One thing leads to another

I’m finally in the part of my job where I am busy, and I am so thankful about that. I’m going from assignment to assignment, which will lead to my first vacation, which we call R&R.

People live for R&Rs here and, since we basically have to take three three-week ones, plan big trips. I talked to people who returned last week from Italy/Spain and Australia New Zealand.

You ask some about their recent or upcoming R&Rs and their eyes glaze over and their voices fill with wistfulness. People seem to live for them.

Not me, of course. I’m weird. I love it here. Not ready to go on R&R, but I am ready for my next assignment, which is at our consulate in Erbil.

For those who don’t know (and it’s OK; I didn’t, either), Erbil is in northern Iraq, and it’s where a lot (but by no means all) of the Kurds in Iraq live. To the degree that some refer to the area as Kurdistan, a T-shirt I am hoping to acquire in the upcoming weeks.

Staffers speak of Erbil as some kind of la la land. Well, la la land before La La Land became a thing. I tell people I’m headed up there, their eyes mist over as well. “You can go outside, you know.”

I didn’t know, and I’m fearful of believing such Utopian propaganda lest I set my heart on wandering outside of the Hundred Acre Sandbox and into … well, Iraq. Real Iraq. The thought of their being a real world outside our T-walls is downright delightful. I would totally love to wander into some kind of sore and buy some Iraqi delicacy, whether it be tasty, crafty or whatever else might lie in store.

There’s rumor of a mall that has a Carrefour in it. For those who’ve been around for a long time, that’s the Walmarty store from Jakarta. We also had one in Morocco (though not my town) and Istanbul.  I want for nothing but the idea of being able to purchase some little trinket, or maybe those knockoff WintOgreen LifeSavers called Polo is the kind of unexpected Christmas gift I’d welcome.

The bag I’m taking up, though, won’t have room for much. I’m allegedly heading up there for three weeks. It’s for work, so I have to do work clothes, after work clothes and workout clothes. Somehow, I feel like the R&R packing will be less, although I will have to also bring swim stuff since I plan on snorkeling.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the R&R is to Australia? I’m going to piecemeal my way through the country. I did Melbourne to Sydney the first time, Perth the second and now I’m planning Cairns to Sydney although I have one flight in there, from Brisbane to Sydney. I ran out of time. Three weeks doesn’t seem like much when you’re trying to bask on the beach and play in the water.

The No. 1 goal on that is to dive and/or snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, and I’m taking the train from Cairns to Brisbane, with three stops in there. I think it’s three, anyway. I made my last reservation right before I started the last three-week assignment and anything that happened before that is kind of a mushy blur now.

When I get back, I’m headed immediately to another assignment. This is what I signed on this tour, to wander from one department to another. There’s just the one department in Erbil, but there are three or four I could possibly work in this tour. I’ve done two of the three big ones already.

I feel a little like a tumbleweed in this assignment, because I bounce around from one place to another. You finish one and head to another. The good thing about it is that when I fly out of here for R&R, I am between assignments. I don’t come back to an overloaded inbox with projects coming due; it’s a clean slate in a new gig.

Latchkey life

Everyone in my little Hundred Acre-Sandbox lives a latchkey life. It is sort of like a prison, but a nice prison. One with two nice gyms and a place where you can meet to knit or smoke cigars, not that I do either of those things at this time.

It’s like a little city. Since we can’t leave, everything’s here, down to the hair salon and barbershop to the water processing plant and firehouse. They’re staffed with fellow residents of the One Hundred-Acre Sandbox, and we come from all over. It’s not just my department colleagues who staff the place; we have other federal employees and contractors plus a lot of third-party contractors as well.

It might be a prison, but I have the most amazing prison cell ever.  Although there are several other housing complexes in the sandbox, the people with DoS have nice little one-bedroom apartments with a little sitting area (mine has a kitchen table full of crap), a pretty big bedroom – big enough for a comfy chair – and a decent-sized living room. The living room is exactly the size of the bedroom; at one point there were enough people here to necessitate roommates, but fortunately I missed that. Oh, and the bathtub is pretty deep. I’m so glad I don’t have to share that with anyone. There’s even a great storage closet that houses all the toiletries I brought for two years (it looks like miniature Target). Really, it’s an incredible prison cell.

Like a prison, the whole sandbox is secure. I’ll never leave the compound, although I did get lucky the other weekend and was allowed to step outside the door to meet someone coming in. That’s probably as much of Baghdad as I’ll see, and the only thing I noted was that people drive really fast on the road out front. I also noticed, looking at an outdate map, that where I live is somewhere near Saddam Hussein’s old house. I’m a terrible map-reader, though, and I could be off on that.

