goal.

Typical mid-level bidder prior to getting a handshake.

I still volunteer at the animal shelter on Sundays. It's located 31 kilometers north of my apartment and this morning I got stopped at a random check point by the police. They were checking documents and the insurance card in my glove box had expired a week ago. I explained that I had the new card on my table at home but forgot to put it in the car. They explained that it was against the law not to put it in the car. I explained that I am a diplomat and carry a card from the MFA that says I am not subject to arrest. They explained that I was still subject to a very hefty fine. They, of course, were, unfortunately, correct. While two of them went off to huddle and determine exactly how hefty the fine would be, I chatted with the third officer and mentioned that I was on my way to the animal shelter just up the road to spend the day cleaning kennels and feeding the dogs. Turns out that they knew of the kennel and like what we do there. I received a very polite warning, a request to put the new card in the car, no fine and a wave good-bye. Who knew that scooping dog poop would trump diplomatic immunity?

Someone tied a puppy to the gate yesterday so we have a new little guy to take care of. He's about four months old and is black with a white stripe on his back between his shoulders. He's built low to the ground, like a dachshund. Naming the dogs is a serious business so I suggested we call him Puzzola which means skunk in Italian. That didn't fly with my Italian co-volunteers so we ended up calling him Skunk which I have insisted is a very common name for really cute puppies.

Skunk, or as I like to think of him..Puzzola!

At the embassy, one of the women in the NIV section is getting married next Friday, another one is getting married in two weeks, a third is having a baby and the fourth is in the process of re-evaluating her current boyfriend with an eye towards upgrading. As you might imagine, we don't talk about baseball very much at work. We adjudicate visa applications between discussions of wedding dresses (my position, when asked, is an unwavering "that looks nice"), wedding flowers ("those look nice"), wedding reception table decorations ("I like those, they are very nice"), baby clothes ("that's cute), baby names ("You don't hear the name Griselda much anymore. Old family name is it?"), and "He is taking me for granted!" (Uhhhhhh, huh. Hey did you see that the Yanks won last night?). The two weddings will be over by the middle of September, the baby will be born by the end of the year and the boyfriend will be voted off the show the next time he is "stupid", so I give him a week. The World Series won't be a big topic of conversation this year, but I have high hopes for the Super Bowl. Surprisingly, none of the women has the least bit of interest or sympathy when I start to whine about the bidding.

My car needed to have an oil change and friends at the embassy told me to go down to the Navy base in Naples to have it done because it is very expensive, at least 80 euros, in Rome. There is also the hassle of having to provide your own filter because none of the auto shops in Rome stock filters for 1995 Mustangs. So, I drove down to Naples on a Saturday morning and got my oil changed. The base is like an enormous Wal-Mart (are there any tiny Wal-Marts?) complete with movie theater, grocery store, food court and auto repair shop. They had the filter for my car in stock and changed the oil in about 30 minutes. The oil, filter and labor came to about $40, or close to what I'd pay in the States. The tolls down and back were around 30 euros. The gas, even with my discount ran close to 50 euros. You just don't get real good mileage in a 1995 Mustang with an old very fuel in-efficient engine. Then, the four tires they sold me on the spot rounded the whole package up to around $700. But, hey, at least I didn't pay 80 euros for an oil change in Rome.

Although I have some favorites on my bid list, I'll probably come running to the first post that gives me a come-hither look. Port Moresby ("very nice"), Nairobi ("it looks nice") or Reykjavik ("a nice place") are all in the running. All in all, it should be a very interesting couple of months and I have the phone number for those singing gorilla telegrams taped above my desk, just in case.

And Why Do You Want To Go To America?

2010-07-20T09:01:00.011+02:00

Leaving the catacombs beneath Villa Taverna on my way to the Wine Tasting Event.

Italy is part of the visa waiver program which means that most Italians traveling to the US on vacation or brief business trips do not require a visa. However, there are several categories of visa for which even Italians must apply, such as student visas, religious worker visas, government official visas and my personal favorite, 'O' visas which have the annotation, "Person of Extraordinary Ability" printed right on them. I'd like one of those myself. Then there are third country nationals in Italy who require visas no matter what their reason is for travel. Our workload, therefore, on any given day is split roughly fifty-fifty between Italians requiring special categories of visa and third country nationals requiring visas of any type. My consular colleagues in the foreign service who work in some of the visa 'mills' (Mexico City, Manila or Mumbai for example) and interview 100 or more applicants each day would not be overly impressed by my workload. I typically interview between 25 and 30 applicants a day, four days each week. I process investor, government and diplomatic visas in the afternoons. On a particularly tough day I might refuse five visas. Like I say, folks who work in the trenches would consider this soft duty.

It is, nonetheless, interesting duty and here's how it works in Rome. The Visa Chief, my immediate supervisor, determines how many reservation slots will be available on any given day. That number is passed along to a call center contracted to handle telephone inquiries and reservations. Visa applicants begin the process by going to the Rome visas website and filling in an online application form (DS-160). They then make a reservation with the call center for an appointment on a specific day. The call center charges their phone number 15 euros for that service. They are told how much the application for their category of visa will cost and they go to a local branch of the BNL bank, pay the fee and are given a receipt. The new fee is $140 for most visitor categories. That fee is non-refundable whether the application is approved or denied. Each family member must have a separate application form and pay the full fee.

On the appointed day, the applicants line up outside the consulate. They must have their passports, DS-160 forms, BNL receipts and any supporting documentation required for their category of visa. They may not have cell phones, other electronics, bags, backpacks, cartons, cases, or weapons. They may be on line for as long as two hours before they are passed through security into the NIV (Non-Immigrant Visa) Section.

Once inside, they are met by one of our Italian staff members who will quickly check their documents and briefly explain the next few steps. She will then give them a number and ask them to wait until their number is called. Visa applicants are remarkably short on patience and will spend most of their 'waiting to be called' time wandering back to the staff member to ask if their number has been called yet. She remains calm and courteous at all times and resists the urge to slap them upside the head and say, "You have number 47, we have just called number 7. If you interrupt me again, I'm going to give you number 87!"

When their number is called, they go up to the first interview window where another Italian staff member enters all their information into our visa adjudication template. This staff member then takes their fingerprints and rechecks all of their documentation. When she's finished, she puts their application form with supporting documentation and payment receipt along with their passport into a bin and then directs them to the interview waiting area. She asks them to wait there until an officer calls them for an interview. I am one of those officers.

I pull the passport, DS-160 and receipt from the bin and call the applicant up for their interview. By the time they see me, they have experienced the frustrations of filling out a form online, dealing with a reservations system by phone, paying a fairly substantial amount of money to a bank clerk, standing in line outside the consulate for quite some time, passing through a rigorous security system, waiting to be checked in, waiting to be processed into the NIV system and then waiting again for their interview. I am behind bulletproof glass.

Our regulations state that all visa applicants are considered to be intending immigrants and that it is their responsibility to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the consular officer that they do not intend to immigrate to the US. They 'demonstrate' their intentions with their documentation and their interview. In short, they must convince us that they have greater reason to return to Italy than to remain in the US. Sadly, some intending immigrants are not entirely truthful when asked why they want to go to America. Rarely will a 20 year old Albanian hairdresser who has been in Italy for eight months and can barely pay her rent say anything but, "I've always wanted to spend two weeks at Disney World."

In Rome we have the luxury of time, which many of our colleagues at busier posts do not, to refuse visa applicants with apologies and explanations. I typically say, "I'm sorry but I cannot approve your application today because your ties to Italy are not strong enough at this time." I give them a pre-printed letter of explanation, sympathize with them for a moment and their interview is over. Fortunately, refusals are relatively rare in Rome and it's much more satisfying to approve visa applications than to deny them.

Although making the final decision on whether to approve or deny rests solely with the American consular officer, the entire adjudication process is most definitely a team exercise. We are most fortunate in Rome to have a terrific team of intelligent, hard working and very knowledgeable local staff. I didn't realize before starting in the consular section, how much teamwork is involved in this area. It's definitely a part of the job that has come as a very pleasant surprise.

I briefly checked one applicant's documentation for a visa to do some research in the US. Then I asked him a few questions about his work and when he claimed to be an astrophysicist on his way to MIT I cleverly asked, "Can you please explain dark matter to me in laymen's terms?" He stared at me for a minute and said, "If I could, I'd probably get a Nobel Prize." Enjoy your time in America, Sir.

The catacombs beneath Villa Taverna.

Most of our embassies have a CLO (Community Liaison Office) to help plan various social activities for us. Sightseeing trips, buses to the Commisary in Naples, special tours of Rome's museums and movies at Villa Taverna are all examples of the kinds of things the CLO puts together and offers to the embassy community. Once a year, the CLO holds an auction to raise money to support its budget. Various goods and services are donated and the auction takes place on a Saturday night in late Spring. It's a dress up affair with an open bar. The 'dress up' part isn't as important to the story as is the 'open bar' part.

I didn't attend the auction this year because I had a friend in town and we already had plans to do something else. On Monday, my friend Dave stopped by my office and said, "Didn't see you at the auction." I told him why I couldn't make it and he said, "Doesn't matter. By the way, you won the Wine Tasting Event." "Huh?" I replied.

He explained that he and our mutual friend Stacie had decided, after planning their strategy at the aforementioned 'open bar' for an hour or two before the bidding began, to outbid all comers for the Wine Tasting Event being donated by the Ambassador. Unfortunately, once the bidding began, it became apparent that two different syndicates had been formed with exactly the same strategy in mind. Dave and Stacie, drinks in hand, never batted an eye and simply raised every bid by ten euros until they reached 1,000 euros. Here the syndicates both blinked and, sensing blood, Stacie jumped the bid to 1,200 euros. While the syndicates were both frantically calling their absent members on cellphones for approval to exceed previously agreed limits, the hammer fell three times and Dave and Stacie had just won the Wine Tasting Event. "Great," I said. "Count me in. How many of us are there?" He explained that, including me, there were already three of us. "But," he said, "this includes dinner too!" 400 euros to spit wine into a bucket and eat fingerfood was a deal I couldn't pass up.

The wine tasting room in the catacombs beneath Villa Taverna.

Fortunately, by the night of the event we had gathered the maximum allowed ten participants. The Wine Tasting Event was held at the Ambassador's residence, Villa Taverna, in a wine cellar designed and built by his predecessor. To get to the small elegant wine tasting room, we walked through ancient Roman catacombs that were only discovered during the construction of the wine cellar. We were served four white wines and four red wines by a sommelier who had personally chosen them from Villa Taverna's 5,000 bottle collection. He explained what we might be experiencing with each vintage and asked us to tell him what we thought of each one. I thought that one eighty euro bottle of red was just fine, and said so.

After tasting the eight wines, we took a break up by the pool while the staff cleared the table for dinner.

Each of us was asked which of the eight wines we preferred to have during dinner and everyone was given his or her choice. "Gimme that 80 euro red," I said sophisticatedly. The food was every bit as good as the wine and I barely saved room for coffee and dessert. As we were departing late in the evening, the sommelier mentioned to us that we were the first people to use the wine tasting room. I'll be more than happy to join any future groups planning to take advantage of this opportunity and our bidding strategy will begin with an open bar.

CinqueTerre is a group of five small villages up on Italy's Ligurian Coast. They are connected to one another by a hiking trail, a railroad and a ferry, making it possible to move from one to the next in several different ways. The five towns have been designated a National Park by the Italian government and a 'must see' destination by most guidebooks. It shouldn't be a surprise, therefore, to learn that I was not completely alone in CinqueTerre. There couldn't have been more than 900,000 people, divided about equally into three main groups, wandering back and forth between the five villages while I was trying to enjoy the sights.

The town of Vernazza, seen from the hiking trail.

The first group was the American college students. A huge number of Americans attend college in Italy every year and most of them went to CinqueTerre the same weekend I chose to visit. They were, for the most part, clean cut and energetic. They moved up and down the hiking trail without apparent effort and spent their evenings in the many bars soaking up great quantities of beer, wine, grappa and limoncello. The second group was the Italian contingent. They seemed to travel in tour groups of thirty to fifty people invariably led by a loud woman with an umbrella or pennant held over her head. The majority of them appeared to be in their 30's and 40's. They positioned themselves on the train platforms to take advantage of their mass and charged the opening doors of the train with martial enthusiasm. The third group was the Germans. They were robust and hardy and never took the train or boat. They wore shorts and sturdy hiking boots with heavy socks. They all had backpacks, two lethal looking hiking poles and very determined expressions as they marched along the trail. They were all probably in their fifties and I always moved politely aside as they and their hiking poles came swinging by. I tried to represent a fourth group, the sophisticated, erudite man-of-the-world type of traveller but failed when I managed to get lost on a well-marked trail between two of the villages. Thankfully, a couple of German tourists pointed me in the right direction with their poles or I'd be wandering among the grapevines even still. So that's what this path with all the red and white signs is, it's the trail. Danke!

Corniglia is the only town without its own beach.

In search of a decent lunch in one of the picturesque little towns I made a fatal mistake and ate in a waterfront restaurant with menus printed in five languages. Chef Boyardee would have been ashamed of the spaghetti I was served and I can honestly claim it as the worst meal I've had in Italy. That night, however, I ate in a small place down an alley that had its menu written in Italian in chalk on a board and that meal of stuffed anchovies and calamari more than made up for lunch.

I stayed here in the first town in line, Riomaggiore.

The five towns are very special and well deserve their reputation for having some of the most beautiful scenery in Italy. A two-day pass for the hiking trail also allows you to hop on and off the train, but the boat requires a separate ticket. You'll come into intimate contact with hordes of strangers on either the boat or train. Success has probably spoiled CinqueTerre somewhat in the last few years but the scenery is still magnificent and well worth the visit.

However, just south of CinqueTerre, along the Bay of Poets, are three small towns that have not yet been overrun by tourists. San Terenzo, Lerici and Telaro are also very picturesque and beautiful and only seem to be visited by Italian families on vacation. The three small towns line the shores of the Bay of Poets (named for Percy Bysshe Shelley who seems to have drowned while boating right off shore from San Terenzo) and can be hiked from top to bottom in about an hour and a half. I had one of the very best meals I've eaten in Italy in San Terenzo and two of the most relaxing days. If you decide to go to CinqueTerre but can't get reservations in any of the hotels or BandB's, I'd recommend that you try San Terenzo or Lerici instead. However, if you're a poet I'd suggest you skip a sunset cruise on the bay.

Picturesque and quiet, San Terenzo!

I still want to get down to Puglia and see the towns of Otranto and Lecce. They're on the heel of the boot and are said to have some of the most beautiful sea views in Italy. Actually, I really need to explore the entire Italian coastline, down one side and up the other to be able to make an informed judgement. I only have a little more than a year to do it, so I'd better not waste too much time working!

I was walking home from work the other day when I saw an attractive young woman (a not uncommon sight on the streets of Rome) walking towards me arm-in-arm with her mother. When she was about five feet from me she stopped, pointed to me and said, "Ciao!" I said, "Hello?," but because it was pretty clear that I didn't know who she was she said, "You gave me a visa last week! Thank you soooo much!" Ooops, enjoy your stay at Disney World, miss, and avoid the restaurants with menus printed in five languages.

Rotating

2010-06-02T13:57:00.013+02:00

On Sicily!

My tour in Rome is a rotational tour. That means it was designed so that I'd spend one year as an Economic Officer and the following year as a Vice Consul. On June 1st, therefore, I'll transition into my new area of responsibility and begin to work in the Non-Immigrant Visa section of the Consulate. For the next year, I'll be a Vice Consul, a title that always makes me think of a W. Somerset Maugham novel set in Southeast Asia with a grey-haired slightly unkempt man sitting on a shady veranda with a slow turning fan, wearing a white linen suit and sipping on a gin shandy while hoping to be recalled to the Home Office. Of course, that would have been a British Vice Consul but you get the idea.

In our Consular section in Rome, there are no shady verandas, no slow turning fans and only a smattering of white linen suits. No, here it's all business. And, it's a very detail oriented business at that. There are special computer programs to master along with laws, regulations and rules covering all of the many variables involved in issuing or denying someone a visa. It's a complex business and the Department of State, in recognition of that complexity, puts all Consular Officers through an extensive training course known as ConGen. Everyone takes ConGen because everyone is required to serve at least one Consular tour during his or her first two tours.

In ConGen you learn the nuts and bolts of the consular business. You learn about the many different types of visas that exist and the things people must prove in order to qualify for them. You learn about documentation and how to determine whether or not said documentation is honest and true or fraudulent. You learn all about the services that our Consular Officers offer to American citizens abroad and how to provide those services in a professional and caring manner. You learn how to mine the Consular Bureau's vast data banks for relevant information and how to operate some fairly detailed and specific computer programs. In addition to these subjects that are relatively factual and can be mastered by anyone with a good memory, you learn to interview visa applicants. Interviewing supplies an element of art to the science of visa adjudication and we are given several opportunities to practice during ConGen.

At the end of the six week course you are tested and if you don't achieve a score of 80% or higher, you are invited to repeat the course. The test gives you full access to all the reference materials and plenty of time to finish and it covers all 12,432 (I made that number up) of the details and facts presented during the ConGen course. With the facts from the course fresh in my mind and the reference materials close at hand, I managed to pass ConGen on the first go-round. Eighteen months ago!

On June 1st, I'll finally get to put all that hard earned knowledge to work and there is ever so slight a possibility that I might have forgotten a fact or two in the interim. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've forgotten 12,429 of them. From interviewing facts, I remember to "try to figure out if they're lying" and there was also something about "micro-expressions." I seem to remember that I can go to jail for trading visas for money, sex or favors and, although Hagen Daz wasn't specifically mentioned, I suppose it falls under the context of 'favors'. Everything else falls under the general heading of, "Stuff I've Forgotten." Right about now I wish I'd taken a few notes.

As I mentioned last time, EER season is upon us and while my colleagues struggled and sweated away on their reviews, I took a more leisurely approach because I am on a different schedule. Everyone else's review was due on May 25th, while mine was due either one year after I arrived at Post (August) or at the end of my tour in Econ (June) whichever came first. My start date in the Foreign Service missed the Spring Tenure Review Board by a few weeks so there was no urgency to complete my EER prior to June. This gave both me and my supervisors time to procrastinate. With very little effort, my June EER would be completed well in advance of the Fall Tenure Review Board. It was amusing to watch my colleagues wrestle with the intricacies of the new on-line system (ePerformance) recently introduced to 'simplify' the EER process and I drafted a few notes for my own when I had time but, mostly I just watched them do theirs.

Then, two days before I was scheduled to leave on a short vacation to Sicily, I received notice that I would be reviewed by the Summer Tenure Review Board and my EER had to be filed prior to my departure! Summer Tenure Review Board? I really didn't have too much time to reflect on why or how I managed to forget the season in between Spring and Fall because I had an EER to draft and shepherd through the somewhat daunting ePerformance process and only two days in which to do it. The sound of my colleagues' chuckling can still be heard echoing through the halls of Econ.

If you've ever seen any of the old silent films of the Keystone Kops, you'll be able to picture the scene in the Econ Section over those next two days as we drafted and revised and ran up and down the hall yelling, "OK. Push the button! Send it back to me! Push the button for crying out loud!" In ePerformance, only one person at a time can be actively working on the EER and you must keep sending it back and forth between rater, reviewer and yourself until it's done. My boss and his boss each put in a yeoman's effort. Exaggerations, embellishments and facts just this side of fabrications were drafted, polished and carved in stone, and we sent it off to the HR review panel on Friday night. I left for Sicily on Saturday.

My plan was to take an overnight ferry from Naples to Palermo and then drive around the bottom of Sicily and then up the east coast. I wanted to take a hike up Mt. Etna and have a close-up look at that very active volcano. Then I'd try to get out to see Stromboli, Italy's most active volcano and, finally, I'd stop by Mt. Vesuvius on my drive back up to Rome. Sort of a volcanic vacation.

In Naples I managed to avoid hitting any of the kamikaze motorino riders by closing my eyes and driving as fast as I could go. I used to think that they were crazy in Rome but now I know better. In Naples, pairs of young men ride around in circles in what I would describe as a Matador style of riding. They come as close as possible to four-wheeled vehicles without actually touching them. From the looks of a couple of their motorscooters, sometimes they get gored. Using a combination of my GPS and blind luck, I found the ferry before it left port and joined the line waiting to board.

The ferry was loaded in a very organized and efficient manner. I was directed to a particular spot and my car was carefully positioned to allow other vehicles to be placed alongside it. It took over an hour to complete the loading and I was really impressed by the level of expertise the loading crew demonstrated. In Palermo, to unload they simply opened the door! It was, "Gentlemen, start your engines! and, Palermo here we come!"

I found a place to park and began to walk around the city. It was fun to watch Palermo wake up and to dodge the traffic. In Palermo, although not as homicidally crazy as Naples, the traffic always runs at full speed sort of like Formula One without caution flags. No one drives in Palermo with any semblance of caution or reserve and it's important to arrive first at each red light and be the first off the line when it turns green. This makes being a pedestrian much more of a participatory sport than I enjoy. I would hover on the curb, bobbing up and down watching the oncoming traffic, looking for a break in the flow or an indication that someone might slow down or even stop. I felt like some great flightless bird trying to time a run across an interstate.

Citizens of Palermo take a totally different approach, they simply saunter out into the street and amble across the road. Nonchalance is the watchword of the day and they neither hurry nor pay the slightest bit of attention to the drivers. In Naples, I'm quite certain this behavior would result in hundreds of incidences of pedestrian roadkill daily, but in Palermo it seems to work. I confess that I never quite got to the point where I could stroll out into the street and make it to the other side without breaking into a run as soon as I spotted an opening. The low point of my 'dodging the traffic in Palermo' experience came when a very senior lady dressed all in black and walking with a cane took my arm and kindly helped me across one particularly nasty five way intersection. I decided that I'd seen enough of Palermo's charms at that point and headed south to Erice.

I drove down this street in Erice!

This somewhat disturbing headstone has an airconditioning vent. I didn't want to ask.

Erice is a beautiful old village perched high up on a mountaintop overlooking the Egadi Islands on the west coast of Sicily. The streets are cobbled and, in some places, are precisely one inch wider than my side mirrors. It took me almost twenty minutes to negotiate one right angle turn on my way to the hotel. There were several restaurants and the food was excellent in the two I visited. My hotel was great and I left the next day with some vague feelings of regret to be going so soon. But, while Erice has charm, wonderful views and great food, it is lacking noticeably in volcanoes. So I headed east towards Mt. Etna.

The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.

This Greek temple is supposedly in better repair than any in Greece.

It is possible to drive from the west coast of Sicily to the east, with a stop in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, in one day. All the guidebooks will tell you that you must stay in either Siracusa or Taormina on the eastern seaboard of Sicily. I stayed in Catania. From there I drove down to Siracusa and up to Taormina and both cities are well worth visiting. I preferred Siracusa to Taormina because it's less of a resort town. Catania, on the other hand, lies in the shadow of Mt. Etna and that's what I'd come to see.

Mt. Etna is puffing out white smoke, but no lava today!

The hike up Mt. Etna was designated as "Easy", but I don't think it was even that difficult. It was a nice stroll on a well tended path on a very pleasant day. Etna's activity consists of periodic puffs of white smoke coming from a fissure on the side of the mountain near the summit. However, from time to time it does rear up and bury one town or another in molten lava, most recently in 1928. Catania was destroyed by a lava flow in 1669. I joined a group that hiked up the south side and then drove around the base and hiked up the north side. The views from the high points on both sides were excellent.

Next on my list was Stromboli. I drove up to Milazzo, parked my car in a lot and caught the hydrofoil out to Stromboli. The guy selling tickets for the boat said something about the wind, but I didn't really understand all of it. On Stromboli I checked into my hotel and jogged up to the meeting point for the group hike up the volcano. This hike was designated "Moderate-Difficult", but I don't think it was that easy at all. My first clue that this wasn't going to a Mt. Etna type climb was when the guide looked at me and said, "you'll have to sign this because we had a guy your age die from a heart attack last month." So I signed a disclaimer absolving them of all culpability if I a) succumbed to cardiac arrest or b) foolishly slipped into the molten lava at the top. Ha, I laugh in the face of molten lava!

The afternoon I arrived on Stromboli was absolutely beautiful.

Our group waiting for sunset and lava bombs!

We climbed straight up for approximately 741 (I made that number up) hours and arrived at the summit just before sunset. Below us was an open crater that spit 'lava bombs' into the air with an amazing crashing boom. The sun set and the wind picked up, maybe this was what the guy in Milazzo was talking about? We watched a few more explosions in the dark and the wind increased in intensity. The guide pulled us all together and said that we had to start back down. Apparently, the climb up was the "Moderate" part because the climb down would be done in total and complete darkness. Well, we did each have a headlamp that cast as much light as three or four highly excited lightening bugs so that made me feel better.