Part of the security is the fact that we have to wear our badges every time we leave our little prison cells. As a result, everyone has an ID badge hanging around their necks. It’s kind of fun to see everyone’s lanyards. Certain themes recur: former posts, the generic Baghdad one, sports teams. It’s amazing how many people see my Florida State one and approach me to sympathize about football season.

Badge holders are another big thing here. At previous posts, I’ve had two card things I need to carry around but here it’s four. I have two for the office, my ID and the most important one: my food card.  I need that when I eat, so I carry it around all the time. So, like a lot of people here, I bought a little badge holder that holds three cards. It also has what was marketed as a change purse, but in reality it’s a zipper that leads to a narrow sleeve that I might could force a single sheet of paper into. Ah well; I don’t really need money day-to-day here. I mean, it’s not like I’m using cigarettes for currency instead or anything like that, but there’s just nothing to buy.

When we get our prison cells, we’re given this gas station bathroom-sized keychain with three, I think it was, keys on it. I lugged the thing with me the first couple of days and I finally realized no one was juggling the bulky things. It took awhile to catch on, but I figured out everyone had taken the one key they needed off the gas station keychain (seriously, here now for two months and I am not entirely sure what the other keys go to) and fastened it to their lanyards. Some people wear theirs in front, and when you see many people walk by, you’ll see their housekey dangling from the back of their lanyards.

We don’t wander around without our badges and keys. After locking myself out one time (in my first week, no less), I fashioned a hook right under my peephole so there’s no way I miss it when I leave.

It’s very much a latchkey life.

My vote counted and other things to be thankful for

It looks like the Florida elections – at least the results – are settled, and I’m glad my vote counted. It almost didn’t. My absentee ballot came in last month, I swear several weeks ago. I took it home, researched the amendments and then stuck it in the mail the same day.

But we don’t have daily mail service. It comes and goes in batches, and sometimes gets held up at the airport. How it works is my mailing address is sort of like a PO Box at an airport somewhere. The first-class stamp (I don’t even know how much they are these days, thank God for Forever stamps) gets it there, then your tax dollar gets it on the plane to me, wherever I am.

However, it seemed like there were 3-4 weeks in between and I really didn’t get my vote a second thought. I stuck my “I voted by mail” sticker on my computer at work and forgot about it until some Peace Corps volunteers from China were mentioning that they ballots had no been received. I asked how they knew – it’s not like absentee votes get confirmations – and they said they called the supervisor of elections. Off that, I called on Tuesday after Veterans’ Day and my vote had not come. I was kind of panicked, because, well, what do you do? She asked if I’d FedExed it, and that’s just not an option. They nicely took my name and said if it came before Nov. 15, it would count. This, of course, was during Florida’s recounts. Basically I’d have been screwed if it didn’t come in, but fortunately, it made it that day. So I am happy my vote counted!

The mail seems to be running again, which is good. I’ve gotten one of my replacement credit cards and the debit card. I still don’t have the American Express, but I was able to go online and get a couple of things done, bought and stuck in the mail. With one exception, I think I’m almost done with Christmas shopping.

With the release of the incoming mail, the two outstanding packages I had out also arrived: a gift box from a friend that included a lot of candy corn and my boat shoes from LL Bean, which fit perfectly.

I’ll be wearing those to work today, where I am finally earning my keep. After being last week in one department, I’m for the next three weeks in the executive section, which is really busy. The people are nice and so far I haven’t screwed anything up. My counterpart has been very helpful and I’m trying to soak up tips and knowledge in the three weeks I’m in there.

It’s still planned to be only two weeks, but I’m not convinced that’ll be all of it. We may have some staffing gaps coming up and I am just hoping that they don’t mess up what’s arranged. I mean, for me, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, but the other place is expecting help and it would be a real bummer if they suddenly had to fly by the seat of their pants for the gap.

Next week will be a bit busier, if just by virtue that there’s no holiday but also because someone’s coming back from leave and that moves things around. We’ve basically called up people for the last few weeks and now the top one is due to return, so everyone (except those on leave) return to their normal spots. It means a shifting of personalities, but not a great one. Right now, the office of seven has three of us subs, so we’ll be down to two. We also have sort of a random person from another office that closed and right now no one knows how he will fit in to the long-term mix.

But yes, I am totally thankful that so far it’s been really good. I was a bit scared of this one; I’ve been in the executive office before but that was in the consulate, not an embassy. And even though Guangzhou was a ginormous and Istanbul a huge consulate, there’s still another layer when it’s an embassy.