This picture of a lava bomb is somewhat out of focus due to the photographer running for his life!

We took a different route down, through an ash field. I can only describe the experience as like being on ice skates on a vertical beach of deep powdery sand. When we reached the town, we looked like coal miners after a double shift. The climb had started at 5:00pm and I fell into bed at the hotel just before midnight. I set the alarm for 5:30 because the hydrofoil would leave at 7:00am and I planned to drive from Milazzo straight up to Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius that day.

Unfortunately, due to high winds, the hydrofoil was unable to come out to Stromboli the next day. Or the next day. Or the one after that. So that's what that guy was saying.....who knew?

It may interest you to learn that hydrofoils are 'grounded' in high winds. It did me.

All in all, it was a great spot to be stranded.

If I hadn't been in a four star hotel and there weren't a dozen excellent restaurants on the island and I didn't have my books and my cigars, I'd have felt exactly like Robinson Crusoe! As it was, I had the most relaxing three days I've had in years and on the fourth day the winds subsided and the hydrofoil appeared at the dock. I had to pound straight back to Rome and will have to leave Mt. Vesuvius for another day.

When I got back from leave, I started spending half my day in the Consular section as an orientation and the first person I interviewed was a student from Milazzo. "Have you ever been to Stromboli," I asked? "Yes," he said, "but the last time I got stuck there for a week because of the wind." I smoothed the lapels on my white linen suit and said, "Young man, your visa is approved!"

La Corsia della Vergogna

2010-04-26T16:14:00.043+02:00

I was in Washington when my apartment was assigned to me and when I asked the Housing staff if it had a terrace they said, "no, well not really, well there is a sort of terrace but you don't have access to it and it is more like a small cage anyway. You won't want to go out there." The U.S. government owns four buildings in Rome: Villa Taverna, the official residence of the Ambassador, is an historic building in Villa Borghese and the largest single family home in Rome; Villa Pinciana, another historic building, is divided into luxurious apartments for the most senior officers in the embassy; and, two decidedly non-historic apartment buildings that have approximately thirty units between them. My apartment is in Building A. We also lease apartments and houses all over Rome for the large numbers of personnel at Embassy Rome but the U.S. government actually owns these four buildings.

When you are assigned to Rome, unless you are the Ambassador or one of the four senior staff members at the embassy, you have a choice of furnished or unfurnished housing. If you prefer, as I did, furnished housing, you will be assigned a unit in one of the two government owned apartment buildings. The advantage to living in government owned housing is that it's furnished, it's relatively secure and in decent condition and any necessary repairs are performed by the embassy maintenance crew. The biggest disadvantage is that it falls under the benevolent tyranny of the Overseas Buildings Operations unit or OBO. OBO is responsible for all construction projects on all government owned buildings overseas.

Before I moved into my building, OBO had decided that it definitely needed to have a very ugly fire escape added to the outside corner right by my two bedroom windows. I was told that they had originally wanted to add the external fire escape to Villa Pinciana but were told in no uncertain terms that adding a very ugly external structure to one of Rome's historic buildings occupied by very senior staff was not going to happen under any circumstances. So they had a perfectly good, albeit ugly, fire escape and no building to burden with it. The Italian government and the Ambassador made it perfectly clear that Villa Taverna was also completely out of the question and, as both Villa Taverna and Villa Pinciana are guarded by units of the Italian army, OBO soon looked towards our apartment buildings. Finding no Ambassador, no senior staff, and no uniformed men with machine guns to chase them away, OBO decided to hang the fire escape onto Building A.

The fire escape, a rectangular box of steel and wire mesh, was built onto the northeast corner of Building A. Because my apartment is on the first floor (which is one floor up from the Ground Floor in Italy) it didn't have a terrace. This was important because the other apartments above me all accessed the fire escape from their terraces and without a terrace my apartment wouldn't have access to this life saving construction project. So OBO built a terrace outside my bedroom window leading to the fire escape. For 'security' reasons, the entire terrace was enclosed in a steel mesh cage and a steel mesh door was installed at the end to prevent anyone who gained access to the fire escape from then gaining access to my terrace or apartment. When I arrived I was shown the terrace from the bedroom window and I understood that in the event of a fire, I would have to climb out the window and access the fire escape in that manner. That was fine with me.

The bedroom window OBO wanted to remove, with a view of the cage.

Then I received word that OBO had decided to put in a door leading out to the terrace. The first message I received said that they were going to install a door by removing one of my two living room windows. I pointed out that this would be a major construction project and I did happen to actually be living in the apartment now. They said they were sorry but they had to do the work anyway and described their plans to open a gaping hole in my apartment wall, install a door and then seal up the side gaps. In February. I then pointed out that after they removed a living room window and installed a door, the door would open out onto a twenty foot drop to the pavement below, as the terrace did not, in fact, extend as far as the living room. They said, "oh."

Time passed. OBO contacted me again to say that they really meant that they were going to remove the window in my bedroom and install the door in there and they were really serious this time, no kidding. Again, in February. I began the process of respectful and courteous dissent. I felt that to do a major construction project (did I mention, in February?) while I was living in the apartment constituted a major imposition. They disagreed and we tussled back and forth. Finally, we struck a compromise and the work crew arrived to begin removing the bedroom window and installing the door. In April. The embassy escort said that they were ready to begin taping up my bedroom closet because that was part of our agreement but she didn't quite understand why it was necessary.

"Because all my suits are in there and this project will create a great deal of dust. OBO has agreed to either tape up the closet or clean the suits, take your pick," I said.

"OK," she said, "but we're not going anywhere near your bedroom."

In fact, they were planning to punch through the wall in the dining room not through any of the windows and install the door in a corner of the apartment. I pointed out that if anyone had actually told me that instead of insisting that they were going to break through my bedroom window, I wouldn't have had any objections at all. We all laughed. They began work. I looked forward to having access to my terrace (hey, even though it's in a cage it's still sort of a terrace!).

Here is the outside of the bedroom window and, at the far end, the wall that eventually became a door.

The contractor completed the work more or less on time and did a fine job. I moved a table and a couple of chairs into the cage and enjoyed my first cigar on my new terrace. I mentally hung a couple of baskets of plants. I looked down the terrace towards the fire escape and noticed that the steel mesh door between my terrace and the fire escape didn't seem to have any kind of a handle. I walked down to the door, examined it and realized that it was locked, had no handle and couldn't be opened from my side without a key. I didn't have a key.

No problem. I asked the contractor for the key they'd been using. "I'm sorry," she said, "we're not allowed to give you the key. It's for security reasons."

Here's the very secure steel mesh door that prevents me from actually getting to the fire escape.

So there you have it. OBO spent a fortune designing and building a very ugly external fire escape on a relatively pleasant neighborhood apartment building, added a terrace to my apartment, broke through a wall and installed a very nice door to that terrace from my dining room and then trapped me like a rat in a steel cage. And people say the government doesn't have a sense of humor.

EER season is upon us once again. This is the time of year when we all stop working so we can very honestly and factually describe our achievements and all the work we have done during the previous year. I use 'honestly and factually' here in the sense that those words mean 'wildly exaggerated, unbelievably embellished figments of our depraved imaginations'. It is with your EER that you must convince a panel of complete strangers, at some appointed time in the future, that you are worthy of tenure and promotion. The Tenure and Promotion Panels have nothing other than your EERs to base their decisions on so we take them quite seriously and strain to shine a light on anything positive that we've done.

For example, my afternoon excursions in search of gelato will become "networked with local community small business leaders while improving Italian language skills." The day I hit the Carabinieri jeep on my way to work becomes "interacted with local law enforcement officials on ways and means of improving traffic safety." The forty-one demarches I've done in ten months now demonstrate conclusively that I've "single-handedly saved a failing Italian economy and strengthened our bi-lateral relationship." I know that it's not as impressive as when I "made Pakistan safe for Democracy", but Italy is already pretty safe for Democracy and the Promotion Panels like to see that you're developing new skills.

Three people have input into your EER. The Rater is your immediate supervisor and his/her section is vitally important to your career. Most Raters will look to you for bullet points and suggestions as they draft their section of your EER. The Reviewer is usually your Rater's supervisor and he/she gives your achievements an over-all blessing with one or two carefully chosen examples from your body of work. You are the third person to have input. Raters and Reviewers often have several subordinates to write up, so they are generally grateful for as much help as you want to give them in drafting their sections. In practical terms, if you're willing you can end up writing all three sections and your biggest challenge will be to identify a mandatory 'area for improvement'. You are discouraged from using, "Larry really has to learn to stop working so hard."

Hyperbole, exaggeration and embellishment are the norm. People are damned by faint praise and careers are enhanced by the use of carefully chosen examples to bolster key precepts. I hope to translate my volunteer activity at the dog shelter into "this officer took community outreach to new levels while bringing a sorely needed sense of organization to a small NGO. His tireless work on behalf of a local shelter demonstrated his clear understanding of information gathering and analysis and showcased his leadership skills by organizing the physical rehabilitation of the facility." Pretty much what I actually do is show up on Saturday or Sunday, clean kennels and feed the dogs. I fix the odd thing here and there and try to keep out of the other volunteers' way. I enjoy the time I spend there and will only include this 'accomplishment' on my EER because I'm desperate for things to write!

My tour in Rome is a 'Rotational' tour. That means that I'll spend my second year working in the Consular Section as Vice-Consul Gemmell. I'll rotate jobs on June 1st and will begin going over to Consular as often as I can from now on to get a refresher on the training I took over a year ago. I have thoroughly enjoyed working as a reporting officer in the Economic Section but I'm really looking forward to Consular work too. Rotational tours are a great opportunity to get as wide a field of experience as possible in a very short time. In my first three years I'll have done GSO, Econ and Consular. Now, if I can just find a Political/Public Diplomacy rotation for my third bid, I'll have the hat trick...all five cones in the first five years.

We tend to talk about people in other countries as being 'terrible' drivers. "Oh, Italians are terrible drivers," we say. I don't think that this is necessarily so. It's true that some Italian drivers are terrible drivers but so are some people from Connecticut. I think that people develop very specific sets of expectations when they learn to drive based on what they've been observing as they grew up. I'm amazed that things that would lead to serious road rage in the States don't even raise an eyebrow here. Zipping up the shoulder of the road to pass a line of slow moving traffic on the right and cutting back in at the front of the jam never causes one horn to beep, one finger to be raised in salute or one shouted challenge to the offender's birthright. No one seems to mind. An Italian waiting on a side street to make a left turn onto a road with heavy traffic will wait a minute or two then slowly begin to creep out into the lane causing the first few cars to swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid him (or her). Finally, he'll move so far out into the lane that traffic will have to stop and then he'll slowly begin nudging his way into the lane he needs. This practice doesn't seem to upset anyone either. After all, he did wait two or three minutes and how long can a man be expected to sit patiently while the world passes him by?

Most drivers here prefer to drive in the far left lane. They go as fast as they can and if they can get up onto the bumper of the car ahead of them and flash their lights to ask him to move over and let them by, their day is made. The center lane is used as a temporary holding lane until you can get back into the left lane and make someone else move over. The right lane is only used by trucks, grandmothers and foreigners. The Italians even have a name for it, they call it La Corsia della Vergogna or The Lane of Shame.

I'm strongly considering putting it into my EER that I've never voluntarily driven in La Corsia della Vergogna. It's all about attitude!

The Coliseum behind me is also gated and locked and they won't give me a key for it either.

Diplomacy at Work

2010-03-19T20:07:00.001+01:00

She seems to be saying, "Play nice, children!" and could very well be the patron saint of diplomatic meetings.

As I thought it might interest some people to experience 'diplomacy' in action, I'll briefly describe some meetings I participated in over the past couple of days. The subject under discussion and the parties involved are not of particular interest so you can be assured that we were not bringing peace to the Middle East, ratcheting up sanctions on Iran or setting troop levels in Afghanistan. No, this was your everyday diplomatic negotiating session to agree to the wording on a memo, a non-binding memo that proposes to create a framework in which we can, mutually, proceed forward to discuss substantive projects.

Some background might be helpful. The Economics and Political sections of our embassies are called the Reporting sections. These two groups are responsible for facilitating the flow of information in their respective areas between Washington and the host country. Good reporting officers establish contacts in the host government and, over time, develop a rapport with them that enables the officers to provide Washington with high quality insightful information. This rapport also eases the flow of information from Washington back to the host country.

From time to time, as is their wont, our colleagues in Washington decide that it is critical that they personally give or receive the information. Unsurprisingly, the decision that their personal presence is required is made much more frequently when the host nation is Italy than when it is, for example, Mali. The immediate drawback to this plan of course, whether they are in Italy or Mali, is that they do not, personally, know anyone in the host government. So we are called upon to set up meetings for them with our carefully nurtured, highly valuable contacts. That's an expected and accepted part of our jobs and, frankly, we're happy to do it. Most of our visitors from Washington are very senior people and have attained a certain level of importance, some are even legends in their own minds.

Recently, a group of State Department folks in Washington realized that Spring had come to Rome at the very same time a memo needed to be discussed and flew over to, personally, do the discussing. Because one of the Italian government contacts they needed to meet with was mine, I would be included in any meeting he attended. There are several reasons for embassy personnel to be included in any meetings between host country officials and our Washington visitors. We generally brief our host government contacts on the expectations of the visitors, thereby giving them an opportunity to prepare for the meeting. We are also there to ensure that our visitors arrive on time and at the correct ministry and to introduce the two parties. One of the embassy members of our delegation will always serve as a notetaker during the meeting and will be responsible for writing a reporting cable immediately after it. If and when appropriate, we are there to add our own insight, ideas or opinions to the general fray. Finally, we are there to assess and evaluate the level of damage control required after our visitors have met with our contacts.

We try, whenever possible, to keep the numbers of participants on each side equal. Unfortunately, we are notorious for arriving with last minute unannounced additions to our team. This happened on the first of the two days of meetings I sat in on last week. Our Italian counterparts expected seven of us and ten of us arrived. The start of the meeting was, therefore, delayed while we waited for three Italian 'subject matter experts' who had, unavoidably, "been detained in a previous meeting" but were definitely supposed to participate in this one too.

When the three 'experts', one looking suspiciously like my contact's secretary, arrived, we began the Dance of the Table Positions. The two principals sit in the center facing each other and the rest of the delegation arranges itself in equal numbers on either side of them. There is a tendency, especially on the part of our visitors, to want to sit as close to the principal as possible and the subtle jostling and nudging is entertaining to watch. However, eventually the music stops and everyone has to sit down, with the victors on the principal's right and left hand and the lesser victors in descending order away from the seat of power. As a general rule, the embassy staff take the seats at the far ends and avoid the unseemly jockeying for position.

The meeting began with the usual pleasantries and then our team stated in several thousand well-chosen words what they hoped to accomplish over the next two days. Their team politely acknowledged what we hoped to accomplish and then carefully explained why that would be impossible to achieve. Undaunted, our team re-explained, using many of the same well-chosen words, what they felt was essential to accomplish during the course of the meetings. Unfazed, their team carefully explained the pitfalls inherent in overly ambitious expectations. Back and forth it went until an agreement was reached. It took the better part of an hour to reach an agreement on how the meeting would proceed!

"If they don't begin making progress, I'm throwing this water down on them!"

Once we got into the meat of the discussion, things really slowed down. Those in the center continued to beat horses long dead and those of us on the wings amused ourselves as best we could. The man sitting next to me, who had come from Washington, was playing a game on his BlackBerry and my contact, sitting across from me, was surreptitiously working on a Sudoku puzzle. I happened to see that he'd put a 7 where a 5 needed to go so I texted him and suggested that he might want to change the number. He read my message, frowned, changed the number to a 5 and then smiled and nodded his thanks my way. Diplomacy in action!

The meeting lasted two days, gave the folks from Washington an excuse to visit Rome, didn't destroy our bilateral relations with Italy and produced a non-binding memo that suggests a potential way to begin exploring possible areas of mutual interest. Both teams agreed that it was a highly successful encounter and promised each other that they'd have a follow-up meeting in the near future. It's Cherry Blossom time in Washington, so I think their team will find it necessary to visit us there.

This was the look on the face of the principal Italian negotiator when we said, "Yes, but..." for the twentieth time.

I bought an app for my ipod. It's a beginner's running program designed to take couch potatoes and turn them into 5K runners. In fact, it's called C25K, clever huh? The premise behind the program is that if you follow the instructions three days a week for nine weeks, you will be in shape to run 5 kilometers or 30 minutes at a stretch. You begin with a relatively easy routine of walking and jogging and progress from there to a steady 30 minute run. The ipod app just puts some bells and whistles onto the program. It tells you when to walk and when to jog and when you're halfway through so you can turn around and finish up back home in the end. You can listen to music while you walk/jog and the whole experience isn't much more strenuous than getting up out of the La-Z-Boy to fetch another beer. The concept is that exercise shouldn't be painful; if it doesn't hurt you, you're more likely to continue doing it.

There are actually several apps dedicated to the C25K program and I took my time before selecting the one I chose. It had many positive reviews by people who had used it and one of them said, "I'm a fat old man and I can run 5 kilometers now. This really works!" Well, I thought to myself, I too am a fat old man and I would like to be able to run 5 kilometers, so I bought the app. It is very important to commit the same three days a week for nine weeks, so I decided that Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday worked best for me and planned to begin the next Tuesday. Tuesday it rained.

I was quite certain that the originators of the C25K program never intended for me to run in the rain (although they were curiously silent on the point in their instructions) so I postponed getting started until a Tuesday when it wasn't raining. The following Tuesday I worked late and it was pretty dark when I got home. Surely, no one would expect a beginner to run in the dark, that's madness. I was impatient to get started but not foolhardy, so I decided to wait another week. On the third Tuesday I had prior dinner plans so I was forced to wait until the fourth Tuesday after I bought the app to get started.

Tuesday came, it wasn't raining and it was still quite light out. I started off and paid close attention to the commands to walk and jog and walk again. Halfway through the 30 minute program I was notified and I turned around and retraced my steps back home. I arrived home feeling very good and quite pleased with myself for completing the first day of my C25K. In fact, I was already looking forward to Thursday which would be the second day of my journey to running a 5K.

Wednesday morning I got out of bed and nearly fell on my face. The pain in my knees was intense and neither of my legs seemed to be under my direct control any more. I wobbled around for a minute or two and then ate a hearty breakfast of aspirin, Advil and Tylenol. By Thursday I could walk with a limp, but without groaning out loud, and couldn't even think of jogging without causing knifelike pains to shoot through my knees. Saturday wasn't much better and I've realized that I just might not be a 'runner', some of us aren't. I have also had time to reflect on the review that persuaded me that I could do this and I think that it should be mandatory for people to state exactly how fat and how old they are when they make these absurd claims.

"...and then I ran from here all the way over to there..."

Speaking of exercise, I have a compiled list of 26 of the most highly recommended gelaterias in Rome. I've downloaded an app for my ipod that has allowed me to map each of them and plot the shortest route there from my apartment. I can also enter my comments and evaluations in a very high tech manner. Every weekend, on whichever day I don't go to help out at the kennel, I will visit one of the 26. Although I will always order the largest size they have, personal restraint will keep me from having seconds. It's all about will power. Today I plan to visit Giovanni's over on Via Eleonora Duse. There's a light rain falling and it's getting dark out now, Via E. Duse is about a mile away, but a man can't let minor inconveniences interfere with a mission. Like they say, if it begins to hurt, I'll stop!

The Pantheon - built by a whole bunch of guys who also never did the C25K.

La Nuova Cuccia

2010-02-13T14:30:00.000+01:00

"Wear rubber boots and bring rubber gloves," they said. I'm the new guy at an animal shelter with a population of 250 well fed dogs and two very nervous cats. La Nuova Cuccia is a shelter, located 31 kilometers north of Rome, with a notorious past. Approximately ten years ago, the shelter was taken over by the Italian government for being more of a gulag than a rescue society. At that time there were about 700 dogs crowded into a chaotic warren of ramshackle kennels. They lived in filth and were slowly starving to death. It is against Italian law for an animal shelter to euthanize an animal, or to abandon one for that matter, so neglecting 700 dogs was a very serious situation indeed.

A new group of volunteers took over the shelter and began to care for the animals. They fed them, gave them fresh water, cleaned the kennels and tried to let them out of their runs at least once a day. They solicited donations and received food, doghouses, blankets and supplies. Their goal was, and still is, to find homes for the dogs or to care for them until the last dog dies. La Nuova Cuccia doesn't take in animals anymore and it will shut down after the last dog goes. But for now, there are still 250 dogs (and two very nervous cats) to be cared for every day. On Sundays I try to get up there to lend a hand.

This little guy is named Yorkie. I guess when you have to name 700 dogs creativity suffers somewhat.

The shelter is divided into sectors and each sector contains 12 to 15 kennels, each kennel has one, two or three dogs and each dog has its own doghouse in the kennel. The kennel floors are concrete and slope downwards to a drain set in the front. I work in Settore Violetta and look after 28 dogs. Two by two, I let them out of their kennels to run in the sector's open space while I go in with a bucket and a mason's trowel to clean up the floor. Then I bring in a hose and wash down the floor with a stiff broom. I dump their water buckets and refill them with fresh clean water, then I take all their bedding outside and shake it out. When I've finished cleaning the kennel, I put the two occupants back in and move on to the next kennel. There are 15 kennels in Settore Violetta so it takes me a good two hours to clean them all.

This is Furto. I suppose the name English Setter was already taken.

After the kennels have been cleaned, we begin feeding the dogs. Some dogs have special diets and others need to be fed apart from their kennel buddy. Nio and Sheila, for example, share a kennel and are the best of friends but if Sheila wasn't fed outside the kennel, Nio would never get a second bite of his food. One of the other volunteers mixes up big vats of food and we bring it to our sectors in wheelbarrows and serve it to the dogs on disposable plastic plates to eliminate the need for dish washing. With the few required separations and the three dogs that have special diets, it takes almost two hours to feed them all.

This is Laika.

Once everyone has been fed, I start back at the beginning and let the dogs out two by two for a little bit of exercise/socializing time. Usually there's a bit of cleanup maintenance to do during this period but mostly it's a time to play with the dogs or just talk to them. All the dogs are pretty fluent in Italian and, surprisingly, none seem to be the least bit bi-lingual. I chatter away in what I assume is Italian and they listen politely as long as I hold a treat in my hand. In what has turned out to be somewhat of a mixed blessing, none of the other volunteers speaks any english either. That's good because it's forcing me to use Italian much more than I usually do but it can also be a drawback when it comes to receiving basic instructions. I was working in Settore Violetta when another volunteer entered and gave me a lengthy set of instructions. I understood most of them perfectly but missed the part about not leaving the sector for the next fifteen minutes while a very dangerous dog was being exercised in the adjoining sector. Fortunately, he was being put back into his kennel when I wandered out to see what was going on and I didn't have to demonstrate how capable I am of vaulting a fence when pressed. Most of our dogs are senior citizens and enjoy just sitting out in the sun for a few minutes. Some of the dogs like to chase a ball and some prefer to just wander up and down the row of kennels checking things out like nosy old men. When it's time for them to go back into their kennel, I give each dog a chunk of liverwurst as a treat and close them up. This part of the day takes over three hours to complete.

Pluto is the biggest dog in my sector.

The facility is still ramshackle but at least now it's clean and orderly. The animals are cared for daily by a rotating corps of volunteers and visited regularly by a veterinarian. People still come to look them over and adopt them or they drop by to donate food, blankets or money. In the past two weeks, two of the dogs in Settore Violetta have been adopted (the oldest and the youngest) and now some reorganization will take place this week. Compatible dogs will be moved into the kennels and, on Sunday, I'll put on my rubber boots and begin letting them out two by two...

Perla is the shyest of the dogs in Settore Violetta.

At work, part of my portfolio covers Italy's aid to developing nations. When Haiti was struck by the earthquake several weeks ago, I was tasked with monitoring Italy's relief effort and reporting it back to DC. This put me into contact with the Protezione Civile, Italy's disaster relief corps. Within a day, the government of Italy decided to send a C-130 mobile hospital unit to Port-au-Prince with a medical team specially trained in crisis care. They dispatched the aircraft but it was diverted to the island of Guadeloupe because of the chaos at the Haitian airport in those first days. My contact at the Protezione Civile asked me to confirm that the US government had control of the airport and to help them get a landing permission for their plane. The Department of State had opened a 'Haiti Task Force' so I called them and they referred me to an Air Force command center who referred me to a Lt. Colonel in Arizona who was actually trying to bring order to the confusion at the airport in Port-au-Prince. He immediately cleared the Italian relief flight for landing as soon as they could get airborne and the first Italian relief mission arrived just three days after the earthquake struck.

In addition to the mobile hospital, Italy sent teams of disaster relief specialists, medical and humanitarian supplies and their aircraft carrier, the 'Cavour', with its hospital, a group of 300 engineers, several helicopters and 90 pieces of heavy construction equipment. As their contribution to the reconstruction effort, Italy has committed to build a physical rehabilitation facility in Port-au-Prince that will specialize in manufacturing prosthetic limbs. As my contact at Protezione Civile said, "Unfortunately, we have some experience in earthquake disasters after Abruzzo." He quickly noted that even though the scale of the two disasters was not comparable, he felt strongly that they had gained valuable experience in dealing with the aftermath of such a crisis. After touring their command center and witnessing the immediacy and the generosity of their response, I'd have to agree.

There was a bit of a drama the other day when I had a small 'incidente' with my, formerly, mint condition 1995 Mustang. I decided to drive into the Embassy one day because I wanted to use the car on the weekend and it needed gas. There's a gas station between the Embassy and my apartment and it's convenient to stop there on the way home. Having my car at the Embassy would also give me an opportunity to stock up at the commissary. Due to construction on one of the gates into the Embassy compound, I had to use an alternate gate and drive down a chute made of metal barriers on one side and a sidewalk on the other. The chute was narrow but wide enough for my car. At least it was wide enough until I hit the carabinieri jeep parked on the sidewalk. The sound of my passenger side mirror being knocked off was the first clue I had that I might have used just a bit more caution as I barreled down the chute and past the jeep. My first instinct was, naturally, to blame someone. The carabinieri were the obvious choice, but it's difficult to hold them responsible as they were, in fact, parked, stationary, not moving in broad daylight. They were also, I might add, standing outside their jeep looking at me in utter disbelief. Their jeep wasn't even scratched, I learned the word for idiot in Italian and diplomatic immunity came into play. My mirror is now held on with duct tape and I forgot to get gas on the way home that night. As my friends all say, "It's been Romanized."

Il idiota is the guy on the right.

It snowed in Rome on Thursday and we all managed to truck on in to work and put in a full day. Sure, less than half an inch fell and even that was quickly washed away by an afternoon rain, but this was the first snow to fall in many years in Rome and we all soldiered on. Shortly after I arrived in Islamabad, it snowed there too. No one felt the need to abandon their post there either. In other words, snow fell, work went on. However, let a few feet of snow fall on DC and the whole place shuts down. If they really cared, they'd have used dog sleds to get to work. Hey, dog sleds. More snow is expected this week and I happen to know where we could find a bunch of willing dogs who'd be delighted to have the work! All I need to do now is figure out how to say, "Mush," in Italian!

Trust me, you do not want to be this tree in Settore Violetta. Oh, the indignities it suffers.

Civita di Bagno

2010-01-10T13:08:00.000+01:00

The Coliseum on a rainy Roman day.

The Number 19 tram runs right by my place. This makes visiting the Vatican relatively easy, because the Number 19 tram ends its run one block away from St. Peter's Square. Friends of mine assured me that this was the case and so, on a blustery cold Saturday about a month ago, I stood in the rain at the tram stop on Viale Regina Margherita for about twenty minutes before climbing aboard the first Number 19 to come along. It may interest you to learn that there are, apparently, two Number 19 trams with two very different final destinations. The Number 19 tram that I boarded made a right turn where all the Number 19 trams headed for the Vatican make a left and stopped in a very nice neighborhood about five miles from St. Peter's Square or, as the crow flies, farther from the Vatican than I had been when I started out. I decided to just sit tight and wait until it began its return journey across town and give up on the Vatican that day, after all it was now raining quite heavily and the wind had picked up. Unfortunately, the driver explained as he kicked me off the tram, this one was going out of service and I would have to catch the next one to go home. By the time I made it to the doorway of a nearby apartment building to wait for the next tram, I was soaked to the bone.

I mention this because that was my most pleasant trip to the Vatican. Four friends came to spend New Year's Eve in Rome with me and they wanted to see as much as they could in the few days they were here. High on their list was a visit to the Vatican and the Vatican Museums with the Sistine Chapel. I hadn't been to the Sistine Chapel since its restoration in the 1980's so I was looking forward to seeing it too. We got up early to get a jump on the crowds and caught the Number 19 (it has to say "Risorgimento" on the front or it's the wrong Number 19) which, as promised, dropped us off a block away from St. Peter's Square. The line to the entrance of the Basilica was six across and already curved back past the famous colonnades.

After counting their feet and dividing by two, I estimated that there were 1,000,000 people in line ahead of us.

However, we were in good spirits and the line was moving slowly but steadily so the time passed relatively quickly and within half an hour or so we were in St. Peter's Basilica. The church is massive and easily accommodated the crowd. We took our time and wandered around admiring the artwork and architecture. People would wait patiently for others to move before taking their photos and apologize if they walked into someone else's shot. It was all very civil and we were able to see and photograph everything that interested us.

The roped off center aisle is where the Pope was mugged by a mentally disturbed woman as he walked towards the altar to celebrate Christmas Mass.

The Papal Altar by Bernini. Only the Pope may celebrate Mass at this altar.

Then it was time to visit the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. There is little I can say about that experience that Dante hasn't already covered in "The Inferno". To visit the Museums, you must exit the Basilica and walk around the Vatican to a separate entrance. The line, again six deep, for the entrance to the Museums began right outside the colonnades and went up Via di Porta Angelica, turned left onto Via Pio X which eventually became Viale Bastioni de Michelangelo and made a final left onto Viale Vaticano. We stood on this line, shuffling forward inches at a time, for three hours. Once past the entrance doors, we shuffled gamely forward until the ticket seller could relieve us of 15 euros each and then we shuffled along with the crowd towards the various exhibits.

An anonymous visitor to the Museums upon learning that there is no way out.

I'm told that the artwork in the Vatican Museums rivals any collection anywhere in the world but I'll have to take that on faith. If you visit the Museums, you do so in a press of humanity that staggers the imagination. You move in lockstep up and down hallways and corridors like cattle in the slaughterhouse pens. Stopping to actually admire any of the art on display is impossible as you are being pushed, shoved and jostled by the horde coming along behind you. There are no side corridors and the route is laid out to march you past the entire collection and then deposit you into the Sistine Chapel. If you decide that you've had enough and no longer have any interest in seeing the Chapel, you're out of luck because there is no way to escape once you enter the first corridor. It took two hours for us to get to the Chapel, half an hour to work our way through the five or six thousand people jammed into that small room and another half hour to follow the long and twisting road to freedom. Like any self-respecting museum, the Vatican exit route dumps you into a series of gift shops selling tasteful memorabilia like Sistine ceiling coffee mugs and calendars of 'hot' priests. The 'experience' itself had lasted just over six hours and was memorabilia enough for all of us, although one of my friends did buy a 'hot' priests calendar. "Just as a joke," she insisted.

When we finally hit the street, we put our backs to the Museums, walked away and didn't look back. While we were wandering through the neighborhood north of the Vatican, one of my friends spotted a small trattoria and we decided it was time for a meal. She went down the steps, tried the door and came back saying it was locked and the restaurant was closed. However, there was a small sign on the door and I thought it might have the time the place would open for business so I went down the steps to look. The sign said (in Italian) "We keep the door locked. If you want to come in, ring the bell on the left." When I tried the bell, a very pleasant woman opened the door, asked how many we were and said she could seat five right away. The restaurant was quite small but there was one open table and they quickly set it up for the five of us.

I asked her why she kept the door locked and she whispered, "Well, we don't really want tourists in here." Bene, molto bene! The food was excellent, the wine plentiful and the desserts homemade.

Civita di Bagno

The 'hill towns' of Central Italy are iconic and Civita di Bagno, although not very well known, is especially picturesque. About an hour and a half north of Rome, it's located just outside of Bagnoregio on a hill that has been eroding away for centuries. When the path across the valley between the two towns finally became too narrow and steep to provide safe access, the long footbridge was built. Until recently, all goods going to Civita di Bagno were moved on the backs of donkeys but now tradesmen use three wheeled motorscooters with small pickup beds to carry their wares. During the winter, the town only has about twelve permanent residents but its population swells to well over 100 in the summer. Many of the small homes and apartments have been bought by Romans looking for a weekend escape from the summer heat in the city. There are half a dozen restaurants, several small shops selling crafts and artwork and two or three bed & breakfasts.

The entrance gate to Civita di Bagno.

The side street.

One of the restaurants was open and my friend Kathleen and I shared a plate of mixed bruschetta with ground olives, truffles and crushed tomato toppings, another plate of mixed local cheeses and then a pasta course of tagliatelle with wild boar sauce. Espresso and panna cotta for dessert wrapped up a perfect meal for a cold foggy day. I could have used one of those donkeys to carry me back to the car.

January 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany and a national holiday in Italy. It is also the day La Bufana, a witch, comes to people's homes during the night to give candy or coal to nice or naughty children. The kids hang up stockings the night before and hope for the best. For the rest of us, it means that work more or less gets put on hold from just before Christmas until the week after the Epiphany. Tomorrow marks the day when everything should kick back into gear.

This year a woman managed to elude security and tackled the Pope as he made his way to the altar in St. Peter's to celebrate Christmas Mass. She, according to all reports, had also tried to knock him down last year but had been stopped as she reached the ropes. The press uniformly described her as "mentally disturbed" but I think that such persistence of intent can only have been born while on line for the Sistine Chapel and if you search her coat pockets you'll no doubt find in them a frayed and crumpled ticket to the Vatican Museums.

Io non sono un tourista.

Motorinis

2009-12-25T00:07:00.000+01:00

For Thanksgiving a small group of us rented a farmhouse in Umbria and cooked a feast for nine people in an oven not much bigger than a ten pound turkey. Everyone brought a dish to contribute to the meal and, while the kitchen was the size of an inadequate closet, the turf battles for stove, oven and sink were often surprisingly civil. I was responsible for the turkeys (two ten pounders in anticipation of the smaller European ovens) and assumed that I'd have some sort of priority in the line for the oven. I quickly discovered that my priority number was just behind four of the women in the group who managed to elbow me out of the way with such skill, finesse and charm that I didn't even mind the bruises on my ribs. "But I have the turkeys," I whined. Their replies were shockingly direct and impressively descriptive and I retreated to the table to have a glass of Prosecco and reflect upon the evolution of diplomatic language.

When it was safe, I popped the first turkey into the oven and began to fight for one of the four burners on the stove. This time I was adamant and no amount of abuse could chase me away. I was able to commandeer a pot of just the right size and I put the giblets with water, broth and spices into it and began to simmer them for the gravy. Because chivalry is not dead, I then surrendered the field to the ladies and retreated to the porch to have a cigar with a couple of the men. When the cigars were finished I decided to go back in and check on the stock I'd left simmering on the stove. All four burners were occupied by pots filling the room with the wonderful smells of Thanksgiving, not one of which was my gravy stock. Where did my pot go? "Oh," said one of the women with an angelic smile, "I put it in the sink for safekeeping." Make a note, this is the exact moment when chivalry died.

Don't let the pretty smiles fool you, they'd eat their young before they'd give up their places at the stove.

After a brief argument over when it was appropriate to begin playing Christmas music (I still maintain that it is appropriate as soon as the turkey goes into the oven), 'regular' music played, wine bottles were opened, the table was set and Thanksgiving dinner was served. The food was amazing and there was so much of it that we were able to have a complete second dinner the next day. I ate enough to shame a wolf and still outreached the woman seated next to me for the last piece of sweet potato pie. Although everyone had had their fill, there was enough turkey left over to have sandwiches on Sunday. Time not spent cooking or eating was spent hiking, watching movies, reading and just sitting around talking. By any measure, our Umbrian Thanksgiving was a huge success and I'm hoping it will be repeated next year and, if so, that I'll be invited along again.

I opened an Italian bank account because the automatic withdrawal option makes it easier to pay my bills here. Without a local bank account you pay your bills at the post office every month and that entails standing in long lines and then being advised that you have been on the wrong line and must now stand on another even longer line. Along with my bank account I received a debit card which I was told could be used on the highways to pay the tolls. This might not sound like such a big deal but at every tollbooth there are three marked lanes; one with no line at all for cars using Telepass, one with very short lines for cars using bank cards and one with a line stretching all the way back to your original entrance to the highway for cars using cash. On my way up to Umbria, as I exited the highway, I pulled into the bank card lane and saw several slots that looked as if they would be where I should put my card, but I wasn't sure which one to use. Fortunately, there was an attendant in the booth and I asked him if I could use my bank card to pay and I explained that I'd never paid a toll with it and wasn't sure how to do so. He smiled and said, "Certamente!" then came out of the booth, took my card, turned his back to me and, blocking my view, paid the toll in one or another of the slots. Grazie!

"You Blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things: O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome..."

Shakespeare almost certainly had motorini riders in mind when he penned that phrase in the opening scene of "Julius Caesar".

Motorinis are a cultural thing. The humble motor scooter is used here as a form of mass transit and for 'mass' I use the Webster dictionary definition, "a coherent, typically large body of matter with no definite shape." Motorini is the word Italians use when referring to the motor scooter riders who zip in, out, around and through the traffic on the streets of Rome. It is already plurale and only Americans add the 's' when there are more than a single motor scooter. In the 1953 movie, "Roman Holiday", Audrey Hepburn takes Gregory Peck on a wild ride through bizarrely empty streets in Rome on, apparently, the only motor scooter in town. This little machine would have been called a motorino, but since 1953 the singolare of the word has been restricted to phrases such as, "Vincenzo hit a motorino today on his way to church. Grazie Dio, our car received only a small dent!" or "Look, Isabella, those boys on the motorino have your purse." Apart from that, it is impossible to spot a single motorino and they are always motorini, or if you're an American, motorinis.

If you grew up in Italy, I suppose that motorini traffic isn't all that unusual. It, much like famine, pestilence and death, is just there. Always has been (post-1953 anyway) and always will be. There don't seem to be any actual rules of the road for motorinis apart from "if there is a space you must occupy it." At every traffic light you must weave and wend your way to the front of the line of cars, even if that means temporarily trespassing into the oncoming traffic lane and, in anticipation of the light turning green, blast away in a pack during the last micro-seconds of the red light. Sidewalks, center dividers and every single square meter of roadway are all fair game for motorini. Yet, these zipping buzzing impediments to sanity and safety don't seem to annoy Italians and surprisingly few drivers bother to make a rude gesture or two or loudly question the riders ancestry. I watched a motorino run a red light in front of a police car the other day and no one was more shocked than the rider when he was pulled over. A pedestrian alongside me in the crosswalk said, "Beh, don't they have better things to do, it must be a very slow day today for the police." This from a man who had almost been knocked down by that motorino.

There is a piece of legislation sitting, largely ignored, in Parliament that would require all bloggers in Italy to apply for permits to continue to publish their thoughts online or risk being fined as 'unlicensed journalists'. While it is unlikely that this legislation will ever be passed or survive the inevitable judicial review if it were, it is almost certainly aimed at Beppe Grillo. Grillo is a political activist who supports freedom of the internet, opposes political corruption and uses satire and ridicule to lampoon Italian power structures and the government. I stand foursquare with him. I too support freedom of speech and oppose corruption, I too am willing to risk fines and imprisonment for civil disobedience or rather I would be if I weren't quite certain that I'm protected by diplomatic immunity.

The Christmas holidays are upon us and it's time for this unlicensed journalist to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year. May your feasts be plentiful, may you always find the short lines and may the motorinis miss you in the crosswalks in 2010!

From the Halls of Montezuma...

2009-11-14T13:48:00.000+01:00

...to the Palazzo Brancaccio, the United States Marines put on an excellent show! An annual event at our embassies worldwide is the celebration hosted by the Marine Security Guards to commemorate the founding of the Corps. The Marine Ball is a formal affair, held on a weekend around November 10th, that offers a perfect opportunity to break out your tux and dancing shoes. Our Marines in Rome arranged to use the Palazzo Brancaccio (http://www.palazzobrancaccio.com) for their Ball and I have to admit that I felt a little like James Bond that night. Ok, I felt a lot like James Bond. An older, less sophisticated, fatter James Bond, but James Bond nonetheless.

A small group of us, comprised of the founding membership of the Rome Rooftop Whiskey Drinking & Cigar Smoking Society and our friends, arrived together, spent the evening drinking Prosecco (Italian champagne), applauding our Marine hosts, eating a tolerably decent meal, taking an album full of pictures, smoking cigars by the fountains, dancing and, finally, falling into the limousine for the ride home. Our Marines threw a great party and were the inspiration for the Rome Rooftop Whiskey Drinking & Cigar Smoking Society to incorporate a dress code into our bylaws. Henceforth, all irregularly scheduled meetings of the Society will require the membership to wear black tie.

Founding members of the Rome Rooftop Whiskey Drinking & Cigar Smoking Society

My friend Allyson petitioning for membership!

The Marine Security Guards are a very special group of men and women charged with protecting the classified materials in our embassies. It is their responsibility to ensure that all classified materials are properly secured each evening or, in the event of an attack, thoroughly and completely destroyed. After hours they inspect the secure areas of the Embassy to ensure that all classified material has been properly stored away. Each of us bears sole responsibility for properly securing the classified material we handle every day and a failure to do so bears consequences. A first minor infraction, such as leaving classified material on your desk even in a locked office, will result in a written security warning. A second infraction can result in the loss of your security rating. If you lose your security rating you can still do many things but you can no longer be a Foreign Service Officer. So if, hypothetically speaking, one should awaken from a deep sleep at, oh say, two-thirty in the morning and happen to remember that he not only left classified materials on his desk but actually highlighted the bits that were marked 'secret', one is best advised to run not walk, even if, hypothetically, a cold black rain is pounding down outside, back to the Embassy to secure said classified material in a very non-hypothetical manner. This purely by way of illustration, of course.

In Rome I am an Economic Officer. Economic Officers and Political Officers are known as 'reporting' officers and that pretty much describes the job we do. We each have assigned areas of responsibility that we study, research and then report on back to Washington. These areas are called our portfolios and we are expected to become the local experts on the various topics in them. We are also required to interact with our appropriate counterparts in the Italian government on these topics. Therefore, a big part of the job is developing our contacts in the various Italian ministries. I, for example, now have contacts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economics & Finance and the Ministry for Economic Development. Diplomacy, it turns out, is both hierarchical and rank observant which goes a long way towards explaining why Prime Minister Berlusconi hasn't returned my calls requesting a status update on Italy's aid to developing nations program.

Of course you realize that I never actually placed a call to Berlusconi; unfortunately however, I did attempt to establish Franco Frattini as one of my contacts. This would have been akin to having the guy who mows the lawn at the Italian Embassy in Washington establish Hillary Clinton as his contact on the proper use of Spring fertilizer. As my boss put it when he discovered that I was looking for Frattini's number, "You're kidding, right? You're kidding, right? No, really, you're kidding, right!" Umhhh, yeah, I was just kidding. Diplomacy is not actually saying the word "idiot" but having all parties involved fully understand that it was said. In my defense, Frattini is Italy's Foreign Minister and he is responsible for Italy's aid program so it seemed to me that he'd have the most up to date information.

My workload evolves something like this: someone in Washington becomes interested, curious or concerned about some aspect of Italian policy on a topic in my portfolio and 'tasks' me with either getting information from or delivering a message to an appropriate contact. Often I am called upon to request the Government of Italy to support a position we've taken or intend to take in our own foreign policy. Official communications of this nature between governments are known as demarches and I've done a ton of them. For example, we are encouraging our European allies to increase their aid to Somalia and because Italy's aid to developing nations is part of my portfolio, I am tasked with bringing our request to rank appropriate contacts in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Development. After a few days have passed, I go back to my contacts for their response, reaction or reply to our request. Then I draft a cable with that response and send it to Washington. Washington sends me a brief note of thanks and then arranges a dinner in my honor for having helped save Somalia.

Okay, so the whole 'dinner in my honor' thing is an exaggeration, as is the 'brief note of thanks' and, in fact, as is the 'send it to Washington' bit too. The literal truth part ends at 'draft a cable'. Then my cable goes into the clearance process, followed by the re-writing process, followed by additional clearance processes repeated as required, followed by the approval process and then, finally, by the sending to Washington process. We call this 'feeding the beast' and ever since George Keenan wrote his Long Telegram in 1946, our reporting cables have been held to an unachievably high standard. Strangely enough they must be factual, concise and accurate. Paradoxically, they must also be intelligent and informative. I tend to ramble, offer mutually exclusive explanations, digress into cul de sacs of misinterpretation and summarize by missing the point entirely. Cable writing, State Department style, is an art form I'm struggling to master.

I mentioned to a young woman who works in our commissary that I was going to dinner on Saturday with some friends to a restaurant in her neighborhood. "Oh, wow," she said, "you're going clubbing!" No, Emma, I did not go 'clubbing', unless going to a restaurant that didn't open until 10:00pm with bouncers the size of small glaciers admitting only a select few past the ropes, with hundreds of very energetic young Italians dancing to music loud enough to compress your eardrums so fully as to cause your eyes to move slightly forward in your skull, with a bartender who mixed tequila slammers directly into your mouth and effected the loss of three of your five senses could be construed as clubbing. Then, yes, it seems I went clubbing on Saturday.

My Italian is improving slowly, but improving nonetheless thanks to the excellent language program offered by the Embassy. I managed to carry on a full conversation with the barber who cut my hair this weekend. He's been cutting hair in the same location for forty-eight years and I'll attempt to incorporate some of his views on Italian aid to developing nations in my next cable draft. Something along the lines of, "we should give more money to old barbers and not worry so much about people in countries I've never heard of." I have found one of the very best gelaterias in Rome and, thankfully, it's far enough away from both my apartment and the Embassy to require making a special trip whenever I have the time. If it were closer, I'd have to have my tux altered. Little by little, I'm exploring the city and seeing the famous sights. However, I really just enjoy wandering through the streets and soaking up as much of Rome as I can get in an afternoon. Friends of mine have begun taking cooking lessons at a restaurant in Trastevere and invited me to join them for their next lesson. It sounds like an excellent way to enjoy just another part of living here. For Thanksgiving a group of us have rented a farm in Umbria and we're bringing turkeys and all the fixings to cook our feast together. Umbria is just across the road from Tuscany in the rolling Italian hill country. It should be an excellent time.

I'd like to say a little more about my adventure in clubbing, but the phone is ringing and it might be Berlusconi finally returning my call. If he plays his cards right, I know a great restaurant where we can discuss Italy's aid program over tequila slammers. Semper fidelis!

You can drink the water from any fountain in Rome. It's a fact!

Embassy Rome

2009-10-24T12:08:00.000+02:00

This photo was actually taken in Florence. It's only an hour and a half by train from Rome.

When in Rome, they say, do as the Romans do. All roads lead to Rome and, if I remember correctly, it wasn't built in a day. The whole "Rome wasn't built in a day" thing clearly defines the prevailing attitude towards installing an internet connection in private apartments!

After finishing my Italian classes, HR informed me that I was required to take ten days of Home Leave before I could depart for Rome. Home Leave is mandated time off that must be taken in the States after overseas postings and it is given to us in addition to our accumulated annual leave. So, on August 8th I left Washington DC and flew up to the beach house in Maine to join my family for ten days of reunion and relaxation. Then I flew down to NYC for two days of consultations with DHS before finally boarding a plane for Rome. I arrived in Rome on August 19th, was met at Leonardo da Vinci Airport by a colleague from the Embassy and taken directly to my apartment. On the 20th, I went in to the Embassy to begin the 'check-in' process.

In this day and age, virtually the first thing everyone does is set up an internet connection at home. Unfortunately for me, I arrived here in August and Rome is closed in August. I use 'closed' in the sense of the word that means 'not open', 'shut', 'unavailable' or 'gone fishing'. This includes the various internet providers. So, I began the process of acquiring the internet right after Labor Day and signed my contract with Fastweb on Sept. 8th. On Sept. 17th I received a call from Fastweb informing me that they would come to my apartment the next morning at 9:00am to install my connection. Bene! The next morning I received a call around 7:30am from the technician letting me know that he was on his way. Bene! At 3:00pm I gave up on waiting for him and went to work. Not so Bene.