One example is the first and second in charge both have residences that can be used for meetings and such, and working in the executive office means you have a hand in facilitating the planning. Not the planning so much (at least me), just coordinating with the people who want to hold it, the people who will invite and the people who will prepare the site itself and the food.  This is one of the things I’m trying to learn from my counterpart; how this whole process falls into place. It’s an element in most embassies, I think, but I haven’t seen it yet. And I’m really glad I am getting this chance to get familiar with the process. Next week will be a bit more complicated but I think I’m acclimating all right.

Two months in and I’m still enjoying it here. Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I had a great meal from the outside world with the office I worked for last week, then had traditional turkey in our cafeteria, which really does a good job for the holidays. My little group of four saw another younger guy sitting by himself and pulled him in and had a great conversation with him.  

Today I have to head into work in a bit, but not for long. I’ve finally gotten a little bit of OT but not enough to kill me; some people here work insane hours.

And I’m still planning my first R&R, which is coming up in a couple of months. I’d been waiting on a credit card to make some reservations so now I need to get to it.

Not having a ball this weekend

In addition to it being Zippy’s birthday, our Marine Ball Was Friday. It was a nice start to a three-day weekend, but of course I wasn’t about to go to the ball itself. This elicited surprise from some, though I can’t imagine why. It’s pretty clear by my day-to-day attire that I’m not a dress-up person. As much fun as the salsa class is, I suck, and I’m not a drinker. Those three factors mean I’m not a prime candidate for the ball. I do like birthday cake, though.

But I’m all about helping out, even if I’m not going to partake. I met up with a group in the morning to help set up after my morning run. There were something like 300 people going, and we fixed up the room, which included laying the place settings and, get this, dressing the chairs. Our chairs are these plain things and somewhere, someone created little clothes for chairs. That person probably is raking in the bucks, because we had 300 of these blue stretchy fabric things that went over the chairs Maybe they were slipcovers; I never thought about slipcovers having feet and these things did. Anyway, by the time I left, the room looks ball-ready.

I’d also volunteered to help take down, but I think they shut down the party earlier than expected (or, rather, shifted it to Baghdaddy’s earlier than expected) because when I got there are the pre-arranged 11:30 p.m., the take-down was almost complete. Instead, I grabbed a piece of birthday cake and headed back to my apartment.

Since the venue is the cafeteria, we’re sort of getting by on the food this weekend. There was no sit-down on Friday, so people were wandering around with Styrofoam containers full of whatever. I went the “grab and go” for lunch and got a turkey sandwich and celery/carrot sticks before turning the corner and realizing there was real food, so I went ahead and took green beans and a pork chop for supper.

I finally think that I have stopped gaining weight from all the food here and might have started losing, but it’s still utterly depressing. We have a TDYer here who’s a lot of fun and basically convinced me to go two weeks without carbohydrates. I’ve no idea how people do this, because everything good is a carb. The experiment lasted a total of two meals, because they had fish and chips the first night. I passed on the chips but ate the fish, which had some kind of breading.

I am trying, though. Breakfast is the worst because even though I would never eat grits, potatoes and a biscuit for breakfast, I want one of them with eggs and bacon. Lunch is hard because I am huge fan of the soups. Bypassing the chicken noodle – it’s fabulous – for fish of some sort (tilapia, maybe) and roasted veggies just wasn’t that great. I’m not a big of big lunches.

The idea is to do this for two weeks to try to jump-start weight loss, but we’ll see what happens. I really didn’t know practically everything was carbs and had yogurt for breakfast. I’m not really good at this.

Plus, seriously, who can live without rice? Why would you want to? A riceless world is not a pretty one. Or a tasty one.

It’s also a long riceless weekend since Veterans’ Day is Sunday. We’ve got a ceremony planned and a 5k. We seem to average one of these a month and I plan on running. One of the people who helped set up for the ball this morning runs at about my pace (which is pretty slow) and we’re plan on doing it together. I’m still kind of vague on the track and need to keep someone in my sites or I might make a wrong turn. The courses for the two previous races were the same but they change it up here and there, I’m told. You do two loops around, but the second loop cuts some part off and that’s where I get confused, plus at that point I’m pretty much sucking wind behind everyone else.

It looks like my job, the actual work part, will kick in for real next week. My job is to fill in for people who are on leave and someone’s finally leaving. At some point, this was going to happen, so I’ve tried to enjoy the lull as much as possible. Starting Monday, I’m pretty much booked through mid-February. That  includes and R&R but it’s still nonstop. I’m glad. Lulls are nice but it’s been something like six weeks. I’m ready to be busy.