No one at Fastweb could tell me why the technician hadn't shown up, but they made another appointment for me and assured me that the guy would be there at 9:00am on Sept. 22nd. Sure enough, he showed up promptly at 9:00am, pulled several covers off of various electrical junction boxes, cut my phone lines, shook his head in despair and left. Now I had no internet and no home phone, but I had seen an actual technician so I felt that I was making progress. The good people at Fastweb had a very long and involved explanation for me that boiled down to "something seems to be wrong and we'll take care of it".

I twisted the wires back together for my phone and waited. And waited. And waited. On Oct. 16th another technician showed up, listened to my dial tone, fiddled around a bit, nodded his head with a very self-satisfied look on his face, called his office and left. This time Fastweb disconnected my phone somewhere at the source and, once again, I had no internet and no phone. However, because they hadn't actually destroyed anything on this visit, I once again felt that I was making progress. They called me at my office that afternoon to say they'd be at my apartment bright and early the next day, Saturday, to hook up my phone and internet connection.

Then, surprisingly, on a Saturday, the original technician arrived, slightly early, connected a modem and a wireless router and, just like that, a mere eight weeks after I arrived, I was back online. My phone even works. Tutto Bene!!

Housing assignments at our embassies are second only to bid lists for onward tours in terms of personal interest to Foreign Service Officers. All housing tends to be magnificent but, sadly, some housing is more magnificent than others and this can, inevitably, lead to 'housing envy'. In a remarkably futile attempt to forestall complaints the Dept. of State has created written regulations to help determine the housing assignments. Housing is assigned based upon rank, family size, job requirements and, to some degree, personal preferences. Embassies have Housing Sections in the GSO (General Services Office) and it is the responsibility of the Housing Section to maintain the post housing pool by leasing or purchasing suitable properties for the post. As bid lists are completed and onward tours decided, the Housing Section is notified of new arrivals and they send housing questionnaires to those folks asking for their input before any housing is assigned. A typical questionnaire will ask for the number of people traveling on your orders, their ages, whether you have pets with you or not, whether you will have a personal vehicle with you or not, if you have a preference for an unfurnished or a furnished home, if you have a preference for a large or a small yard, whether you or a member of your household has a problem with stairs, etc. Many officers, and I use 'many' in the sense of the word that means every single living and breathing one, believe that the housing questionnaire is a firm guarantee, a contract if you will, that actually determines the direction their housing assignment will take.

No. It is used by the Housing Section to try to suggest an appropriate housing assignment for each arriving officer, one that will satisfy the officer, if possible, and the rest of the post staff as a community. Then the Housing Section makes up a slate of all their suggestions and that slate goes to the Housing Board which makes the final formal assignment. Post Housing Boards are generally composed of representative members of the various agencies and sections in the Embassy and the Board has the final word on which particular house or apartment you get. In most cases, the Board approves the slate suggested by the Housing Section, but there are instances where the Board will require the Housing Section to reassign an incoming officer for one reason or another. If, upon arrival at post, you are dissatisfied with your housing, you must make an appeal directly to the Housing Board. Appeals are granted very rarely and, typically, only for reasons of security or safety.

In Rome, we have a wide variety of housing. We have furnished apartments and unfurnished apartments, houses with yards, places in every neighborhood in the city and some in the surrounding suburbs and each has unique benefits and drawbacks. If you want to live in the Centro or Trastevere, you'll get an unfurnished apartment that might be smaller and older but with great views in the liveliest part of town. If you prefer a house because you have kids and pets, you might end up with a small villa in one of the suburbs but have a two hour commute to work. There are tradeoffs for every type of housing but the pool is so varied that nearly everyone can be given something that will make them happy.

Unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast to complain. Mark Twain once said, "Man is the only animal that blushes...or needs to!" and I'm embarrassed to admit that I joined the whiners upon arrival in Rome. In my defense, before I even left Washington I was led to dislike my housing assignment by the unfortunate remarks of one of the Locally Employed Staff in the Housing Section. My housing assignment complete with photos and a floor plan was sent to me while I was still at FSI and, after looking it over for a few days, I emailed the Housing Section with two questions. Did my apartment have a terrace and, if so, was it large enough for me to put out a table and chairs and a grill? Was the third bedroom furnished as a bedroom or could I convert it into an office?

I had asked for and been assigned to a furnished apartment within walking distance of the Embassy. My apartment was newly renovated, had secure parking for my car, brand new carpets, appliances and furniture and was a twenty minute walk to work. Perfect! I was delighted. Then I received the reply to my two questions. First, I was on the ground floor (one floor up in Europe) and the terrace was completely enclosed by a heavy wire cage and was inaccessible except in an emergency. I was assured that I would never want to go out onto it. Second, the third room on the floor plan was "small, dark and damp like a cave with only one electrical outlet that blows out the electricity for the whole apartment every time it is used so it probably cannot be an office. Sorry".

Now my newly renovated, beautiful, large apartment in one of the best neighborhoods in Rome had just become "small and dark, like a cave" and I was preparing to file my appeal upon arrival. The volume of my whining would have drowned out a small jet and I hadn't even seen the place yet. I was going to be paid to live in Rome for two years and, at any other time in my life, I'd have been happy to live in a tent to have that opportunity but now I was fully ready to moan and complain my way into more 'suitable' quarters than the furnished three bedroom apartment to which I'd been assigned. Don't they know who I am? I actually wrote back to the Housing Section asking for a reassignment before I even left the States. Mark Twain obviously had me in mind.

One of the parks right around the corner from my apartment.

Fortunately for me, reassignment was never an option. I arrived and discovered that my apartment is absolutely great. The room described as "like a cave" is perfect as an office and the single electrical outlet works just fine with one computer plugged into it. It's true that I don't have a terrace and, therefore, will never feel pressured to put a bunch of plants in pots and watch them die, but I have access to the rooftop terrace and a few of us have established the 'Rome Rooftop Whiskey Drinking and Cigar Smoking Society' up there. The Embassy is a twenty to twenty-five minute walk from home or a ten minute drive. I have a secure parking spot for my car and two of Rome's nicer parks are just five minutes away. In the end, I'm living in an apartment I couldn't afford to pay the rent on and it's in Rome. Life is sweet!

This place serves excellent gelato!

All roads may very well lead to Rome, but not all streets, it turns out, lead from my apartment to the Embassy. The first few days I walked to and from the Embassy with colleagues who live in my building and they led the way. Finally, came the day when, due to schedule conflicts, I had to go solo. The beauty of Rome is that there are many different ways to walk between any two points and we had gone, on different days, through the park, down a very heavily travelled city street with many different stores and shops, along a less travelled route and, finally, on a road that went past the local Ferrari dealership. So, on a bright midweek morning I struck out, confidently, on my own and walked along admiring the architecture and morning bustle of Rome. People hurrying along to work, people sitting at sidewalk cafes having coffee, vendors opening stalls and shops and kids running to school. It took me about an hour and a half to realize that a) I was totally lost and b) I had left my map and phone back in my apartment.

Fortunately, thanks to my 'fluency' in Italian I was able to ask several passersby for directions to the U.S. Embassy. Unfortunately, there is a tendency among Romans to give you very specific and detailed directions even when they don't have the slightest clue themselves about how to get to your destination. So, I spent a very pleasant morning wandering and chatting and wandering some more until I happened, just by chance, upon the Via Veneto and from there even I could find the Embassy.

Friends of mine who have the good sense to always bring their maps along.

My work is very interesting but I'll save a description of it for another time. Today I intend to walk down to the Pantheon and have lunch in Trastevere. I'll take my time and I won't bring a map. When the mood strikes me I'll stop at a 'bar' for a coffee and talk to whomever is standing next to me. Now I'm in Rome and it's what the Romans do.

3/3 In Italian!

2009-08-03T20:03:00.000+02:00

Camden Yards, Orioles vs Twins

If you speak three languages you are tri-lingual, if you speak two languages you are bi-lingual and if you only speak one language, you are an American. So goes the old joke. I am now, apparently, fluent in Italian! After managing to not learn Bulgarian for the two years I lived there and then avoiding the burden of knowing Urdu for the year I worked in Islamabad, I have acquired the ability to deny a visa, order an espresso and claim diplomatic immunity in nearly understandable Italian.

I began language training last February and finished today. Tonight will be the first night since the course began that I won't study Italian in one way or another. Our class is scheduled to continue to meet for the rest of this week and these last few classes should be a lot of fun. Actually, the entire course has been a lot of fun. Except, of course, for the whole 'learn Italian or lose your job' thing. In the Foreign Service you are required by law to master at least one language other than English within your first five years in order to be eligible for tenure.

Because Italian is a "world" language we are expected to acquire the ability to understand, speak and read it at a 3/3 level with 24 weeks of intensive training. My days at FSI followed a routine. I would arrive early to check my State email account and then review anything I had prepared for the morning class. Over the course of the 24 weeks the composition of my class changed several times, as did the hours, but the routine never varied. After reviewing and preparing I would report to our room and receive a two hour lesson. We were asked to read the Italian newspapers online every night and the first thing we would do in the morning was to report on our selected "notizia del giorno". This accomplished three things, first it gave us a great deal of practice in reading, second it gave us an uninterrupted ten to fifteen minutes every morning to speak and third it gave us a constant insight into Italian culture, politics, economics and gossip. After the 'news of the day', we would be given some grammar point or an exercise to do in class or any other thing that the teacher had readied for us. At the end of the two hours, we had a two hour self-study/lunch break and we usually received an assignment to complete during that time. If we didn't have an assignment, we were free to use the language lab, the library or grab lunch. I found a desk in the lower floor of the library where I could sit in privacy and weep quietly to myself over my total lack of comprehension. Then we reported back to our room and sat patiently while one or another of the teachers attempted to cram ten pounds of Italian into our four pound capacity brains.

The Italian section is located on the back corridor of the third floor. There's a lounge area on the front corridor by the French classrooms. The lounge has four or five computers and a padded bench of seats under the window. It also has one old faded green easy chair and a table. I would frequently use that easy chair to catch a quick nap. I discovered that I have the ability to fall sound asleep while surrounded by people talking on phones, using the computers, eating lunch or doing any of the many other things people tend to do in lounges. Once I fell so soundly asleep that I was snoring, not softly or gently, but raucously and loudly. In fact, I was snoring so loudly that I woke myself up. There were a dozen or so people in the lounge and, without exception, they were all staring at me. The only think I could think of to say was, "How's a man supposed to sleep with all this racket going on?" and I got up and walked slowly back to my classroom. Dignity, it's all about dignity and being able to discreetly wipe the drool off your chin without anyone noticing!

We had three regular full-time teachers and two or three teachers who came in as needed and they were all excellent. Each had a different style but they all followed the same course plan and they switched around between the three groups of students every four weeks or so. This gave us an opportunity to experience different voices, cadences, accents and speaking speeds. In Italian, speaking speeds vary from machine-gun rapidity to something that almost resembles speech but is actually indecipherable to the human ear. We also had a class on hand gestures, because it is impossible to speak Italian without making the accompanying and appropriate gestures. Two hours of class in the morning, a two hour self-study period and two hours of class in the afternoon every day except alternate Wednesdays, that was our job for twenty-four weeks. On alternate Wednesdays we were given the afternoon session off so we could meet with our colleagues at State, arrange for packers and movers, get our visas or attend to any of the hundreds of other details required to allow us to depart for post.

After the second classroom session I would head back to my apartment and begin to work on the homework. As I said, every night we were expected to read through several Italian newspapers and magazines and to select one article to discuss in class the following day. In addition to the news of the day, we were given assignments from the textbook and its accompanying workbook and, often, were asked to prepare a five to ten minute presentation for the following day on some topic of interest such as immigration, the environment, or the reasons for anti-Americanism in the world today. Sometimes the teacher would give us a topic to debate during class and we'd be expected to take a position and argue it against our classmates, or she would give us seven minutes to prepare a ten minute extemporaneous presentation or would challenge each of us to speak for two minutes without pause on a word she would throw at us off the top of her head. Frequently, we'd be given articles to read that the teachers had found and these, invariably, were much more difficult than the softballs we chose for ourselves. Every Friday afternoon we'd watch an Italian movie with English subtitles and by the end of the course most of us found ourselves understanding more and more of the spoken dialog.

So for 24 weeks that's been the routine, a very intensive program designed to take us from 0/0 to 3/3 with all the language resources of the Department of State at our disposal. And then they test us.

The test is a very formal structured event. FSI has a suite of rooms specifically designed to host the tests. You sit in one of those rooms with two testers for the six part exam that takes approximately two hours to complete. During the exam, one of the testers will only speak the foreign language and the other will only speak English. The first part of the exam is called the 'conversation' and you and the native speaker are expected to talk about anything at all. This is a warm-up and you can lead the conversation or let the tester take the lead. After the testers are satisfied that they've heard a fair sample of your ability, you move on to the second part of the spoken test, 'speaking at length'. The testers give you half a dozen or so topics and you pick one to speak on for no less than five minutes and no more than ten. They leave the room and give you five minutes to prepare your thoughts, then they come back in and you start talking. The third part of the test is the 'interview'. Again, you're given a list of topics to choose from and you select one. Then you interview the native speaker on that topic and translate his replies for the English speaker. For the fourth part of the exam you are given a sheet of paper with six short written pieces on it and you have six minutes to read them and then tell the testers what each of the six was about. The reading selections are written in the foreign language but you explain them to the tester in English. The six pieces will vary in difficulty and length and you're only expected to know what they are about, for example an advertisement for a boat, a recipe for clam sauce, a political announcement or a short newspaper article on a country fair. The fifth part of the test is a long written piece that you select from a stack of pieces. You're given seven minutes to read it and then report on it to the testers. This time, however, you have to be able to talk about it in some detail and demonstrate that you understand the tone of the article and any messages that are implicit but not stated. The sixth part of the exam is exactly like the fifth except that the testers select an article for you to read. Then you're done. I am still uncertain as to how your use of appropriate or inappropriate hand gestures factors into your final results but never let it be said that I was timid in my use of flailing, waving and gesturing meaningfully during my exam (even the reading parts!). You leave the room and they come to an agreement between them on your score. The tests are recorded so you have an opportunity to challenge the score if you're not satisfied.

As you might imagine, the tests are fairly stressful no matter how high your level of self-confidence might be. I went into mine with a strategy that required perfecting the phrase "I'm having a small heart attack now" in a blatant attempt for that sympathy point or two and "the envelope I'm sliding under the table has several hundred dollars in it" in an attempt to influence the testers in a more time-honored manner. In the end, neither faking a medical emergency nor bribing the testers was necessary and I managed to achieve the required 3/3.

I don't want to give anyone the impression that all I did was study for 24 weeks. I also went to two ballgames. I saw the Orioles play the Twins up in Baltimore and I saw the Nationals play the Phillies in DC. I went to an opera, saw three movies and a parade and I drove out to a farm for a barbecue.

Camden Yards is a great ballpark.

Thanks to my classmate Terrie and her husband Willie, I got to sit in the CNN suite for the Nationals Phillies game at the new stadium in DC.

My car is on its way to Rome and the packers will be here on Thursday to pick up my stuff. I'm running around saying goodbye to my friends and completing the FSI checkout sheet. There's always last minute paperwork to finish and last minute consultations to attend, then I'll be off to Rome. I've been assigned an apartment up by the Villa Borghese and, they tell me, I can walk to the Embassy from there in about twenty minutes. Although I assume I'll have to actually work while I'm in Rome, I don't intend to let that inconvenience prevent me from fulfilling my self-appointed mission to find the best gelateria in the city.

This morning before my test I sat in that old green easy chair in the lounge to go over my notes one last time. Now I'm concerned that I might be sound asleep in that chair just dreaming that I've passed the exam. If you happen to be near the lounge on the third floor of FSI and see a man snoring peacefully in the chair, please don't wake me up because I'm having a great dream!

Italian Continues

2009-04-23T04:52:00.000+02:00

Great Falls National Park

When I'd finished my two years in Bulgaria as a Peace Corps volunteer, I was relatively pleased with my ability to read, speak and understand Bulgarian. I could carry on lengthy conversations, speak to people on the phone, work my way through the daily newspaper with some semblance of understanding and travel the country without a phrasebook. As I was wrapping things up at work, upon completion of my tour, I was having a quiet coffee with one of the women in the office and I mentioned that one of the things of which I was most proud was that I had actually learned a 'foreign' language.

She choked so violently that coffee blew out of her nose. She very carefully put her half empty cup onto her saucer and looked at me earnestly as if to determine whether or not I was serious.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I thought that my Bulgarian was pretty good."

"Larry," she said very slowly, "my dog understands more Bulgarian than you can speak." Then she reached over and put her hand on my shoulder. I'll never forget the look of sympathy in her eyes as she continued, "And he isn't an especially bright dog."

In Urdu I mastered the language to the extent that I could say, with complete and total confidence, "Hello", "Greetings", "What is your name?", "Is that weapon loaded?" and "Thank You". By the time I left Pakistan I was reduced, through lack of use, to "Hello" and "Is that weapon loaded?". So, I think I've demonstrated pretty convincingly that my language learning ability can be compared, unfavorably, to that of an intellectually challenged canine.

That having been said, I think I'm doing pretty well in Italian. If nothing else, I'm really waving my hands around a lot and speaking in highly excited tones! In class, we are now trying the patience of our fourth teacher and, because one of our original class members was scheduled to take only eight weeks and he finished up a week ago, there are only four of us left. It is FSI's practice, wherever possible, to rotate the teachers so that the students are exposed to different voices, accents, speaking speeds and teaching styles. All the teachers work off of the same curriculum so there is no disruption in progress each time a new teacher picks up the reins.

We started with Silvana who will be fondly remembered as the only teacher who ever spoke English to us. She introduced us to the rudiments of Italian with a 'take no prisoners' attitude that marched us through the first seven chapters of our textbook in just under four weeks. She gave the appearance of being extremely distracted and flustered but prepared us, by the second week, to begin using nothing but Italian in class. Her lesson plans were always clear, concise and well organized. I would have been quite happy to have had Silvana teach me right through to the end, but after four weeks it was Agata's turn.

Agata is from Sicily and is desperately trying to set the Guinness World Record for 'Most Homework Assigned to Braindead Language Students'. She gave the appearance of being stern, severe and determined to teach us Italian by any means necessary, including having 'Uncle' Guido make us an offer we couldn't refuse. She proved to be an excellent teacher with a great sense of humor and an ability to make difficult grammar points clear to us while explaining them completely in Italian.

A fairly typical experience during FSI language training is the 'meltdown'. All of us, and this applies across the board to students of all languages, have good days and days where we just don't get it. There are those days when it seems that you're the only one in the class who just can't seem to understand what's going on and it can be extremely frustrating. Usually, you struggle along and work a bit harder and, eventually, you catch on and catch up. Sometimes, however, the struggle goes on for just an hour, or a session, or a day too long and you just lose it. The teachers know the pattern better than we do and they deal with it with empathy and understanding. In my case, Agata threw me out of the room. Actually, she suggested that I take what has come to be known as 'Larry's walk of shame' and return when I'd cooled off. She dealt with Terri's meltdown by taking her into the office and serving her a nice cup of tea while they chatted. Hey, I like tea! I would have been quite happy to have had Agata teach me right through to the end, but after only three weeks it was Francesca's turn.

Before Francesca started, we were given our first Progress Test. As I've mentioned, we have to score a 3/3 on the FSI language test by the end of the course and we are given a couple of Progress Tests modeled on the final evaluation to give us practice in taking the test as well as to tell us if we're on track or not. After six weeks, I tested at a 1/1+ level and seemed to be on track. The test was administered by Silvana and Fabio and I was quite thankful that Fabio wasn't in the rotation to teach us because he speaks with machine gun rapidity and is extremely difficult to understand.

Francesca only worked with us for two full weeks. She was a substitute brought in from the Language Institute in DC to teach us while one of the regular staff took some scheduled time off. Although she was only with us for a couple of weeks, she was thoroughly professional and kept us working hard every day. Our homework load was lighter than it had been under Agata, but Attila the Hun wouldn't have assigned as much homework as Agata. Of course, just as we were getting used to the cadence, rhythm and style of Francesca's speech our new teacher took over. I would also have been quite happy to have had Francesca teach us right through to the end.

Somehow, the teacher rotation was changed and Fabio is now our teacher, machine gun speech speed and all. He's only worked with us for a very brief time, but I already like his approach and his style. I even find that I can pick out a word or two from time to time, when he's teaching, that I understand! He appears to subscribe to the Agata school of homework assignment but in spite of that, I think this is going to work out and he announced today that he'll be working with us right through to the end.

Some of the aircraft on view at the Udvar-Hazy Center for the National Air & Space Museum

My folks came down for a visit last weekend and we went out the Udvar-Hazy Center for the National Air & Space Museum located near Dulles Airport. They have an amazing collection of old aircraft out there and we spent a very enjoyable four hours looking them over. On Sunday we drove up to the Great Falls National Park to see the falls. The Park was quite crowded but we managed to find a parking spot and decided to walk along the trail by the river. It was sunny and hot so I put my sunglasses on and dropped my glasses onto the seat of the car. Instinctively I knew that this was a bad idea because I'd be certain to sit on them when I came back to the car. So, I put the hard protective case on the seat next to them so that I'd see it and not sit down. After all, that's what hard protective cases are for.

As you've probably guessed, when I returned to the car I promptly sat down on my glasses, but I was only aware that I'd done so because I felt the hard protective case under my butt. So it did serve a purpose. The glasses were bent out of any usable shape but I'd been planning to have my eyes checked and get a new pair of glasses before I go to Rome anyway so this wasn't an enormous tragedy.

Lenscrafters was offering $100 off any pair of glasses which should have been a clue that the glasses were going to cost me significantly more than $100 but I don't pick up on clues all that well. I chose a pair of frames for regular glasses and another pair for sunglasses and with my new prescription they came to just over $1,000, with the discount of course. The regular lenses will take a week to produce so I asked the young woman who was helping me if she could straighten my old bent glasses up a bit. She took them and in three minutes had straightened them, replaced a loose screw and tightened the arms perfectly. They're like new! I still need the new glasses but I'll keep these as a spare pair.

I hope the new glasses come with those hard protective cases. When you sit on them it's really the only way to tell that you've just destroyed your glasses!

Io Sto Studiando La Lingua d'Italiano

2009-03-06T23:18:00.000+01:00

I Am Studying The Language of Italy

This is my 1995 Mustang convertible in what I like to think of as 'mint' condition.

On February 23rd, the new tranche of language classes began. Approximately 70 languages are being taught at FSI at any given time and all the classes begin together at regularly scheduled intervals. So, on February 23rd the largest new language group in the history of FSI trooped into the auditorium to begin orientation. In fact, the group was so large that the Spanish language students were seated in another room and attended orientation via teleconferencing because they couldn't all fit into the auditorium. The first several rows of the auditorium were reserved for the relatively large numbers of students learning Arabic, Russian and French. The rest of the languages filled the remaining rows and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. Gujarati, Hungarian, Serbian, Urdu, Tamil and Hindi language students all crowded in, cheek by jowl, with folks set to learn German, Dutch, Norwegian, Italian and a couple of dozen other languages.

After an hour or so of administration (attendance policies, payroll, instructor introductions, etc.), pep rally ("you really can learn a foreign language, no kidding, you really can!") and reminders ("This is your job for the next several months, take it seriously"), we were sorted into specific language groups and sent off to meet our instructors. However, all groups are not created equal and we had to sit and wait in the auditorium until the Spanish horde cleared the hallway. Then we were turned over to our instructors one language at a time and the last language called down from the seats was Italian. I felt like the slow fat kid who gets chosen last in the pick-up baseball game; it's a scar that will take a long time to heal. Living in Italy will, of course, go a long way towards easing the healing process.

This building is the language school at FSI.

Classroom space is at a premium at FSI and it's in everyone's interest to keep class sizes small, so any language with more than five or six students splits the group into shifts. There were enough of us beginning Italian to form two groups. We were arbitrarily assigned to the first shift (0800 to 1400) or the second shift (1000 to 1600). Then we were allowed to swap shifts with anyone who wanted to change. I was assigned to the second shift and agreed to swap with someone who didn't want the early shift. I actually preferred the early start so it worked out well for both of us. Then we were taken to the language lab and shown all those resources. In addition to our scheduled class instruction hours, we are given lab assignments and homework. We are also expected to spend several hours each week in the lab in 'self study'.

The Department of State makes Rosetta Stone available to us if we want to begin learning a language on our own. I decided, based on my previous experiences with Bulgarian and Urdu, to take advantage of this resource as soon as I received my onward assignment to Rome. So, for several months I patiently worked my way through the nineteen Rosetta Stone chapters with varying degrees of understanding and success. As of today, we've had nine days of class and we're already beyond the Rosetta Stone course. The pace is 'challenging' in a "faster than a speeding bullet" way and it's our responsibility to keep up. For the first couple of weeks now I've had to put in three to four hours each day after class in order to do so, but I doubt very much that I'll be able to continue to slack off that way in the weeks to come.