Saving money, but not on purpose

I’m trying to plan my first R&R, which is planned to be to Australia in a few months. As someone who mostly takes trips over long weekends, trying to plan a three-week excursion has been a different, especially since there is no package tour involved.

Those are easy, as demonstrated by the fact I’ve already put a down payment on a cruise for January 2020. Write a check or give a credit card number and you’re done.

It’s a little harder when you’re trying to piece together different countries (I transit Amman) and multiple cities.

It’s really hard when you don’t have a credit card.

And that’s the situation I’m in now. Late last week, I went to buy a train ticket and realized my Visa card expired at the end of October and one debit card had expired in September (not that I want to use those on the internet). The new ones, I’m sure, went to Tallahassee but Zippy hasn’t seen them and likely accidentally shredded them. I spent time on with the State Department Federal Credit Union to see if I can get new ones, so hopefully that’s fixed.

Although Visa is “everywhere you want to be,” my card of choice is still American Express. This is a bit difficult sometimes, because it’s not accepted everywhere. Like the Australian train ticket, for example. But AirBnB takes it, so I’ve been happily making reservations in Cairns and Airlie Beach.

I’d intended to try to plan the rest of the vacation this weekend and decided to see what damage I’d done so far this month with American Express. You know it’s your preferred card when you not only have the card number, that little secret number, the expiration date and the card closing date by heart. I might have to look up my SSN, but I can fire off that number pretty quick. Just ask Amazon.

Before making any more reservations, I wanted to check the account. In doing so, there was an unfamiliar charge. Holy smokes.  I called AmEx (best customer service on the planet) and had the card canceled. After thinking about the charge, though, I realized it was from the same place I stayed over two years ago while on vacation. I have no earthly idea why they would have charged me again, or why my number would have been still accessible. I went in February 2016!

So the next step was to get a new AmEx card, which is harder than it seems it should be. The problem is I don’t have a phone number that you can call and I’ll answer. Now, I don’t understand why that’s a stumbling block to get something mailed, but OK. Personally, I have no problem with having no answerable phone because I can call out with few issues. However, even though I the Google Voice number and all, for whatever reason, it doesn’t ring and therefore I can’t answer it. While I’m not going to worry about it, it freaks people out. And I get it, really. I mean, I’m talking on the phone to a customer service rep trying to explain that I don’t have a phone. Why should they believe that?

Anyway, due to some policy, I can’t get my new AmEx sent directly to me; it has to go to my home of record first. So now I have to wait on it to travel the world, and in the meantime, I have absolutely no way of spending money.

It’s a really weird situation so I hope nothing comes up. It already occurred to me that my internet comes due on the 20^th, so hopefully by then I have something that works. But it’s a strange feeling, knowing that I’m pretty much unable to spend any money. I mean, if push came to shove, I could figure it out, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. It’s not a bad thing to go a couple of weeks without placing an order from Walmart, Target, Amazon or some other place. I’m not even a big shopper but knowing I can’t makes me want to.

It’s a process

Going a month in Pooh’s Hundred-Acre Sandbox, and life’s pretty easy. That sounds weird, I know, what being in a war-torn country and all, but I really feel that I’m in an insulated bit of it.

But settling in is a process. So far, I feel like I’ve yet to start my job. Technically, my job is to substitute for other people when they go on leave, and the leave rotation really hasn’t kicked in yet. In a month it will be nonstop action. Tomorrow, not so much.

But as soon as the bell rings, I’ll super busy. I’m just tired of waiting for it.

Come to think of it, I have heard bells, though. We’ve had what I think were small kitchen fires in the last two weeks and when one happened in my building – oh my God, the bell. The fire alarm is not eight feet from my desk and it scared the bejesus out of me.

Anyway, I’m just trying to be patient and find stuff to do while I’m waiting for the job to really kick in. By my estimates, that would be mid-November at the latest.

In the meantime, I’m waiting on more to settle down, like my weight! It’s hard to get used to the abundance of food, and to pace yourself accordingly.

As happened between my first two posts, I gained weight in the U.S. Once in [insert name of country here], though, I got back on the treadmill and weight came off again. A month into it, that has not been the case here. It’s still creeping up.

The thing is, if you look at what I’m eating, it’s not much. I’ve had multiple people comment on my lunch, saying it’s barely enough. In general, it’s soup, rice/broccoli/mashed potatoes/some other little side dish and a piece of unbuttered cornbread.