There is no magic formula for learning a foreign language (so the money I paid that fellow in the yellow plaid pants for a bottle of Dr. Silvertongue's Remarkable Language Elixir is most probably ill spent). FSI does a great job of providing the resources we need, instructors, materials and time, but we each still have to put our own dedicated efforts into the task. Our Italian teacher, for example, has marched us through the first three chapters of our textbook in just under two weeks. She also warned us on day one that by the end of the second week she wouldn't be speaking any English in class. That's most unfortunate for me because I actually understand English. Some undefined period of grace also seems to have passed because now when we make a small grammatical error, Silvana yells, "NO!", rather than gently correcting us as she did in the beginning. She shouts this out as though we're breaking her heart by not learning our lessons perfectly. Silvana is an Italian grandmother and has the whole guilt thing down to perfection. She brings a very high level of energy and enthusiasm to the class and challenges us to keep up.

This is one of the lounges at FSI.

My job in Rome is a 'language designated' position, which means that I must test at a predetermined level before I can go to Post. The predetermined level for Italian is 3/3 or "having a functional fluency" in both speaking and reading the language. In the more difficult languages the required level might only be a 2/2, or even a 2/1 in super hard languages like Chinese. The test itself is quite an interesting experience in much the same way that a root canal is an interesting experience; I tested in Bulgarian just after joining the Foreign Service. I had just returned from two years in Bulgaria as a Peace Corps volunteer and was fairly confident in my ability to get a 2/2, which would have satisfied my language requirement for tenure. I tested out at a 1/1 but gained valuable experience in the 'testing process' and an insight into my own shortcomings in the 'language acquisition process'. My primary shortcoming, of course, is that all foreign languages sound very different, to me, from English and I have trouble understanding them.

So, my task is pretty clear for the next six months, I will learn to understand, speak and read Italian. I will take full advantage of the resources that are made available to me and I will put in whatever time is required after class to ensure that I don't fall behind. We have access to Italian newspapers, tv broadcasts, movies and magazines and individual tutoring is available if we begin to struggle. Italian has a multitude of cognates, a grammatical structure very similar to English and, unlike Urdu or Bulgarian, a familiar alphabet. By August I'm quite certain that I'll be ready.

Is it hard to find a place to park on the Via Veneto?

In 1995 I bought a bright red Mustang convertible with wide tires and a beefed up sound system. On the first of November every year I put it under a cover in the garage and didn't take it out again until after the first of April. It has windshield wipers, but I can say with pride that I don't know if they even work because it's never been driven in the rain. It has the last of the big old five liter engines that Ford discontinued in 1996 in favor of the much more efficient 4.6 liter high performance engine. Sitting at a stoplight the engine in my Mustang sounds like it wants to eat up the road, high performance engines sound very similar to weedwackers. The State Department will ship one car to Post for me free of charge and I debated long and hard about shipping the Mustang to Islamabad. I finally accepted that a bright red convertible would not exactly be low profile from a security point of view and left it in the garage in Maine. Next month I intend to drive up to Maine and bring it back to Washington. I'll drive it around here from April until August and then ship it to Rome. It'll be fifteen years old next year and it's time for me to get some use out of it. I just hope it doesn't rain while I'm in Rome because I'm not sure if the wipers work.

But that's later on and right now I'm enjoying my time back in school. FSI is a truly unique environment in which you wander up and down the halls hearing conversations taking place in every imaginable language. Turn a corner and you interrupt two people speaking Russian, around the next corner a small group of Nepali speakers nods a "Good Morning" as you pass, down the hall you hear Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Laotian coming from separate doorways. Although you don't understand the words, the meaning of each and every conversation is quite clear, "Hey, I just bought a bottle of this 'Remarkable Language Elixir' stuff from a guy in yellow plaid pants, and it's guaranteed to get me a 3/3. You better hurry up and get some, he said it's going fast!".

Obamarama Day

2009-01-25T19:50:00.000+01:00

The Inauguration is finally over and the 1.8 million strangers who spent four days here stepping on my toes have all gone home! The city is settling back into its normal levels of insanity and I have a new boss. Granted there are several hundred people on the org chart between me and the Secretary of State but I'm definitely down there at the bottom somewhere. From her first meeting with State Department employees, SecState Hillary Clinton, apparently, believes that diplomacy should be conducted by the country's diplomats and not by its Armed Forces. She's even talking about giving us the resources to do our jobs. What can the woman possibly be thinking? Insanity indeed!

It all began on Sunday with a concert (by assorted celebrities) and speech (by Obama) at the Lincoln Memorial. The closest I could get to the event was the WWII Memorial and I never did find the friends I was supposed to meet. Although my cell phone wouldn't work, everyone else's seemed to and I was surrounded by people shouting into phones, "I'm by the fountain!", "I'm wearing a black coat!", I'm right next to the woman waving her hat!" This proved to be only marginally useful because there were several hundred thousand people by the fountain, two thirds of them wearing black coats and every woman in DC was waving her hat! The cell phone shouters, bless their souls, continued to bellow and gesture wildly in the hopes that their black coat and hat waving woman were somehow distinguishable from all the others. A mating orgy of a million geese would have shown more decorum.

The 500,000 people in my immediate area and I were watching everything on a Jumbotron and it occurred to me that a) I would see and hear everything much better by sitting on my couch watching my tv and b) all these people were going to leave the Mall at the same time as soon as the concert ended. So I bolted and caught the speech on tv while enjoying a cigar and a cold drink. But I was there, at least for the start of the concert.

Half a Million or so of my new best friends!

On Monday night I put on my tux, snapped the red silk suspenders into place and went to the Illinois Inaugural Ball with some friends from Islamabad. The Ball was held at the Renaissance Hotel and to get in we stood in line to get into a line to get to the line going into the hotel. At one point we made it into a tent where, six across, we shuffled back and forth in a snaking line to the door. Once we actually got into the hotel, we were shunted into a line for the mandatory coat check and then into a line to the escalators going down to the first of three floors hosting the Ball. Obama and Oprah were both there, but we couldn't get to the floor they were on. So my fear of having to stand around making small talk with Obama was for nothing. Still, we had a lot of fun just being there. There were open bars everywhere and plates of finger food appeared here and there. Although we could get to the bars, the food trays disappeared like grain under a cloud of locusts. The tickets to the Ball were $300 and, once in, the drinks were free so my friend Aidan Liddle and I made it our goal to drink that sum in brandy. I finally admitted defeat and went home but I'm pretty sure Aidan accomplished his mission. I got home about 2:00am, caught a few hours sleep and then headed back to the Mall for the Inauguration.

I got to the Metro station across the street from my apartment at about 7:00am to give myself plenty of time to get downtown. At the station, I discovered that the only way to get onto a train to DC was to board one heading west (away from DC), go to the end of the line and get on an eastbound train there. Even then, I was standing and jammed up against everyone else. At one point we were so packed in that I thought I was going to have to "do the right thing" by the unfortunate woman standing right in front of me. Fortunately for her, the doors opened just as I was about to offer to marry her and 250,000 people got out of our car which gave us room to separate slightly. I needed to get to the Federal Center station but we were informed that they had shut down that station and the two before it because there were so many people on the street that people in the stations couldn't exit and there was no more room on the platforms for any additional arrivals. I hopped off about a mile from the spot where I was to meet a friend and began to work my way towards that area on foot.

I had two tickets in the reserved section and even though they were for the farthest back reserved section they got us into this tiny exclusive area. Enough people to populate a small midwestern state also had tickets for this 'exclusive' area so, once again, we made many many new friends. My friend and I connected outside the gate, against all odds, and we shuffled forward inches at a time until we found places to stand that had a fairly decent view of the Jumbotron. The hard part was over and all we had to do was stand perfectly still in our six square inches of turf for about three hours in the freezing cold until the ceremony began. My friend had hand and foot warmers while I resorted to shivering uncontrollably to keep warm.

Hand and foot warmers functioning perfectly!

There's Obama! See, he's in a black coat standing right beside a woman waving her hat!!

Being there was worth all the hassle and discomfort. It was quite an amazing experience to be in the crowd watching this Inauguration. There were 1.76 million people on the Mall (I arrived at this figure by counting their feet and dividing by two) and people were for the most part courteous and pleasant to each other. The crowd cheered Obama into office and then began the six inch shuffle towards the exits. At one point we were standing in the middle of an intersection unable to move in any direction for about fifteen minutes. People were amazingly civil through all this crush and frustration. I skipped the Metro and walked home. The roads and bridges had all been closed to traffic so the walk home was actually very pleasant once I got out of the main press of humanity. I made it home in time to catch the parade on tv and it was a somewhat strange experience to have my couch all to myself.

The Jumbotron Inaugural Speech.

The Inauguration was pure magic. I'm really happy that I was able to be here to see it live (by that I mean, of course, on the Jumbotron)! Expectations are incredibly high for Obama but I'll be content if he can manage to get us back onto a positive track in the next four years. I'm not asking for miracles. Of course, if we begin to use diplomacy instead of guns we run a very real risk of having peace break out.

Back At FSI (Foreign Service Institute)

2009-01-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

So now I'm a 'veteran' junior entry level Foreign Service Officer. I've got a tour under my belt and I'm being readied for my second foray into the world of international diplomacy. There are five career tracks called 'cones' in the Foreign Service, Political, Economic, Public Diplomacy, Management and Consular. I, for example, am Management coned and my tour as a GSO in Islamabad was 'within cone'. However, it is perfectly acceptable to work 'out of cone' and for every entry-level officer not Consular coned it is mandatory at least once because within our first two tours we must serve at least one year as a Consular Officer. I bid on a two year tour in Rome that will allow me to serve as an Economics Officer for the first year and a Consular Officer for the second.

As an Economics Officer, I'll be gathering information on specific sectors of the Italian economy, analyzing that information and drafting carefully considered and well thought out cables meant to convey that information back to the Department of State. So they tell me. I hope to do much of this 'information gathering' in the cafes that line the Via Veneto and I intend to filter a lot of the information through a nice glass or two of chianti. I just completed a three week course on "How To Be An Economics Officer", so I'm ready. Talk to people, write cables; talk to more people, write more cables. The talking to people part is undoubtedly where the chianti comes into play.

During my year as a Consular Officer, I'll be working in one of three areas; Immigrant Visas, Non-Immigrant Visas or American Citizen Services. People intending to come to the US to live permanently need an immigrant visa; visitors, tourists, students, business people or anyone coming on a temporary basis need a non-immigrant visa; and, Americans requiring any sort of assistance become the responsibility of the ACS unit. The Consular training course is six weeks long, covers all three areas and is extremely detail oriented. I won't actually begin consular work in Rome until the end of 2010 so there is a very slight possibility that I'll have forgotten one or two of the less important details by then. Fortunately, I have friends in the course who are actually taking notes and they can expect a call from me in 2010.

Over the Christmas/New Year's holiday, we had some 'no progress' days at FSI. These are, as the name suggests, days when no classes are scheduled but which must be accounted for in one way or another. Our options were to use accrued annual leave, report to FSI at 9:00am and 2:00pm every day to sign in and then leave or find gainful employment within the Department of State for those days. Because my status at FSI is 'Post to Post' I am given per diem allowances to help defray the cost of my temporary stay in Washington. Under State rules, I lose those per diems for any day I take annual leave. If the days of leave bracket a weekend, then I lose the per diems for the weekend too. So taking annual leave to cover my 'no progress' days would have been financially painful. Reporting to FSI at 9:00 and 2:00 to sign a register seemed bureaucratically absurd and a waste of time. So I found gainful employment elsewhere at State.

For four consecutive days I was the Italy Desk Officer. Desk Officers are responsible for channeling information to and from their assigned countries and some countries are more information intense than others. Italy, for example, was fairly quiet over Christmas while Israel was hopping (in this case 'hopping' is a euphemism for bombing the Gaza strip). I was given an opportunity to sit in for the real Desk Officer who was on leave and it sounded like more fun than reporting to FSI every day at 9:00 and 2:00. So, on each of the four 'no progress' days I put on a suit and tie and went to work at the Harry S. Truman Department of State offices in Washington, by God, DC, just like the big kids. It was an interesting and valuable experience because as an Economics Officer in Rome, I'll be interacting with the Desk on a daily basis. The cafeteria at the HST bulding is also much better than the one at FSI.

The most interesting thing to happen while I was on the Desk was a demonstration outside the building by Palestinian sympathizers who were trying to bring attention to the situation in Gaza. They were gathered directly below our windows and were well organized and quite peaceful. I spent some time trying to think of a sign I could hold up in the window that might incite them to violence but became distracted by actual work and then it was time to go home and my experience as the Italy Desk Officer was over. Now I'm back at FSI, in what we don't seem to refer to as 'progress days', and will finish the Consular training program in February.

Right after Consular training, I'll begin taking Italian lessons full time. All Foreign Service Officers are required by law to be fluent in one or more foreign languages in order to attain tenure. Therefore, it's critical for me to pass Italian at a fluent (3/3) level in order to get off of language probation and qualify for tenure. Although this does add some stress and pressure to the situation, I'm really looking forward to learning Italian and have expressed my willingness to serve my third tour (the one after Rome) in any country that speaks Italian. That opens the door to Italy, San Marino and the Vatican. I'm flexible.

I have a ticket to the Illinois Inaugural Ball on October 19th. I have a proper tuxedo and cummerbund (but am lacking suspenders at the moment) and my shoes are polished and ready. I'm told that, of the many Balls that night, the Illinois Ball is the one to attend because the President-Elect will certainly make an appearance there. A group of us will be going together so I don't have to worry about standing around by myself and being forced to make small talk with the Prez-to-be.

This picture was taken at the British High Commission's Monsoon Ball in Islamabad. The same tux and friends will be going with me to the Illinois Inaugural Ball.

Shades of Bulgaria. Today when I got home from FSI, the elevators in my building were in the decidedly non-functioning mode. This happened regularly in Stara Zagora but now there are two minor differences. First, in Stara Zagora I lived on the eighth floor while in Arlington I have to hike up to the sixteenth floor and, second, the rent here is approximately ten times higher than it was in Bulgaria. If the elevators aren't repaired soon I fully expect to have a team of sherpas available to carry me up. As a result of climbing sixteen flights of stairs, I have come to realize how badly out of shape I am and I've made a resolution to do something about it.

In the corner of my living room, behind a very nice folding screen and tucked away beside the tv is a treadmill. It's in the upright 'stowed away' position and my plan is to lower it into the 'ready to use' position in the next day or so. Because these machines are quite complicated and can be very dangerous if used by the uninitiated, I plan to read the manual until I've mastered all the controls, say for the next week or so. Eventually, I'll take to standing on it from time to time when it isn't running. I think of this as the acclimation stage. Sooner or later I'll fire it up and begin exercising. This is the self-inflicted pain stage. I figure that by March or so I'll be running like the wind on the damn thing. Hopefully, by then the elevators will be fixed!

By August, I plan to be in shape again, know the vagaries of consular law and economics and speak perfect Italian. Of course, I can always call my buddy Barack if I need to apply for a waiver on the whole perfect Italian thing. Sure, we're tight, we socialize, small talk, small talk, small talk, the man won't leave me alone.

What's Done Is Done

2008-10-25T10:43:00.000+02:00

A friend and I went up to Murree last weekend. It's a resort town in the mountains about an hour and a half outside of Islamabad. We went up for the day and thoroughly enjoyed walking around, poking in and out of shops and eating in a restaurant. It's difficult to describe what a treat it is for us to be allowed to just walk around and act like tourists. My friend speaks Urdu so we decided to identify ourselves as Italians when people asked where we were from, nobody seems to mind Italians. I even spoke such Italian phrases as, "The small boy is falling off a big yellow umbrella" and "Those birds are wearing sunglasses" to add authenticity to our claim.

It's the end of the season in Murree because the snows will begin next month and close the road, so we went up there just in time. I've learned that if the opportunity to do something presents itself here, you have to grab it because you never know what will be prohibited next week.

Negotiating about to begin.

Old Murree buildings.

The shopping alley.

This is the local dentist, unfortunately he doesn't participate in our Medical Plan.

This restaurant boasts a minus four stars in the Michelin Guide!

This man was selling some terrific peanut and cashew nut brittle candy.

Murree is up in the mountains and is quite a bit colder than Islamabad.

I'm four days and a wake-up call away from heading home. On November 7th I'll take my last run out to the Benazir Bhutto International Airport to catch an Emirates Air flight to Dubai. It'll be my last ride in a fully armored vehicle in a high threat environment for quite a while, unless we designate Washington DC as a 'high threat' environment. My orders to report to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) for further training have been cut and my ticket home has been issued. I've rented a furnished apartment in the Court House area of Arlington and am looking forward to nine months of the comfortable routine at FSI.

I divided my things into three piles for packing and shipping. The bulk of my things, my Household Effects (HHE), will go to a government storage facility in Belgium and remain there until I head off to Rome. Two metal trunks of clothing and odds and ends will be shipped by air to Washington for me as Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB) and, finally, I'll have my two duffel bags of things I'll need when I first arrive in DC. My pack-out took place earlier this week and all my things, except the stuff that will go in my duffel bags, are gone. I have the Welcome Kit that was loaned to me when I first arrived and, although it made my house seem warm and homey then, now it doesn't help as much and the place feels as empty and impersonal as a cheap hotel room.

The Warehouse guys have come by to inventory every single item in the house to make sure that I haven't, inadvertently, had Embassy furniture shipped to Rome or destroyed anything in some wild drunken party. Then the Facilities people came out to inspect the place and fix, at last, all the minor things that needed repair so the next guy will get a clean start. I've paid my final gardener's bill, written letters of recommendation for my guards, turned over my internet account to the guy who's taking my house and set him up with my old housekeeper. I've completed all the things I set out to do at work and intend to spend my last four days at the Embassy just walking around shaking hands with the guys and doing that air-kissing thing with the women.

Among the last things I had to complete was my EER. This is the comprehensive formal evaluation of my entire performance while at Post. My immediate supervisor writes it, the DCM reviews it and adds his own comments and then I write a page of self-evaluation (aka the suicide box). I served on a review committee that checked the EERs of first tour officers for inadmissible statements, typos and grammatical errors, so I've seen quite a few examples of good, bad and indifferent suicide boxes. Rather than draft a laundry list of my accomplishments, I thought I'd be really clever and just quote Macbeth, "What's done, is done". That's all I put on my page and then I gave it to our HR Officer to get her opinion. She was stunned, but finally managed to say, "Ya know, Larry, there's a reason this is called the suicide box. It's because you can commit career suicide more easily than you can possibly imagine just by being too clever." It turns out that your first two EERs are really all the Tenure Board has to go on to determine whether they'll give you tenure or not. I was assured by the HR Officer that they would not be amused by my single Shakespeare quote and would definitely want to see more from me.

So I added the laundry list, gave full credit to my team and expressed my honest appreciation for all the people who helped guide, coach and mentor me through this first tour. I stuck in a quote from Hamlet (Though this be madness, yet there is method in't) and called it a day. The HR Officer approved it and now my EER is in the hands of others.

It will be a while before I can step back and put this year in perspective. It's flown by faster than I ever could have imagined and I'm not really ready for it to be over. Unfortunately, things are not improving in Pakistan, the economy continues to deteriorate, the government is still unable to establish any sort of rule of law in much of the country and the security situation continues to worsen. Measures will always be taken to keep our own folks safe, but that will inevitably mean further curtailing movement and exposure. Trips to Murree may not be allowed down the road and while we're currently allowed to drive privately owned vehicles, I won't be surprised when that privilege is withdrawn and the Embassy moves to a 100% armored motor pool policy for all transportation.

I got to see the Khyber Pass from a helicopter gunship, Peshawar and Lahore from armored vehicles, Skardu and Murree on foot and Islamabad in great detail. I didn't get to Taxila or the jingle truck factory in 'Pindi, nor did I get to drive along the Grand Trunk Road or take a rental car down the back roads that run alongside the Indus River. I didn't get to Karachi, Sindh or Baluchistan but I did get to see the Crossing Ceremony at the Wagah Border. In the balance of things, I did okay.

These are a couple of 'jingle' trucks. Virtually every truck on the road in Pakistan is decorated this way.

During my tour, we managed to increase the size of our motor pool by almost twenty vehicles and we added six drivers. Most of the time I felt like a big kid who had the world's most amazing collection of armored toys. Our drivers have suggested that they should all take me out to the airport in a twenty-five car motorcade. Twenty-five black or white fully armored Land Cruisers in formation with lights flashing and horns blaring isn't really low profile, but I haven't ruled out the idea. If I decide to do it, I'll add one of the spare BMWs in the middle as a 'target' car and I'll ride in the Straggler. However, my replacement is here and she will probably not feel that this small twenty-five car gesture is necessary. I've enjoyed being a GSO and providing support to my colleagues. It's a great position from which to see just how an Embassy is put together and how the whole team operates. I honestly believe that we are doing important work in Pakistan and that we need to be here doing it. Places like Pakistan need the very best of our people, the most talented and the hardest working. With one or two exceptions (whom my career aspirations prevent me from identifying by name) we do have a talented hard working team in place.

These are the cars I intend to use for my departure ride to the airport.

My Motor Pool drivers!

Now it's time to sit back and enjoy the waning light over the Margalla Hills, smoke a cigar and watch the parrots fly in and out of my trees. I'll miss my place here. I'll miss the good friends I'm leaving behind, Americans and Pakistani, and the pace of work at the Embassy. I'll miss Islamabad and the adventure of trying to find a way to get to the Diplomatic Enclave amid random road closures every day. I'll miss the men who work for me and the people to whom I report. I might even miss my guards, given time.

I will certainly miss Pakistan. It's been an incredible year.

The Marriott Hotel

2008-09-22T12:57:00.001+02:00

A subtle difference between the old hands here in Islamabad and the newbies was made clear last Saturday night. During a barbecue party at a private residence in the city there was a flash that lit up the night sky, a tremendous bang of an explosion and the ground shook momentarily. The new folks all looked up and said, "What was that?!" Three or four of us who have been here a while were already calling our sections and heading for vehicles to get us back to the Embassy. If you live in Islamabad long enough, you recognize bombs when you hear them.

I've been here through four bombings:

Luna Caprese Restaurant. Four FBI agents were seriously injured and a Turkish woman was killed when a man ran up an alley next to the outdoor restaurant and threw a satchel bomb over the wall. This relatively small explosive device, thrown into a confined area, could only be heard in the immediate vicinity of the restaurant. It was determined, after the Luna Caprese bombing, that we were at greater risk in the markets on Saturdays because of the crowds, so Saturday shopping was added to the list of security restrictions.

Danish Embassy. A suicide bomber drove a small car down the street and detonated his bomb in front of the Danish Embassy, killing several guards and a young boy who just happened to walk down the wrong street at the wrong time. No Danes were injured in the attack, although their building suffered some damage. The Danish Embassy is on the street just behind my house and the blast blew out all my windows and doors and small pieces of the bomber's vehicle were found in my yard. Seven other Embassy houses were damaged to one degree or another, but mine was the worst. The advantage of that was that the houses were repaired in order of severity of damage, so mine got fixed first! This blast could be heard as far away as the Diplomatic Enclave. Security reminders were sent out and all our Motor Pool drivers were put through a refresher course covering their particular security responsibilities.

Red Mosque 2. A suicide bomber wearing an explosives laden vest walked into a group of policemen and killed twenty of them. The police were there to maintain crowd control during demonstrations on the anniversary of the storming of the Red Mosque. Although my house is well over a mile from where the explosion took place, I heard this blast quite clearly. While this explosion caused no injuries to Embassy personnel or damage to our properties, it served as a very clear reminder of why our security measures are in place.

Marriott Hotel. A truck carrying approximately one ton of explosives attempted to crash the security barrier at the Marriott Hotel. The guards at the barrier shot out his tires and prevented him from pulling up alongside the hotel before he detonated. When he triggered his bomb, he destroyed the hotel and left a crater in the road that measures forty feet across and twenty-five feet deep. His truck, a very large and colorfully painted dump truck, completely disappeared. After the blast, no piece of this massive machine was found that couldn't be held in the palm of your hand. Thirty-six Embassy houses in the area were damaged with the usual broken windows and blown out doors. I was more than two miles away and felt the concussion.

So, the Marriott is gone, destroyed by the explosion and the fire that followed it. The death toll is still being tallied as the wreckage of the building is searched for staff and guests who were killed in the fire. Three American diplomats, many other foreigners and the Czech Ambassador to Pakistan are among the fatalities. Our men were here TDY, which means on temporary duty. They had only just arrived. Similarly, the Czech Ambassador had also just arrived in Islamabad to begin his new assignment. As usual, the people who bore the brunt of this attack were working class Pakistanis. The guards at the barrier, the doormen, the bell-hops and concierge at the front door, and the front desk personnel in the lobby were all killed.

There were several very good restaurants in the Marriott and we were allowed to eat in them. The restaurants in the Marriott and Serena hotels and the Monal Restaurant in the Margalla Hills were all approved for Americans even though security concerns prevented us from eating in any of the other restaurants in town after the Luna Caprese bombing. People from the Embassy who were dining in the various restaurants in the Marriott on Saturday night tell of the waiters and waitresses who calmly led their guests out through the kitchens to safety after the explosion. Although many of these people, guests and staff alike, were bleeding and in shock there wasn't any panic in the smoke and chaos and most made it to safety.

For the time being, we aren't allowed to do anything any more. That includes all of the small freedoms we used to enjoy, such as going to the grocery store on weekdays or hiking on the one approved trail in the Margalla Hills or day trips to Taxila in armored vehicles. None of these activities are inherently more dangerous, or safer, than they were before the Marriott bombing but they are now prohibited. In this day and age, it is far better to be overly restrictive than to make a mistake. Right now our every focus is on ensuring the security and safety of our people.

The Czech ambassador was killed in the Marriott explosion and, because they don't have support staff here, the Germans offered to help repatriate his remains. They contacted us to see if we could give them a coffin. Coffins must be lead lined to be carried on airplanes and we have a small supply of them in our warehouse. We explained that we would have to charge the German Embassy for the coffin because it was an 'accountable' item in our inventory and the cost would be approximately $1,000. The Germans said they'd get back to us. Later I received a call from the French Embassy asking me if I knew of any local vendors who might sell them a lead lined coffin. They were flying the Czech ambassador home and needed a coffin. I told them that the Germans had already called about the coffin and I asked if they wanted it instead. They said, "the Germans, apparently, want to shop around". Ahh, Pakistan, everything is negotiable.

I made several attempts to get close to the Marriott to take a few pictures of the building and the crater in front of it but the police kept chasing me away. Not being one to let a couple of hundred angry nervous heavily armed Pakistani policemen deter me, I had Basharat (my driver) circle around to different approaches to the building. We were able to talk our way past the first two roadblocks and then I tried to walk in from there. Unfortunately, the police made it abundantly clear that if I didn't return to my vehicle and leave immediately, I would be given the right to remain silent, etc. The thought of having to phone the Ambassador to ask her for bail money helped me realize that I wouldn't be getting any pictures of the Marriott any time soon.

Virtually everyone here has a little countdown meter on their computer that shows how many days he or she has left on their tour. Even though I like it here and am not chomping at the bit to leave, I check my meter every once in a while like everyone else. A notable day in the timeline is the day you go into double digits and folks wander around announcing, "Ninety-nine to go!" The real countdown begins at sixty days when your official check-out list is issued and you start to mark things off. Once you hit the thirty day mark, you become a "double digit midget" and people begin asking you if you have room in your allotment for them to send stuff back with you. I'm under forty days now and have begun the rather formal process of getting my orders cut to return to Washington. I'm still trying to figure out how I'll get back because both British Airways and Lufthansa pulled out of Pakistan this week.

I was in Pakistan for the declaration of Martial Law and the ensuing riots, the attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Karachi and the ensuing riots, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi and the ensuing riots, the relatively peaceful and democratic elections that returned two convicted felons to office, the steady and progressive escalation of the fundamentalist insurgency in the FATA, the targeted attack on the Principal Officer in our Consulate in Peshawar and the four above-mentioned bombings. It's been an extraordinarily interesting year and an experience that I'll never forget. We are reminded on a daily basis that Pakistan is the front line in the war on terrorism and that we are working under unique and exceptional conditions. I often am amazed that I've been given this opportunity especially at this stage of my life.

I feel like I've come full circle now. When I first arrived at Post, I walked around and didn't know any of the people I saw. Now, because this is a one year post and our turnover season is the late Summer and early Fall, I walk around and don't know any of the people I see. It's time for me to think about going home and letting the new guys have all the fun. In no time at all they'll look over at the even newer arrivals and say, "Oh, that's a bomb and now here's what we do..."

These are pictures of the Government building that was down the street a little way from the Marriott Hotel. The blast killed six men who were working late in this building.

R&R Redux

2008-08-24T14:54:00.000+02:00

The Man Who Would Be King

I have three guards. Azad is a man of about 40, bearded and serious. He speaks a bit of English and between that and my broken Urdu we communicate with some degree of understanding. Saqib is the youngest guard and he too speaks a little English but, as he is highly excitable and borderline insane, we don't communicate so well. Then there is Sher Mohammad, the 'Lion of the Pathans'. Sher Mohammad is in his late 60s or early 70s and speaks only Pashto so communication with him is all but impossible. He takes his work very seriously and always carries himself with great dignity so it came as somewhat of a surprise to us all when he returned from his days off and a visit back to his village in the FATA with his grey hair dyed bright orange. This may have some cultural significance among Pathans of which we're unaware, but more likely it's a simple fashion statement gone badly awry. Sher Mohammad continued to behave with the same serious and dignified approach to his work that he's always shown so I became used to his orange hair curling out from under his Wackenhut Guards hat. Then I came home from work one day to discover that the 'Lion of the Pathans' was wearing mascara, eyeliner and makeup on his cheeks. The Pathans are fierce and proud warriors who have controlled the mountain passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan for centuries. They have occasionally been defeated in battle but never conquered and they always avenge any slight, real or imagined. I was, therefore, careful to continue to treat Sher Mohammad with all the respect and courtesy due a cross-dressing senior citizen Pathan carrying a gun. And I immediately put in for my second R&R.

I made reservations at a resort in the Maldive Islands that was reputed to have great food and an excellent dive center. My plan was to spend ten days lying in the sun, reading books, eating big meals, smoking cigars, and doing some scuba diving. The resort was called Herathera which means "Hideaway" in the local language. I would live in a beach villa that didn't have a 'safe' room, Phase 3 security, two-way radio or armed guards. When the mood struck me I would walk up and down the beach and I wouldn't ride in an armored vehicle for the whole ten days. It took me just over 24 hours to get from Islamabad to Herathera. I flew to Dubai where I had a sixteen hour layover but the airline gave me a complimentary hotel room and I managed to both get some rest and see a little of the city. Then I flew from Dubai to Male, the capitol of the Maldives. In Male I transferred to a small twin engined plane for another hour and a half flight down to Gan, the island with an airport on the atoll with Herathera. From Gan I took a 25 minute speedboat ride across the lagoon to Herathera and then I was there, one speedboat ride too far, in my opinion, to be summoned back to the Embassy for any perceived emergencies.

The first thing I noticed about Herathera was that it was no longer called Herathera. It had changed ownership since I made my reservation and is now called Han'dhufushi which means something other than Hideaway in the local language but I couldn't determine exactly what that might be. Under either name my villa was excellent and opened up right onto the lagoon so after a short nap I visited the dive center to pick up a mask, snorkel and fins. The day was overcast but warm and I swam around the reef for almost three hours. It may surprise you to learn that you can become pretty severely sunburned while snorkeling for three hours under an overcast sky; it did me. However, because the sunburn was on my back and calves and I couldn't see it, I decided to just ignore it and hoped it would go away. When that plan didn't work so well I bought some exorbitantly priced spray stuff that actually took the sting out. I snorkeled every day and went scuba diving every second day. There were reef fish of every imaginable shape and color, dolphins, turtles, moray eels, manta rays and sharks all over the lagoon. The underwater scenery was amazing!

Sartorial splendor on R&R

The staff decorated my bed on my birthday

My vllla

Three meals a day were included in the price of the room and the food was delicious. There was a salad table, a bread & cheese table, a row of serving dishes with a wide range of hot foods, a dessert table and two chefs who cooked at the grill. There was no limit to the number of times you could waddle back up to the buffet and I began to feel as if I were conducting an experiment in seeing how far the human skin will stretch.

The view from my dining room table

I brought along a stack of books and a box of cigars and spent much of each day lying in the shade relaxing. Every day, in the late afternoon, bats the size of flying monkeys came out and flew up and down the beach. In addition to their well known powers of sonar and echolocation they also seemed to be able to sense when a very sunburned man was trying to take a picture of them and would only come by when my camera was back in the room.

Dolphins played around the dive boat every day

One of the dive boats

Bats aside, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Han'dhufushi Resort to anyone interested in a quiet relaxing vacation in a remote idyllic spot. Bring suntan lotion and, if you're so inclined, bat repellent.

Caped Crusader, where art thou?

It took another full day to fly back to Pak where I did my laundry, slept for a few hours, repacked my bag and headed back out to the airport for a flight to Skardu in Kashmir. I had reservations at a hotel near K2 and was looking forward to seeing that famous mountain and taking some pictures of it. While I was sleeping Musharraf resigned. The country didn't explode so I didn't cancel my trip.

The first thing you notice when you fly on Pakistan International Airlines is that the flight attendants recite a prayer before takeoff. "Bismillah heerachman neeraheem" or "We begin with the name of God". Prior to descent they say, "We will be landing, Inshallah (God willing), at Skardu Airport in ten minutes". The next thing that strikes you on the flight to Skardu is that after climbing for 40 minutes out of Islamabad and negotiating narrow mountain passes that seem to be only marginally wider than the plane's wingspan, you land. You don't actually descend to land, you just land. Inshallah! Skardu is well over a mile high and at that altitude it is still the lowest point in the entire surrounding area.

This ruffian was spotted near the warning sign.

I stayed in a 17th century fort that's been converted into a very nice hotel called Shigar Fort. It's in the next valley over from Skardu and involves an interesting drive across one of the passes and along a very narrow two lane road that, in typically quaint Pakistani fashion, has no barriers or guardrails along the drop-off side. "Bismillah heerachman neeraheem" indeed! Upon checking in at Shigar Fort I asked the Manager if it was possible to have a room with a view of K2. He thought about it for a minute and then said, "No, not from this hotel." I asked him which hotel had rooms with views of K2 and he said, "Well, to see K2 we can rent you a jeep and you drive eight hours north until the road ends and then you hike for seven days and if the weather is clear you can see K2 from that spot." Which explains why I haven't seen K2 to date.

Shigar Fort Hotel

The hallway to my room in Shigar Fort

The doorway to the hallway to my room in Shigar Fort

A 'charpai' on the grounds of Shigar Fort

Instead of going to K2 I hired a car and driver to take me to the Deosai Plateau which has views of lots of very tall mountains, although none of them are famous. The car picked me up at the hotel and drove back along the narrow mountain road towards Skardu then south to the Plateau. It was an old Toyota Corolla with no shocks, bald tires, loose steering and bad brakes but the driver managed to hammer it along at just under the speed of sound and gave a whole new meaning to the word "careening" as we rounded the turns. Looking down into the river valleys thousands of feet below us as we rocketed along the road I didn't want to distract the driver so I whimpered softly instead of screaming out loud. The situation became marginally more terrifying when the driver received a call on his cell phone and proceeded to have a long animated conversation while sliding around the gravel strewn mountain road. Then, as if to prove that it can always get worse, he began to use his non-essential hand (the one doing the steering not the one holding the cell phone) to fiddle with his tape deck. Although not many things worked on this small decrepit juggernaut of a vehicle, I'm happy to report that the tape deck functioned perfectly and for the next several hours I was treated to very very loud music. It was atonal, repetitive, wailing and each song lasted approximately seven hundred hours. The driver continued to shout into his cell phone and, from time to time, would use his non-essential steering hand to see if he could boost a bit more volume from the tape deck. Flying off the road into one of the river valleys below began to look like an appealing option to me.

This isn't K2, seen from the PIA flight into Skardu.

Satpara Lake seen in the distance

Satpara Village as seen from a very high mountain road

I had decided to visit the Deosai Plateau National Park because the hotel manager had assured me that there were more types of wild flowers found there than could be seen anywhere else in the country. I was no longer a novice at this so I made him guarantee that I could see this wild mosaic of color from the jeep on the road and wouldn't have to hike for days in order to do so. No, the flowers grew everywhere and the road across the Plateau cut straight through them.

The Plateau looked like a lunar landscape, dry, featureless and brown. When I returned to the hotel and told him that I hadn't seen so much as a green leaf the hotel manager explained patiently and slowly, as if he finally realized that I was a bit dim, that the wild flowers grew in great abundance...in the Spring...and that I really should choose my time to visit more carefully. The absence of flowers didn't really bother me too much because the drive through the mountains was spectacular and the views from the Plateau were incredible.

This patch of lichen represents the riotous spray of colors seen when the wildflowers bloom in Spring

The Deosai Plateau, Skardu and Kashmir are amazing places to visit with magnificent views of the Karakoram Mountains, the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. The shopkeepers and businessmen in Skardu are suffering because there is virtually no tourism any more and tourism is the foundation of their economy. They repeatedly asked me to "tell Americans to come here" and assured me that Osama was nowhere near Skardu (and if he's up at K2 it'll take him seven days to hike to a road to hitchhike into town!). Unfortunately, after a period of relative calm, Kashmir seems to be on the verge of erupting into sectarian violence again. It's truly a shame that Kashmir isn't safe for tourists now because Americans would flock to this part of the world and they'd spend more money than we currently give to the Government of Pakistan. Tourist dollars put directly into the hands of shopkeepers, hotels, restaurants and local businesses would do more to reduce Pakistan's crushing poverty than all our well-intentioned government supplied aid put into the hands (pockets) of the politicians and military.

Town meeting in Skardu

Skardu's main shopping district

I flew back into Islamabad on Sunday and realized that I was completely rested and ready to get back to the job. I like the people I work with here, I enjoy the work I do and, in spite of our security restrictions, I like living in Pakistan. When the car bringing me back from the airport pulled into my driveway, Sher 'The Lion of the Pathans' Mohammad opened my gate, saluted touching his fingertips to his silver grey hair and smiled a make-up free smile. Everything seems to be back to normal (by Pakistan standards anyway) again and it's good to be home.

Last evening at Han'dhufushi

The Khyber Pass

2008-07-23T16:34:00.000+02:00

The entrance to the Khyber Pass, seen from the open door of a Huey gunship.

I flew over the Khyber Pass in a helicopter gunship the other day. I'm not quite certain why I was given this highly sought after opportunity but when it was offered to me I jumped at the chance. A very senior State Department official and his Staff Assistant were here on an official visit and his program included a tour of Peshawar with a flyover of the FATA and the Khyber Pass.

The FATA is the Federally Administered Tribal Area and it's the place in Pakistan where most of the Taliban and other righteous militants gather, plot mayhem and hide from the light of day. The Khyber Pass is the historic route into the Indian Subcontinent and its military significance has been recognized and exploited by invading armies from Alexander the Great to the British Army of the Indus.

While it would be truly interesting to drive through the Khyber Pass and you'd gain a still greater appreciation for it if you hiked through it like an invading army, it's far safer and much easier to simply fly over it in a helicopter. The Government of Pakistan recently tried trucking a couple of helicopters over the Pass but, sadly, they were stolen by brigands along the way. No, it's much better to actually fly the darn things in the manner in which they were intended.

So we, the senior State Department official, his assistant, his Embassy supplied Control Officer and I, piled into two armored Land Cruisers and drove up to Peshawar from Islamabad. The senior State Department official (aka the Principal) and his Control Officer rode in the front car and I, as is my habit, rode in the back car (aka the Straggler). His bodyguard rode shotgun in his vehicle which meant that his Staff Assistant had to either ride three across in the back seat with him and the Control Officer or could ride in relative comfort with me. It is the nature of Staff Assistants to prefer to be close to power and I use the word 'prefer' in the sense that they would eat their own children for a chance to sit behind the Principal and whisper in his ear at a meeting. So the Staff Assistant had to be ordered into the Straggler and we set off for Peshawar, the Birthplace of Al Qaeda and current Home of the Taliban who, by the way, are the creature come into being with the full aid and support of the ISI, Pakistan's version of the CIA.

The Frontier Corps is responsible for maintaining control of this region.

Peshawar is now and ever was the gateway to the Pass. It has been fought over and occupied again and again throughout recorded history and is currently under the nominal control of the Government of Pakistan. Coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan, once past Peshawar, you are in the heart of the Punjab, the rich fertile Indus River valley. It's a two hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar on a very modern and beautifully maintained motorway through a lush and green countryside and by the second hour the Staff Assistant had relaxed enough to begin to enjoy the scenery. Prior to that she had been very busy identifying every bearded man on a motorcycle as a potential suicide bomber. There are a lot of bearded men on motorcycles in Pakistan. Before she left the States someone told her that Pakistan is a 'dangerous' place and she, bless her heart, was certain that everyone we saw was poised to attack. I pointed out that anyone attacking us would certainly go for the front car, which we refer to as the 'Target', and that seemed to reassure her a bit.

Haystacks in a farm field on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.

Public transportation on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.

Public transportation in Peshawar.

When we arrived at the Consulate in Peshawar, the official party went off to have official meetings and I spent the morning with my counterpart, the GSO. He's a man about my own age, I know him well and we have a lot in common so I was able to "read between the lines" when he asked in perfectly phrased diplomatic terms, "How the f**k did you get a ride over the Pass, you a*****e?". The man's a poet.

This somewhat disturbing replica of a small plane going down in flames is at the entrance to the 11th Corps airfield.

After lunch he and I drove out to the 11th Corps military airfield to meet up with the official party and board the helicopters. We were driven out to the waiting aircraft and were told to board. The Principal and Control Officer were directed to the first helo which was painted in very military looking camouflage colors and the Staff Assistant and I were asked to get into the second machine which was painted olive drab. The Staff Assistant had had enough and stated most emphatically, "I'm going in that one!" and clambered into the camouflaged helicopter. As she was crawling into it she turned, saw me point at it and mouth the word "Target" and then I watched her knees buckle as I walked to my now private and personal aircraft.

The Khyber Pass!

The flyover was incredible! In the Khyber Pass we flew below the mountain peaks on either side and over forts, gun emplacements, rivers and roads. The doors were left open and I sat beside the door gunner on the left hand side. The winds were gusting with some strength through the Pass that day and we were batted around like a bingo ball in a mixer. At first it was a little unnerving to be flying in a narrow canyon, seemingly close enough to touch the rocks on either side, but I became so busy taking video and still pictures that I forgot to be nervous. The pilots, who do this regularly, were steering with their feet and eating peanuts from a bag with their hands. We spent an hour flying through and around the Pass before turning back towards home. The helicopters took us all the way back to Islamabad and we had an excellent view of the Punjab in all its splendor.

A fort in the Pass. Every time I asked the crew what this building was they looked down and said, "What Building?"

This is the beginning of the two lane road through the Khyber Pass. If ever a road needed a 'Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers' sign, this is that road.

This town may or may not have been in the FATA. If it wasn't, it was pretty damn close.

These fields are definitely positively in the Punjab. I think.

This is a Huey 2, a Vietnam era helicopter that's been refitted with new avionics, engine and rotors. It was my personal aircraft for over two hours.

The 'Target'.

One of my colleagues told this story of her encounter with the Islamabad traffic police. She ran a red light and was pulled over by the cop on the corner.

"Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, I did."
"No, Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, you're right, I did."
"Yes, you did!"
"That's right, I did. So you can just give me my ticket."
"I can't give you a ticket. We don't have any paper."

If that doesn't sum up Pakistan for you then consider that several of my colleagues have opened tabs with the traffic police. They put down money on account at the police station and the cops just deduct from it for each violation.

So, remember...Don't walk through the Pass, don't ride in the 'Target' and never leave your helicopter parked on a truck!

The Holy Grail

2008-07-05T10:49:00.000+02:00

I like a cup of coffee in the morning. I almost never have more than just the one cup, but I really enjoy that cup. Our cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00am and I am often on the compound before then and am forced to wait for my coffee. Many of my colleagues have those insulated coffee mugs made for commuters and bring a cup with them from home. This seemed to be a good idea to me, but I couldn't find one. I kept going to the commissary hoping to find one but, because they don't carry them, I never found one. Nonetheless, I looked for one each and every time I shopped at the commissary sometimes even making a special trip down to that end of the compound just to see if one had magically materialized.

Then one day before we destroyed my fleet of beat up vehicles and I lost my car to the vagaries of the Diplomatic Security Driver Training course I came up with a plan, I'd go to the market and buy my insulated coffee mug there! It's brilliance like this that has seen me become the successful Foreign Service Officer I am today. So I fired up my metallic pink KIA and headed for Khosar Market and a very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store. You can well imagine my disappointment upon discovering that this very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store carried everything from French coffee presses to Italian espresso machines but not a single insulated coffee mug.

Nonetheless I had come all this way and I felt fairly certain that the mug would appear if I put a little more effort into the looking for it, so I prowled the aisles, moved sundries, peered into gaps and spaces on the shelves and in general made a nuisance of myself. Then, quite reasonably, I got mad at the owner and clerks who were following me around and basically accused them of hiding the mugs from me. The Urdu word for "get out!" is "Jao!" but I didn't quite catch the correct pronunciation of the word for "lunatic".

The grocery store I frequent is right next door to the inadequately stocked kitchen supplies store and they carry Hagen Daz in limited flavors which would help take the sting out of my unsuccessful search for a mug. While paying for the ice cream I remembered that the grocery store had a small drug store type section upstairs and I climbed the stairs without any real hope of actually finding a mug. However, on a shelf directly opposite the top of the stairs was the last commuter's insulated coffee mug available for sale, quite possibly, in Pakistan. Between me and the mug were two Swedish diplomats, women who were looking at the mug, but, and I stress this point in my defense, they had not actually touched it yet. Using every inch of my reach I managed to wedge myself in between them and grabbed the mug. Diplomacy be damned, the mug was mine.

I paid for the mug and took it home. It was only several days later when I did the math that I realized I'd paid just over $35 for a mug that the Marriott Hotel routinely gives away as a promotional item. Of course, my mug doesn't have the Marriott logo printed tackily on the side. It has SIGG printed on the side, which turns out to be a Swiss company that manufactures mugs, water bottles and other promotional giveaways. All I can say is that my coffee has never tasted so good.

This week was a holiday week, someone left the doors of Congress unlocked and we had a surge in congressional delegations. Members of both Houses of Congress visit Pakistan with great regularity, never more so than over a holiday, to confer with various senior Pakistani officials including the President, the Prime Minister and the heads of the other two major political parties. That these Members are Honorable men is an indisputable fact, for it says so on their business cards, and they come in an honest attempt to educate themselves on the situation here to help them formulate our policy towards Pakistan in a way that best reflects our national interests.

A week when five separate delegations descend on us 'en masse' means two things to me; first, I will get very little sleep and second, my motor pool will be given every opportunity to shine. This week, between Monday at 3:00am when the fun began and Saturday at 10:00am when the last delegation boarded their military transport for home, we staged fifty-one separate motorcades and moved the five delegations around like pieces on a chessboard. Every vehicle was where it was supposed to be, when it was supposed to be there. Every Honorable Member was transported in safety and security, often at high speed, without incident. Our drivers did an outstanding job! I rode the Control Vehicle or Straggler in most of these movements. When the principal delegate and his/her party are strapped in, the motorcade moves out whether all of our embassy officers are in vehicles or not. The Straggler is there to make sure that anyone missing the move gets brought along to the next stop.

President Musharraf has a beautiful compound in Rawalpindi known as the Camp Office and the drivers, security people and I often sit there enjoying a cup of tea while the Honorable Members meet with him to discuss policy and have their pictures taken. The Prime Minister's residence is in Islamabad on a hill with a glorious view of the city and the Margalla Hills and he prefers to meet with our delegations there rather than in his office, leaving those of us who don't make policy in either Pakistan or America to sit outside and admire that view while hoping that the Honorable Members, against all odds, get it right. It is fairly evident to the committee of us who sit outside the meetings and don't take part in the photo opportunities that the problems here are huge and complex and won't begin to be solved until the grinding poverty in this country is addressed. Pakistan is a nation that needs schools and hospitals, an adequate power supply, a massive infrastructure building project, jobs and food. It has a nuclear weapon, a corrupt bureaucracy and an army that is 0 for 5 since 1947.

High speed motorcades out to the airport and the government offices in Rawalpindi with police escorts front and back and all traffic pulled aside to let us pass were very exciting when I first did them. Now I bring a book and my iPod along. I really enjoy sitting in the Straggler, reading my book, listening to music, sipping my coffee and looking out the window at this very green and beautiful city. It's quite similar to working for a living.

Standing on a hill overlooking the NWFP (Northwest Frontier Provinces).

The fabled NWFP, land of brigands, bandits, terrorists and a whole bunch of people just trying to eke a living out of rock and dirt.

We're in the Monsoon season now, it's come early this year. It's hot and humid and it rains nearly every day but the rain doesn't cool anything down. When the rain stops, the humidity in the air builds up until it rains again in a constant cycle of humid mugginess and torrential downpours. Surprisingly, I don't mind this at all. I find that I like the monsoons and that the heat doesn't bother me. It makes me feel like I'm living in a W. Somerset Maugham/Joseph Conrad sort of foreign place and I should be smoking cigarettes in long holders and drinking gin and tonics on a bamboo porch cooled by slow moving ceiling fans while complaining about the lack of 'good help'. This is also the beginning of the mango season and mango milkshakes are available at the restaurant on the compound, as are mango pies, mango ice cream, mango smoothies, mango ala mode, mango tea and mango smothered in fresh berries. Fresh mangos make the monsoons all the more bearable.

My blue aluminum commuter's insulated coffee mug works very well with mango smoothies and is, therefore, almost worth what it cost me. By the way, it turns out that the Swedish phrase, "alltfor dyr" translates as "too expensive", not "look, Sally, there's the mug we've been searching high and low for!".

Mule Thief!

2008-06-13T10:25:00.000+02:00

There are only a couple of things that annoy me about Islamabad, which really isn't too bad because this is, potentially, a pretty annoying place. Because the government can't produce enough power to meet demand, they shut power off to different parts of the city at different times of the day. This is known as 'load shedding' and no matter where you live or work, you share in the regularly scheduled power outages. These outages, set up to last for about an hour at a time, would be very annoying if we didn't have generators at our homes.

Fortunately, we do have generators so when the city turns off the power in our neighborhoods, our generators kick on and the lights, appliances and (most importantly) air conditioners turn back on. So load shedding itself doesn't particularly annoy me. I recognize how fortunate I am to have a generator and I know that life is pretty miserable for people who do not have them.

No, the annoying thing about load shedding is that my dvd player shuts down when the power goes off and forgets where it is in the movie. It seems to be impossible to time it so that I can watch a movie in between power outages, so any movie I try to watch quits twice and I have to search for the spot I was watching when the power died. Trivial, I know, but annoying none the less.

The other annoying thing, to me at least, are the bombs. I confess, even if it's culturally inappropriate, that I don't like people who set off bombs around innocent civilians. I find it especially irksome when they target diplomats. The most recent bomb was detonated in front of the Danish Embassy to express displeasure with some political cartoons that ran in Danish newspapers several years ago. No Danes were injured in the attack but many local people on the street including a young boy were killed or badly injured. The brave souls at Al Qaeda, who immediately took credit for this latest bombing of an unarmed unsuspecting populace, were fairly dribbling spittle into their beards in excitement over their 'great victory'. I was at the Embassy at the time of the blast and learned about it through the grapevine at work. The Danish Embassy is not located with us on the secure diplomatic enclave. Many nations have established their embassies, missions and representatives in the spacious and elegant housing found throughout Islamabad. The Danes are in a very nice residential neighborhood about fifteen minutes from the enclave. To be specific, they are in my neighborhood. In fact, they are one street behind me.

I got home that night to find that my back door, the one facing the street with the Danish Embassy, had been blown in off its hinges by the pressure wave from the blast. The wave then went through my house and blew every single window outwards. Not a single other thing was damaged and, much more importantly, none of my guards were injured. The guards said that the blast was quite loud but not so bad that it hurt their ears. In all, we had eight houses damaged to more or less the same extent and our maintenance people worked all night to get them boarded up and secured. Glass and doors can be replaced and we're fortunate that none of our folks were hurt.

So, for the week it took to replace the glass and door it was a bit like camping out. The mosquitos certainly believed that was the case. Replacing the glass was a more complex task than measuring, cutting and plugging-in because of the security grills covering every single window opening. All the grills had to be cut off then re-welded into place after the glass was installed. However, all the work's been completed, all the mosquitos have been evicted and we're operating under heightened security rules...again. Ironically, this bombing came on the heels of the current Government of Pakistan's insistence that negotiating with the terrorists was effectively bringing peace to the country. If you can't trust the word of people who use suicide bombers to kill children, you could begin to lose your faith in diplomacy altogether.

This is how all my windows looked immediately after the blast.

When all your windows are boarded up, it's a little like living in a cave.

I stole a mule today. In an incredible lapse of good judgement I purloined the DCM's mule. All I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Before I'm hanged as a mule thief, a word or two of explanation is in order. 'Mules' are Kawasaki all terrain vehicles that are used on the compound like golf carts. GSO (my section) has one mule for sure and another who's ownership is debated. We feel it's ours and the DCM insists that it's his. For those of you unfamiliar with the hierarchy of an Embassy, the DCM is the Deputy Chief of Mission, second in command only to the Ambassador herself. So, our 'debate' has, up until today, consisted of us muttering under our breath and never in his presence, "it's really our mule" and him stating emphatically, out loud and directly to us, "keep your damn hands off my mule!". He took both the keys to the mule called Paco (all the mules have names) and that would have been that if we didn't have the ability to make duplicate keys. Reasoning that sometimes he's away and we might need Paco, we had a set of keys made just as a precaution.

Today, Saturday, the temperature and the humidity were climbing and Chuck and I needed to go from Post 2 down to the commissary. It's a long walk on a hot day and Luci, our undisputed GSO mule, was being used so we looked for Paco and couldn't find him. Chuck is our Housing Coordinator, an ex-marine and a fellow about my age so he and I hiked down to the commissary grumbling every step of the way. On the way we passed the Facilities Maintenance building and spotted Paco parked neatly by the barber shop. One of us suggested that since we had the spare key with us we should just take 'our' mule back especially since it was unlikely that the DCM was on the compound anyway. Chuck agreed. Just to be safe, we peeked into the barber shop and determined that DCM Bodde wasn't there. We hopped onto Paco and drove to the commissary.

As we exited the commissary loaded down with groceries we ran smack dab into the DCM looking exactly like a man who's mule has been stolen on a very hot day. He saw us and said very quietly and with great purpose, "who stole my mule?". Chuck and I immediately pointed to each other. The commissary is right next to the Maintenance building (where the DCM had been in a meeting...who knew?) and the fact that we hadn't actually left yet for Post 2 probably explains why I am still a Foreign Service Officer. He confiscated our spare keys and left us to walk back to Post 2.

Lita asked me to wear a shalwar qamees to her "Outta Here" party.

Cricket and baseball have some similarities, apparently this batting stance is not one of them!

This is a Punjabi grain chest. The farmers in the Punjab used these chests to store their winter grain. This one is about eighty years old and has been refinished and converted into a wine cabinet.

Chuck and I have agreed that the next time we steal Paco we'll have a spare license plate along to switch its identity.

It's All About Cars

2008-05-15T07:45:00.000+02:00

"A démarche is a formal diplomatic representation of one government’s official position, views, or wishes on a given subject to an appropriate official in another government or international organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform, or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government." State Department Diplopedia

Démarche can also be used as a verb, as in "I have to démarche the GOP (Government of Pakistan) today regarding our dissatisfaction with...". It is almost never used familiarly, as in "after de soldiers line up, demarche".

Back in November I put on my best suit and delivered our notification to "persuade" the GOP to release a small number of vehicles they were holding in Customs impound and to "inform" the GOP that these vehicles were needed, urgently, by the U.S. Mission in Pakistan for the security of our people. The vehicles which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was dragging its heels on releasing were all 'hard' cars or fully armored vehicles. I delivered my notice by hand to the Deputy Chief of Protocol, had a very nice cup of tea with her, chatted with her about her years as an undergraduate student at MIT and received her assurance that she completely understood our request and would act on it promptly. Then she left to go on Hajj for three weeks, during which time no one was empowered to act on her behalf.

I became aware of her return when I received a notice from the GOP which stated that our vehicles could not be released because it was against GOP rules to "sell these vehicles on the open market". I assured her that we would never dispose of our armored vehicles on the open market and was informed, via an official diplomatic note, that "the French had recently tried to sell an armored vehicle on the local economy". Excusé Moi! I immediately wrote, in reply, that under U.S. law we can only dispose of our 'hard' cars by a) sending them back to the U.S., b) dropping them into the ocean, or c) blowing them up. Pakistan, a nation notorious for selling nuclear weapons to the highest bidder, is concerned that a few armored Toyotas will end up in the hands of ruffians.

I was next asked to provide "proof" that we had disposed of our older vehicles appropriately. You can imagine my shock and disappointment when I learned that my word as a gentleman was not sufficient. We are given permission by the State Department to destroy these vehicles and we blow them up. We happen to videotape this process and I was able to give the Deputy Chief of Protocol a copy of the cd.

Time passed. More vehicles arrived at the port in Karachi and joined the original batch in impound.

I had several more meetings with the Deputy Chief of Protocol and her assistant and was assured each time that they were completely sympathetic and were working diligently to get our vehicles released. More vehicles arrived. I received a very strange note requiring us to declare the type of weaponry installed in these vehicles. We issued a diplomatic note in reply assuring the GOP that these were "unarmed armored" vehicles and received a demand to describe the level of protection offered by the armoring down to the NATO calibre of bullet the armor would stop. And when they had run out of absurd questions to ask, they did what any self-respecting bureaucracy would do...they passed the paperwork to another ministry. All they needed, they explained, was a No Objection letter from the Ministry of the Interior and they would immediately issue the needed approvals.

It took me almost a month to track down the desk in the Ministry of the Interior where the paperwork for our now thirty-three vehicles was being ignored, another couple of weeks to get an appointment with the Joint Secretary for Security and a one hour meeting to convince him to release the vehicles. Smiles, handshakes all around and a small Happy Dance in the parking lot. A week later, after phoning the Joint Secretary every day, I was told that he had passed the paperwork up the chain of command to the Additional Secretary and had recommended that "everything be approved".

From there it went to the Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, who declined to meet with me but assured me, through an intermediary, that he had forwarded our request to his superior, Rehman Malik, the Advisor to the Minister of the Interior, and as soon as Malik returned from London he would "quite probably" approve our request and let us have our vehicles. After all, hadn't we recently given the Ministry of the Interior 600 brand new Toyota double cab pick-ups (which, incidentally, never spent a single day in impound)?

Mr. Malik is described in Wikipedia as "the person responsible for the security of Benazir Bhutto" so I hoped he'd be somewhat sympathetic to our request to allow us to protect ourselves since the whole Bhutto thing didn't work real well. His level of concern and sympathy was expressed by stating that, "if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will issue me a No Objection letter to your request then I will issue them a No Objection letter to your request". Huh?

And so it goes.

A team is coming out from DC in June to give the motor pool drivers a two day course in security awareness driving. We use older unarmored vehicles for this course and treat them harshly. In my motor pool inventory I have six or so cars that have long since outlived their usefulness and are perfect for this course. The only concern over using these cars is that they haven't been driven for quite some time. So, one by one I've been driving them home at night and the next day I bring them to the auto shop and let the mechanics work on them. The other day I was driving home in an old Honda and I was within sight of my house when I got pulled over for speeding. The officer asked to see my license and I gave it to him. He asked me if I knew how fast I was going and I told him that I wasn't paying attention, but I guessed I was going too fast since he had stopped me. Then he asked me where I lived and I pointed to my house. "Awwww," he said, "you almost made it home!" He was so moved by my bad luck that he just gave me a warning and drove away.

Among the old beaters that I'm trying to get into shape for the Security Course are several Hondas, a Mitsubishi and my personal favorite, a KIA Spectra. The KIA is metallic pink and looks like the car awarded to Mary Kay's least successful salesperson.

An acquaintance from the Peace Corps showed up in Islamabad yesterday. He left Bulgaria last Fall, traveled overland through your various 'Stans and arrived in Pakistan through the mountain passes from China. He has traveled through parts of the country that we are not allowed to go into with armored vehicles in convoys. As one of my friends put it, "he's hitchhiked through Hunza and I can't go to the KFC". However, to be fair, by tradition the KFC in Islamabad is the first thing burned to the ground during riots. Traditions are important in every culture.

Inspired by this example of adventurism and being the rebel that I am, I ordered up an armored vehicle and drove across the street from my house to Said Pur Village. There are three things that are interesting about Said Pur Village. First, it is currently being renovated as a 'model' village for tourists to visit; second, it has the mosque that calls me to prayer at times when I am least inclined to pray; third, it has a fully functional goat market.

As you can see, Said Pur Village will be a charming little place to visit once it's finished. Depending on your own personal perspective, the Goat Market may or may not add to that charm.

The government buildings along Constitution Avenue are truly impressive and, when the army isn't out in force, it's possible to grab a shot or two of them.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan

The Prime Minister's Palace

My expedition to the Said Pur tourist village has left me feeling so adventurous that I am thinking of swinging by KFC for dinner. I'll be sure to wear my "Free the I'bad 33" tee shirt.

Cat Wrangler

2008-04-16T17:11:00.000+02:00

The flag carriers at the Wagah Crossing.

Our Embassy diplomats have many important reasons to travel to Lahore. That ancient and fascinating city is the political capitol of the Punjab, the traditional home of the Army's officer corps and the ancestral fiefdom of Nawaz Sharif, whose PML-N party is forming a coalition government with Benazir Bhutto's PPP. Our Political Section, therefore, is often required to meet in Lahore with one dignitary or another to solidify relationships and practice diplomacy. The folks from the Economic Section are frequently called upon to fly down to better gauge the pulse of the Pakistani economy in this center of commerce second in importance only to Karachi. They regularly meet there with Pakistan's captains of industry. Our Public Diplomacy people go there because Lahore is the cultural heart of the country and a prime location for news and media outlets. Cultivating these vital media resources is an important means of getting our message out to the population. So, many of our diplomats are in the position of having to travel to Lahore to better do their jobs. The fact that Lahore is also the acknowledged center of Pakistani cuisine and home to most of Pakistan's best restaurants is purely coincidental.

I went to Lahore last week to deliver a cat.

Admittedly, this doesn't rank as a seminal moment in diplomatic history but the cat and its owner appreciated the effort and it was the only excuse I could come up with to finagle an 'official' trip to Lahore. The cat is the pet of a diplomat who left Islamabad suddenly last year, too suddenly to arrange to take the cat with her. She left her pet with friends and contacted us recently to ask us to ship it to her new post. The best way to get the cat to her was to send it on a flight from Lahore and the only way to get it to Lahore was to send it down by car. I decided that if I had to send a motor pool vehicle to Lahore for a cat, I was going along for the ride.

The old Grand Trunk Road runs from Peshawar at the Khyber Pass, by Islamabad, through Lahore, through Delhi and on, all the way to Bangladesh. Between Islamabad and Lahore it is in very good condition and goes right through the picturesque towns of Gujranwala, Gujrat and Jhelum as well as many small villages and roadside markets. It's a slice of history resurfaced in macadam. We are, of course, prohibited from driving down the Grand Trunk Road and are required, instead, to take the Motorway. The Motorway is a six lane divided highway the equal of any interstate in the US and every bit as boring. The cat seemed annoyed too at not being allowed to drive on the fabled Grand Trunk Road and expressed its displeasure most of the way down by making very loud cat noises. At one point the driver said, "Sir, I think your cat is dying". "Possibly, but it's not my cat", was all I could think of to say. The cat managed to not die on the trip and I saw it safely into the hands of the shippers before I began my tour of Lahore.

The Grand Trunk Road crosses the Pakistan-India border just outside of Lahore in a town called Wagah which has the distinction of being the only open border between the two countries. Each night at around sundown, Honor Guards from each country close the gates and lower their respective flags in a carefully choreographed ceremony.

Our Consulate in Lahore had made arrangements for me to attend the ceremony that night and I went out to Wagah in an armored vehicle with a full police escort. I showed my ID to the military guards surrounding the spectator's area and was escorted into the grandstands built around the Wagah gate. They took me past all the stadium seats and then past the rows of VIP seats right up to the VVIP seats which were virtually next to the crossing gate itself. My escort from the Consulate and I were the only two people in this section and I was pretty sure someone had made a mistake. No sooner had we chosen our seats from among the twenty or so empty chairs when, sure enough, a soldier came up and asked us to move. Then he moved us to the VVIP seats on the opposite side of the road so we would have a better angle for taking pictures! To this day I still wonder who they thought I was.

The ceremony begins with flag carriers running up and down the road between the two sets of grandstands leading the crowd in cheers, exactly like a college football game. They wave their flags and shout, "PAK..I..STAN" and the crowd roars back, "ZIN..DA..BA" which means, 'long live'. And just across the border Indian flag carriers are leading their crowd in equally patriotic cheers. All the while each side is playing pop music on loudspeakers set to maximum volume and soldiers are wandering here and there. This goes on for thirty to forty minutes before the actual border crossing ceremony begins. The official ceremony starts when the Pakistani Honor Guard comes down the road towards the gate (the mirror image of what's happening on the Indian side) and the crowd goes wild. These men are chosen from one particular regiment and must be at least six and one half feet tall. They march aggressively towards the gate, stamp their boots in greatly exaggerated movements, scowl ferociously and shake their fists at their counterparts on the Indian side, who are behaving in exactly the same manner.

After quite a bit of martial posturing on both sides war is narrowly avoided by the strategic withdrawal of the belligerents and decorum is restored. At sunset, with bugles blowing, the flags are lowered in unison, folded with great respect and escorted on each side back to the barracks. The two senior members of the Honor Guards meet in the center of the road salute and give each other one crisp up and down handshake, then the gates are closed for the night and the ceremony is over. It's a truly wonderful spectacle and I highly recommend it if you're ever in this part of the world.

On the domestic front, I decided I'd had enough fun having a housekeeper and it was time to let my guy go. When he shows up he works at my house on Tuesday and Friday afternoons and does some light cleaning, the laundry including any necessary ironing and cooks dinner if I remember to defrost any food. Unfortunately, he seems to miss work more often than he comes and doesn't ever quite get everything done when he does grace me with his presence. Laundry is left in the washing machine or the vacuuming isn't done or if he's cooked, the kitchen looks like a food bomb exploded on the stove. In fact, it seemed to me that the only thing he does with any efficiency at all is ask for more money and he does that all the time.

So I drove home early on Friday to let him know his services were no longer required at Casa Gemmell. "Saqib," I would say, "I've decided that I don't need a housekeeper/cook and even though today is your last day, I'm going to pay you through the end of the month." I was fully prepared for some whining and even some pleading. I knew he would bring up his wife, his sickly mother and his three small kids, I was prepared to remind him that I was not responsible for his family and that if he had done a better job I wouldn't be letting him go. I was prepared for every argument. I was not prepared for the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Somehow the phrase, "I don't need a housekeeper/cook" came out sounding suspiciously like, "You can BAKE!"

Saqib's new title is Cook/housekeeper. We've agreed that he will cook enough food to last me until his next work day and that he will leave the kitchen spotlessly clean. If he doesn't have time to do the laundry or ironing, I'll use the dry cleaner and I can always run a vacuum over the rugs once in awhile if he can't get to it. His genuine gratitude towards me for not firing him was quite moving and he ended our conversation by asking for more money.

Summer is the busy season at Embassy Islamabad because most of our transfers in and out of Post take place then. I'll be kept hopping for the next couple of months looking after the Motor Pool, Shipping and Housing. My colleague Lita is responsible for Housing, but she's moving on to her next Post this month and her replacement won't be here until the middle of June so I'll pick up Housing in the interim. The workload will be heavy but I find it interesting so I'll survive. It's beginning to heat up now and days of 100 plus degree temperatures are just around the corner. I was given the chance to move into a brand new house on a quieter street, but my place suits me and all my flowers have bloomed and the new place doesn't have a yard. I have green parrots and crested woodpeckers and scarlet hummingbirds in my trees. I have trees! The new house has a jacuzzi tub and a glass shower. I'll leave them for the next guy.

I have company coming for dinner tonight. I'm serving duck l'orange, twice baked potatoes with cheddar cheese, a vegetable dish that is a mouthwatering combination of fresh veggies and spices and some kind of baked apple thing for dessert. I'd better go now because I have to clean up the kitchen before my guests arrive.

Random Bits & Pieces

2008-03-30T07:10:00.000+02:00

I have bought some things since I've been here. Five carpets, four camel skin lamps, three tables, two pieces of old brass and one set of Multan pottery. I am assured, primarily by those who sell these things, that I've gotten incredible bargains on them all. Each of the carpets was purchased at the vendor's shop and was selected from the hundreds of samples he'd unrolled for my inspection.

The four camel skin lamps were an impulse purchase made during a Vendors Day on the Embassy compound. As their name indicates, they are made from camel skin that has been shaped, then hardened with shellac and painted. There is no subtlety in this artwork and should I ever decide to open a bordello, four of the lamps stand ready now to light the bawdy rooms.

The three tables, a coffee table and two end tables, are made of old carved windows fitted with legs and covered with glass. The furniture maker also inlaid some brass scrollwork around the edges for an effect that I like. I had a choice of having them finished with a dark stain or left unstained and oiled and I chose the unstained and oiled option.

I bought the two pieces of brass when they were grey-brown with age and dirt. The vendor cleaned them and polished them and they look very nice, but I probably wouldn't have bought them if I hadn't seen them looking all old and nasty.

Multan is a city in central Pakistan where they make pottery. Samples were brought up to the Embassy and I picked out a pattern I liked and ordered a set of dishes. About six weeks later, my pottery arrived packed in a flimsy cardboard box tied up with yarn. I managed to get it home without breaking anything and opened the box. Inside, my seventy-eight pieces of hand thrown, hand-painted Multan pottery were packed in Pakistan's most plentiful resource, dirt. It took the better part of a day to get it all sorted out and washed and then another couple of hours to clean up the entryway to my house.

My tables have long since soaked up the original application of oil so I went back to the furniture shop to ask if I could buy some and oil them up again myself. I learned that they use plain old cooking oil, "like olive oil?" I asked. "Sure, but that's very expensive, we just use any cheap cooking oil." Today I'll re-oil my tables with some inexpensive sunflower oil and we'll see. My concern is that I'll be reminded of french fries each time I walk by them.

My house and yard are receiving the Phase III security upgrade. The walls around the property have been raised to a height of approximately ten feet and topped with long steel spikes. Concertina/razor wire has been added to the spikes on the wall in the backyard and the front gates to my driveway have been replaced with taller ones made from a much heavier gauge steel. All the windows in my house have had heavy steel grids welded across them and my wooden doors are being replaced with solid core steel. To get into the Embassy, you have to pass through delta barriers and 'man traps' and I'm half expecting those to appear in my driveway soon. If the phrase 'man traps' misleads you into picturing alluring young women in silk shalwar kamisses beckoning you forward, I'm sorry to have to tell you that they're a series of gates that open and close in sequence rather than simultaneously and can thereby trap a man trying to run through an open gate onto the compound. Even without these, my house is more secure that it ever was and I feel perfectly safe in it.

The flowers have bloomed and the yard looks great. My gardener has done a terrific job and I enjoy sitting on my front porch with a cold drink, smoking a cigar, looking at my flowers, reading a book and watching the birds fly through the trees. The only negative to this peaceful way of passing a Sunday afternoon is that there is a type of wasp, the size of a small airplane, that seems to be attracted to men sitting quietly on their porches. The first time I saw one of these beasts was when it landed on my book. When I yelled, the guards came running up to see what was wrong. I pointed the wasp out to them and they said it is a very dangerous type and very aggressive. I told them to shoot it. Apparently, they are more mature than I am and one of them killed it with his sandal.

At work I have been awarded the position of Parking Czar. We have 134 legitimate parking spaces on the compound and two parking lots just outside the walls that hold more than 600 additional vehicles. More than half the 134 on-compound spaces are reserved for one VIP or another which leaves roughly 60 temporary spots for the masses to use. On any given day there are anywhere from 150 to 200 vehicles scattered around the compound because anyone with a red (diplomatic) license plate can bring that vehicle through the gates. My solution is to issue exactly 134 on-compound parking passes and restrict access to only those vehicles exhibiting them. The powers-that-be are unanimous on two points A) my plan will work and B) I will be the most hated man in town once it's implemented. Perhaps that's why I'm getting the security upgrades done on my house. As with most things to do with the Department of State, where status is everything, to the great unwashed there is status in having a delta barrier lowered and the man-traps opened to allow them to park in the inner sanctum. The parking lots are guarded, fenced and barricaded, but they are not on-compound and require a walk of ten or fifteen yards to the pedestrian entrance of the compound. When the 134 spaces are filled, vehicles are currently left in fire lanes, in the motor pool area, against the warehouse, blocking driveways and over paths. Vehicles have been left in temporary parking spaces since the Eisenhower administration and would probably fall apart if the dirt were ever removed from them. After the permits have been issued, any vehicle found parked illegally will have one of my forklifts positioned with its blades under the chassis. The owner can then come and find me and wait while I locate the keys to the forklift and move it. I like to think of it as a "US Embassy Islamabad boot". The fun and games begin next week.

In a recent bombing that made international news one woman was killed and several of my friends and colleagues were badly injured. Our already restricted movements have, understandably, been further curtailed as our security measures have been tightened. A delegation of elected officials expressed considerable annoyance at not being allowed to wander through the markets to go shopping and even questioned our nerve. It is my unassailable belief that we could elect monkeys to replace some of our members of Congress without suffering any noticeable decline in the level of competence of that august body. Our people are recovering from their injuries in hospitals abroad.

The weather is getting warmer now and the Embassy pool is open. We also have a brand new Cardio Gym with state of the art treadmills, bikes and stair-steppers. I've got to begin getting some exercise one of these days so I'm thinking seriously of lying by the pool with a cold drink and watching my colleagues go in and out of the Cardio Gym. I think I'll use my on-compound parking permit to get a spot near the pool.

La Dolce Vita

2008-02-21T04:59:00.000+01:00

The elections have been held, the current government has been voted out of power and has accepted the results of the polls, there was virtually no violence before, during or after the voting and the Devil is wearing long johns and earmuffs.

By 'virtually no violence' I, of course, mean by Pakistani standards. Naturally there were bombings in all the usual places, Quetta, Swat and the FATA, but these appear to have been unrelated to the elections specifically and were, rather, just life in balmy (please forgive the terrible pun) Pakistan. The local newspaper also carried a report of a wedding and the "three young women who were killed, on this happy occasion, while getting in the way of many celebratory firing of weapons". Rahman, you silly man, point your rifle towards the sky like the rest of us, you rascal!

In other news, an aunt and her brother kidnapped her nephew and "after torturing him for several days, slaughtered him in a terrible way due to her grudge against his father. They were only discovered as being the culprits after her brother let the cat out of the bag during dinner". Please pass the roti and daal and, by the way, we slaughtered young Amir this morning in a most terrible way, oops, I mean the curry is very good don't you agree?

Finally, in another part of the country a boy was eaten by wolves. "The young fellow and his mates were in the woods when they were set upon by a herd of wolves. While most of the boys made a good escape, Mohammad Saqib a slow boy, failed to get away and was eventually nibbled to bits by the beasts. When the villagers ran to the woods to rescue him, they were able to find only his clothing and some small parts of the boy". Somehow, being "nibbled to bits" makes it sound almost like fun...but I digress.

The elections were a huge success for Pakistan and represent the first time in the country's history that a government has been changed through a peaceful democratic election and not by military intervention. There are few claims of foul or vote rigging and, more importantly, no rioting or loss of life. For those of us who live here it's a bit strange, wonderful, but strange.

Several international organizations, citing security concerns, opted out of observing the elections. Our Embassy, however, fielded over twenty teams throughout Pakistan and observed polling stations from Karachi to Peshawar. The Embassy teams from Islamabad travelled as far south as Bahawalpur and PakPattan. Our responsibility was simply to observe the proceedings and make note of any obvious irregularities. Again, things went quite smoothly and we were allowed access to everything we wanted to see and reported very few concerns with the "Free and Fair" elections. Most importantly, to us, all of our teams went out, did their jobs and returned safely.

Leading up to the elections the country was overrun by representatives of the international media. You couldn't kick over a buffalo chip without two or three of them scurrying into the sunlight. Every night they stared solemnly into their cameras and predicted, with grave sincerity, massive bloodshed and loss of life in the days to come. With glycerin tears in their eyes they prayed that Pakistan might somehow avoid the inevitable upcoming tragedy and ratings boost. They oozed sincerity.

Surprisingly, the positive news of Pakistan's peaceful elections has received comparatively little coverage and the media have evaporated like a distasteful odor in a strong breeze.

I worked in the 'Command Center' and so didn't get to volunteer to take part on an observer team because I was tasked with keeping track of our people in the field. By 'people' I mean, of course, vehicles. As I explained to our drivers in all our pre-election briefings, "We can always get more diplomats, we can't replace the vehicles. Take care of those cars!". Here are a couple of photos of the Command Center which, admittedly, aren't half as interesting as photos of polling stations would have been.

We were in constant communication with all of our teams all day long for the entire three day exercise.

The cities represented by the clocks on the wall behind me are the direct result of some fairly intensive coin flipping.

This was the cake we had at the Motor Pool 'wheels up' Party.

My guys. The Islamabad U.S. Embassy Motor Pool team.

On a personal note, I submitted my bid list for my next post last Friday. In descending order, I asked for Rome, Athens, Madrid, Paris, Budapest, fifteen other cities and Suva, Fiji as a twenty-first choice. The way it works is that 'High Equity' bidders get assigned first and then everyone else gets what's left. My year in Islamabad qualifies me as a 'High Equity' bidder and I was fairly confident that I would get a post in my top ten, maybe even my top five if I got lucky. With no disrespect intended towards Suva, Fiji, I didn't really expect to have to accept my twenty-first choice and I only put it on the list as a lark.

The postings were announced this morning for the 'High Equity' group and, in recognition of a lifetime of sin and as penance, the Foreign Service has assigned me to Rome for my next job. The Church is already dusting off their "How To Do One Of Those Exorcism Things" books and many clergy are praying for my immediate reassignment to anyplace else. I'll go back to FSI this coming November to begin learning Italian (how tough can it be, I can already say "espresso") and then head off to Rome in August 2009. This will be a two year assignment, with one year as a Consular Officer and the second as an Economic Officer. The only problem with being told about my onward assignment this far in advance is that whenever anyone asks me about things I'm responsible for now, I just look at them and think, "Ok, but what does this have to do with Rome?"

You know, Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were raised by a wolf. Ironic isn't it? I wonder if she ever nibbled on them? So, until next time, Ciao Bella.

Monkeys and Other Stuff

2008-01-27T11:12:00.000+01:00

My hike in the Margalla Hills.

We are fairly restricted in what we can do with our free time here in Islamabad. We cannot leave the city limits on our own, walk anywhere, take any form of public transportation or gather in groups of more than eight. We can, however, drive personal vehicles, go to restaurants on the RSO's approved list, gather in groups of eight or less, hike the approved trails in the Margalla Hills and shop. This week I took advantage of the freedoms we're permitted.

Anywhere I've ever rented a car I've had to sign multiple forms guaranteeing that I would basically purchase the company a new car if the one I'd rented was so much as scratched. I've had to hand over my driver's license, credit card, two valid forms of id and several telephone numbers. Then, reluctantly, the clerk would give me the keys to a car that was, inevitably, not the one I had reserved. The car I had reserved at $19.99/day with unlimited mileage would always be unavailable so I'd be forced to take one for 'only' $29.99/day. By the time they finished adding on all the surcharges, insurance, and fees, I never got away with paying less than $100/day.

I rent a car now on the weekends and this is how it works here. It's delivered to my door on Friday night and picked up on either Sunday night or Monday morning. Whether I'm home or not on Friday, a car is left in my driveway. When I'm finished with it on Sunday I call the company and leave the keys with my guard. Sometime between Sunday night and Monday noon the car is collected. Then when I have time, I take a motor pool vehicle and run over to the rental office to pay my bill. I'm charged $22/day all inclusive. I don't sign anything and I pay in cash when I have time. Having a car on the weekend enables me to join a group of 'eight or less' that meets regularly in an ever changing location to play poker. Sometime early in the day on Saturday a text message is sent out to a group of regulars advising one and all of the location and starting time of that week's game. You RSVP regrets only and if you miss too many games, you're dropped from the call list. Theoretically, this poker game doesn't have to be an expense, but so far it's worked out that way for me. Without the car I wouldn't be able to make it to the games, so I suppose it's fair to add the poker losses to the car rental bill and, you guessed it, I'm right back up to $100/day!

We can also drive to the trailheads for the hiking trails in the Margalla Hills and we're allowed to hike on Trail No. 3. The Hills and trailheads are literally right across the street from my house but I'm not allowed to walk outside my gate or cross the road on foot. So, I get in my car and drive down the street, make a U-turn, come back just past my house on the other side and park in the lot for Trail No. 3. The trail goes up into the Hills and is about five kilometers long. I hiked it with three friends and it took us just under two hours to climb to the top of the first set of ridges. The Margalla Hills are the foothills of the Hindu Kush which are the foothills of the Himalayas; so, indirectly, I was hiking in the Himalayas last weekend and, I'm pleased to say, I climbed the shortest peak in the tallest mountains on earth. The trails are surprisingly well tended and very popular with many people in Islamabad, especially on the weekend. About halfway up the climb we hiked through a troop of monkeys who seemed intent on surrounding us. Some of them would play and pose on the trail and while we were distracted, several of the bigger guys would try to sneak around behind us through the bushes. I do not know their intent, but from the look in their shifty beady close-set little eyes I suspect they had villainy in mind. While we had them in size, they were our superior in numbers so we hurried along the trail and left the monkeys to plan their mischief around another group of hikers.

These monkeys are, apparently, not under the same security restrictions as us and they regularly walk across the road to root around in my garbage cans during the night.

The most popular participation sport for expatriates in Pakistan is shopping. Carpets, furniture, brassware, pottery and jewelry are the Big Five for diplomatic bargain hunters. One of the first questions people ask each other upon being introduced is, "How many carpets have you bought?", then they begin to swap information on shops and prices and immediately plan a safari to acquire still more stuff. I broke down and bought two mid-sized carpets from a guy who does a lot of business with Embassy staff. They are hand woven kilims from Harat, Afghanistan and have an interesting pattern that I find attractive.

This doesn't really do the colors justice, but it's the best picture I have. The golds and greens seem to come up better if you enlarge the photo.

So I say, "I have two, but they're very special hand-woven kilims from Harat" and the response, inevitably, is "Oh yeah, I've got a few of those and twenty-seven other, nicer, carpets too!". Like I mentioned, it's a participant sport. It becomes a full contact participant sport when we move into the area of furniture. There are several businesses in Islamabad that cater to the dip community's insatiable thirst for old furniture. Brand new antique pieces are being made in factories all over town as we speak. Old doors and windows are piled in heaps in basement stores under every carpet shop and people like me have tables and cupboards, chairs and desks, swings and mantle pieces made from them. Until I began getting the rental car, I was excluded from the Saturday hunt for treasure. Now I'm a full fledged member of the "I had an old window made into this cool table" Club.

The lattice work is from an old window and the bronze inlay on the sides is all new. The lattice work will be covered with a big piece of glass. My 'new' antique coffee table will be finished and delivered in a week.

There is a matching end table to go with it and if I want a second end table, "We'll find you a matching one by next week, Sahab!". There you go, antiques made to order. Half the fun of going to these places is finding them. One store is so hard to find that its location is passed on from one person to the next by taking them there because it would be nearly impossible to find from any set of directions. It is behind the PIA bulding, not the first PIA building, the white one, and then you have to make a U-turn on the 'new' Jinnah Blvd. and park in the front parking lot. You walk down an alley in the northeast corner and look for a small black sign pointing down. Follow the stairs down to the heavy iron doors and ring the bell. A man will look out the peephole and then let you in. Sort of like a speakeasy. You know what, it'll be easier if I just take you there.

This is what's behind the heavy iron doors. This store is called Tribal Arts and it's a favorite of the big-time shoppers. Lots of old doors and windows waiting to be turned into custom made furniture.

These old trunks are from PakTurk, another furniture dealer. I've been told that they're the next big thing. I bought my two tables from PakTurk.

One more thing the rental car gives me is the ability to just wander around and take pictures.

I go to Saeed Book Bank every couple of weeks because they have a great selection and a frequent buyers discount card.

The Faisal Mosque is right down the street from me and is one of Islamabad's landmark buildings. It's set up against the Margalla Hills so the Call to Prayer really reaches every corner of the city.

Jingle buses and trucks are everywhere. In addition to the wild paint jobs, they have these metal disks on chains hanging down in the back and on the sides that give them their name. You can just see the chains on this one below the license plate.

So, until next time, remember to drive on the left, don't pay the asking price and never, ever let the monkeys circle in behind you!!

The Week When Nothing Worked

2008-01-07T05:07:00.000+01:00

This was the week when nothing worked. It started on the weekend when the car I was supposed to receive from a rental company failed to show up. Our Procurement Section has arranged to have a rental car delivered to my house every Friday evening and picked up again on Sundays. After ironing out the details all week long, I sat waiting for my first car like a kid on Christmas Eve. It turned out that the phrase, "your car will definitely be delivered tonight, sir" didn't actually mean that my car would be delivered that night, or any subsequent night either. Language nuances, communication mix-ups, cultural misunderstandings, gross indifference, who knows?

On Monday morning the telephone at my house died and, apparently, in its death throes took my internet line with it. That caused me absolutely no concern for two reasons, a) this sort of thing gets fixed very quickly by my able and competent staff in the Housing section and b) I worked an eighteen hour day that day and had no real need for either the phone or the internet. Senator Lieberman arrived for his visit and I spent most of the day working with the inevitable changes to his schedule. Islamabad received its first rain of the season and the cold rain came as a welcome relief in this dusty dry country. I spent most of the day with wet cold feet, but that's just part of the territory. I was a bit surprised when I got home just before midnight and discovered that the phone/internet was still out and I made a note to remind the guys to look after it in the morning. The rain on the roof was quite soothing and I slept like a baby.

On Tuesday my hot water joined the phone and internet in what was, apparently, a sympathy walkout. I showered with invigoratingly cold water and set off to work shivering but wide awake...at 4:00am. Our second group of visitors, three congressmen led by Congressman Mitchell, arrived and I spent the day shuttling between their schedule and Senator Lieberman's. I got back home just after 11:00pm, noticed that the phone/internet was still out, washed my face in wretchedly cold water and hit the sack. It had rained all day and while I slept my cold wet shoes were drying out by the heater. The heaters were warding off the damp cold and I slept soundly for five solid hours.

On Wednesday I had hot water!!, but still no phone and the lights went out, well technically they never went on. Sometime between midnight and my driver arriving at 5:00am the electricity joined the phone and replaced the hot water on the walkout list. I got dressed in the dark which explains the tie I chose that morning and left for work in a hammering thunderstorm. I got home late and the phone was still out. At least one call a day had been put into the maintenance folks and they assured me each and every day that it would be working that same night. They lied. However, someone had made my electricity work again. Unfortunately, the heaters were now in the non-functioning mode so the house was pretty cold but I climbed into bed in my sleeping bag and passed out. The rain pounding incessantly down on my roof was no longer soothing.

On Thursday morning I didn't give a damn. I got up in time for my 4:00am pick-up and began the busiest day on the schedule. Phone still dead, heaters gone, hot water (shamed into solidarity) now back on strike and, when I climbed into my waiting vehicle all the lights in the house went out as the electricity died again. Senator Lieberman left on an early morning flight and the rides to and from the airport were uneventful. Congressman Mitchell was due back into Islamabad from a side trip to Afghanistan in the early afternoon so at about noon we saddled up and headed back out to Chaklala.

They say it was the worst storm in Islamabad in five years. I was sitting on a highway in Pakistan in a blizzard not moving an inch. The drivers in our motorcade were very excited and I was happy for them, but we were not going to be on time to meet our VIPs so I wasn't quite as happy for me. We position expediters at the airport to assist us so I just called our man on the scene and asked him to meet the delegation, put them in the lounge and explain that we were on the way. His response was, "Sir, they are already here, they are in the lounge and they are fine".

We arrived at Chaklala thirty minutes later to learn that they were not in the lounge, they were not at Chaklala, in fact, they were not in Pakistan at all. They were still on the ground in Afghanistan. Language nuances, communication mix-ups, cultural misunderstandings, gross indifference, who knows? For the next three hours we received a continual stream of incredibly bad information. At one point we were informed that the Afghan controllers had handed them off to Pakistan but that the Pakistani controllers could not make contact with them. During the half hour that we lost contact, in truly nasty weather, with a small aircraft containing three U.S. Congressmen for whom we were responsible I instructed anyone who would listen to refer to my colleague Alex as "Second Secretary Whittington, the man in charge of this congressional visit" and to refer to me as "a low level embassy functionary" without using my name. Of course, as soon as it was determined that they were safe I became, "Larry, the guy who got the motorcade to the airport on time in the worst storm of the decade". I got home very late, I couldn't care less what was or wasn't working and I went to sleep. It had rained and/or snowed all day and my mood matched the weather.

On Friday Congressman Mitchell and his group left. I got up at 3:00am to see them off and watched the sun come up over Islamabad as we headed back from the airport. By midday my phone/internet was working, the hot water heater had been replaced, my generator had been fixed and all my heating units were up and running. My Vonage phone seems to have died, but I'll deal with that in good time. I had three hundred unanswered work related emails on my queue and most of the afternoon free to read through them.

From Monday to Friday I logged over 75 hours covering two very successful congressional delegations and a third, also successful, VIP visit. The guys who work for me took care of business and I ended the week in a position to catch up by putting in just a couple of hours in my office over the weekend. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining on the Margalla Hills across the street from my house. Best of all, the car rental company has promised me that my "car will definitely be delivered tonight, sir", so I have that to look forward to.

Sunny downtown Islamabad!

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1767257

This is a link to a video I made about the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery. The video is grainy and small because the file was huge and I had to reduce it substantially to upload it to Yahoo Videos.

Interesting Times

2007-12-26T04:16:00.000+01:00

This is my front porch where I sit, read, smoke my cigars and relax!

Merry Christmas!

In Muslim countries the Christmas season coincides with the celebration of Eid. This celebration honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son upon God's command. After passing the 'willingness' test, Abraham was permitted to substitute a sacrificial animal for his son. Today, the Eid celebration, much like Christmas, involves family time, the exchange of small gifts and the sacrifice of an animal (or a badly behaved son). Goats, cows and camels are the preferred sacrificial beasts and there are two markets in Islamabad that sell these animals.

The other day I saw an article in the local paper about these markets and the high prices the animals were fetching this year. Goats were being offered at prices starting at $100! Cows were upwards from $500 and camels, well, don't even get me started on camels. Apparently, it's outrageous and the sounds of great and many lamentations were heard throughout the city. So, I thought I'd wander over and check the markets out. It would be an opportunity to see something unique and different and I'd try to take a few pictures. Prior to doing anything of this nature, we check with the RSO (Regional Security Office) to make sure it's okay. In the politest possible terms the RSO asked me if I was out of my cotton-pickin' mind and explained that the markets would be full of very disgruntled men who couldn't afford to buy the most critical component of their Eid celebration. Many of these men go about armed and could well resent having a Westerner wandering around photographing their plight. Under those circumstances, he explained, and because all Westerners are thought to be wealthy, I might just as well go into the markets wearing a sign on my back that read, "Kill me and rob me". Hopefully, this will explain the lack of some really interesting pictures of the animal markets on this posting.

The Eid holiday was Thursday and Friday and our Christmas break was Monday and Tuesday, so most of our locally employed staff were given a six day break. Because we were busy preparing for various visiting delegations and the Pakistan national elections, the Americans in the Embassy worked almost straight through the break. We were ordered to take Christmas day off and without that command, one Grinch or another would have surely called a meeting! Two of my colleagues hosted a Christmas dinner and invited thirty or so of us over to eat, drink and celebrate. The evening was a great success and provided some welcome relief from the pressures of preparing for our visitors and getting ready for the upcoming elections while attending to the day to day business of running an Embassy.

The following day (Wednesday) the first of our delegations arrived and we went into action like a well oiled machine. This particular group was headed up by Senator Arlen Specter and included Congressman Kennedy. They had a full agenda of meetings with various officials and dignitaries including President Musharraf and General Majid who is the new Chief of Staff of the Pakistan army. So, bright and early Thursday morning we hammered down the motorway to Rawalpindi to attend the first meeting of the day with General Majid. The good General thoughtfully provided a very nice room for the security detail, the drivers and me and we enjoyed his hospitality while the delegation met with him. Then, exactly one hour later, we were back in formation for the return trip to Islamabad and our appointment with President Musharraf at the Presidential Palace. It was a beautiful day so we opted to stand around with the cars rather than sit in the waiting room while the meeting took place. I'm sure you would be very interested in what took place in those meetings, but I don't actually attend any of them. However, I know from the people who do attend that it goes something like this...after greetings and pleasantries one or another worthy says, "blah, blah, blah blah" and someone responds with "yes, but blah, blah, blah blah" Then there is much nodding and shaking of heads and a few more "blah,blah blah's" It all gets summed up in the end with "blah, blah blah" everyone shakes hands and that's all there is to it.

The agenda had some free time for our visitors after their meeting with the President and I escorted Congressman Kennedy to the National Heritage Museum. It's a small facility on the outskirts of the city and is quite complete in its representation of Pakistan's culture and history. A Punjabi folk group played native instruments for the Congressman as we left and he had a great time. Then we escorted Senator Specter to the Islamabad Club where it had been arranged for him to play a squash match against a former world champion. The Senator seemed delighted with the competition and was in a great mood as we headed back into Islamabad so he could get ready for dinner with Musharraf and then a late night meeting with Benazir Bhutto.

We heard about the attack on Bhutto on the way back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening trying to sift the facts from the rumors. As the truth gradually became known, all further meetings and events were cancelled and the delegation decided to depart the next morning. We took them out to Chaklala air base under heavy escort and saw them safely out of the country. Our return trip to the city was temporarily delayed because demonstrators had set fire to the road. For those of you interested in precisely how you set fire to a road, tires soaked in gasoline will do the trick. As soon as it was safe, we drove back without incident. The country was locked down in anticipation of widespread violence and we returned to the Embassy to wait, watch and plan. Later that night we were all safe in our own homes watching CNN or BBC. Communications with the States were nearly impossible because the sheer volume of phone calls and internet usage overloaded the systems here.

Things are quiet in Islamabad and the violence in the other cities has subsided today (Saturday). Bhutto has been buried next to her father in their family plot in Karachi and there is no indication as to whether or not the elections will go forward as planned on January 8th. The current debate on the local news broadcasts questions exactly how she was killed. Early reports suggested that she was shot prior to the bomb explosion but now the government maintains that she wasn't hit by bullets, shrapnel or pellets and that she died as a result of hitting her head on part of the sunroof as she fell back into her car. She had been standing up through the sunroof waving to the crowd as she left the rally when she was attacked. I suppose it's important to know the details, but the end result is the same; there was a successful assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto and it has thrown Pakistan into even more turmoil than usual. Many nations have expressed outrage at the act and sympathy for the Pakistani people and the Swiss government announced today that it was dropping its money laundering charges against her...but would continue to pursue them against her husband. Hey, business is business!

I'll be back at work tomorrow (Sunday) trying to figure out how to run a motor pool without gas as all fuel deliveries have been temporarily halted by government decree. Maybe I can requisition some of those unsold sacrificial animals to lug people around? "Yes, Ambassador, the big camel in the front is yours, Ma'am. Watch your step and don't ruin your shoes in that pile of ..."

I've settled into my house and find that I like it more and more. It seems that, for one reason or another, several other diplomats were offered my house before me but turned it down. In fact, it sometimes feels like everyone I meet had a shot at living here before getting a place they deemed more suitable. For some it is too noisy, for others too small and for one woman it was, "not a place where a single woman would be comfortable". It is on the main Margalla Road, but that puts it across the street from the Margalla Hills and the afternoon sun lights them up beautifully. There is noise from the road, but not more noise than you'd find in any similar city. It has two very comfortable bedrooms instead of the six or seven commonly found in our houses here, but we are all here alone so how many bedrooms does one 'single woman' require? The furniture is Embassy furniture and, while very nice, is exactly the same in every residence, big or small. The yard is among the largest in our inventory of houses and has been whipped into shape by the gardeners in a very short time. It's true, I have a mosque across the street and the Imam leads prayers with an impressive sound system but show me a street in this country that does not have a mosque on every corner. All in all, I think my house is just fine and legions of diplomats to come can reject it again after I'm gone, but for now, I'll live here quite happily.

These are some of the bananas ripening on the tree in my back yard.

These are the trees I look at while I'm sitting on my front porch.

And this is the interior of my "too small, unsuitable, oft rejected" rent free house.