I have to stop here to mention that the soup is fantastic. I’ve yet to have a soup that I’d deem subpar, although I have noticed the chicken noodle in one building is superior to one served in a different building. They’re both excellent, but one uses spaghetti noodles and one uses one of the curly noodles. I like the curly more. Anyway, I’ve had Indian Dahl, minestrone, vegetable, chicken vegetable, beef noodle, roasted pepper (oh, the roasted pepper!), turkey and rice, chicken and rice, and seafood bisque. Seriously, one day last week I had three different soups, one for lunch and two for dinner.

So I’m eating a lot of soup. That shouldn’t pack on pounds, right? But I feel like I’ve continually gained since I arrived. It’s hard not to, but I swear I’m being conscious about what I eat. (Although, I admit, after skipping any sort of dessert for a week and then getting on the scale and hitting a new high for the decade, I caved and ate Ben & Jerry’s because it just doesn’t seem to matter.)

Now I am wondering if it’s because I’ve always bought food on the local market and now I am back to eating food that’s been processed in the U.S. I noticed this in Morocco, when I are basically rice, macaroni and popcorn for meals. People would tell me I was losing weight and what was I eating, and I was thinking pretty much just carbs. But the food wasn’t as processed as it was in the United States. Same with Turkey and China.

So now I have to figure it out. This past weekend, I didn’t drink anything except water and unsweet tea, with the exception, as planned, as an end-of-weekend soft drink. I’ve been trying to figure out where the intake has been coming from, and all I have been able to figure is the drinks. There’s tea and lemonade, and even though I mix the sweet and unsweet teas together, in Istanbul I always did stevia sweet tea. The lemonade is just super sweet, too, and there’s only cucumber water to dilute tit.

And I’m doing fitness classes up the wazoo. It’s just baffling me, but I guess, like the job itself, everything will kick in at some point. It’s all a process, right?

At sea in the sandbox

Happy first three-day weekend! It’s kind of like being on a cruise that’s at sea. There are a whole bunch of scheduled stuff going on, but no real purpose, like, you know, a job.  Me, I need that dock so I can go aboard and take in the sights. Day three of the three-day holiday has been pretty darn boring.

I hadn’t really counted on three-day weekends anyway, so this was kind of a surprise. Most people here work six or seven days a week. At some point, I probably will, too, but my job is to stopgap people and right now everyone’s here so there’s no need to stopgap.

So, this non-docking cruise ship in a sandbox is one, right now, of routine, but man oh man, the routines you can build. Fridays, which are our Saturdays, are the most packed but Thursday nights (our Friday nights) are packed.

I went directly to the gym after work to hit the rowing machine for a half an hour before abs class, then agreed to kickball before I realized kickball was immediately following abs class. I had penciled in eating for that hour, since Bible study started right after that. Instead, I darted off to grab some Froot Loops (Marriott got me addicted) as a meal for during Bible study. Not exactly healthy, but compact with little cleanup.

There’s not a lot of retail therapy in this sandy version of Pooh’s One Hundred Acre Wood. We have two little stores with stuff like cleaning products and toiletries (but no vitamins) and another with a different variation of that, plus booze. The first one also has a limited supply of random things with “Baghdad Embassy” on it, though as of yet I haven’t seen any clothing I need.

After an attempt to run outside, though, I did cave and buy a $13 ball cap to run in. I have one, but it’s orange and since some of my running stuff is blue, I just can’t mix those. I got a tan one with a U.S. flag. No “Baghdad” on it anywhere.

One of my major goals this weekend was go buy a shower curtain liner, which is something not offered in any of the little stores. But Wal-Mart and Target deliver, so why not, right? I figured I’d pick up a few other little things. Well, this turned out to be waaaaaay harder than it should have been. Apparently a shower curtain liner is somehow too dangerous, or something, to go through the diplomatic pouch, which is how I get mail.

I tried various combinations of stuff to try to land on some safe-enough version of a shower curtain liner (seriously) and came up empty until one certain combination from Target. As a RedCard holder, this was perfect, until the automated system refused to acknowledge my new address. Now, the addresses are pretty standard, and it basically just changed one set of four numbers to a new set of four numbers and then switched a box number. The ZIP code changed two digits.  When I went to change it, though, no matter how I put it in, the system insisted I had entered an invalid address for some city in Jersey that I’ve never even visited, let alone gotten mail in.

After three calls to Target directly, I gave it up and hit up Amazon. I hadn’t tried it before because I tend to wind up with a lot of stuff that’s deemed unable to be sent to the dip pouch, like books. But it let me send the shower curtain, although not the vitamins. Win some, lose some. I topped it off with enough “I’d have bought it eventually anyway” stuff to qualify for free shipping (Thanks, Eric Church!) and will hope for the best. I’ve no idea how long it takes to get Amazon stuff here.

Mostly what I’ve done this weekend – besides agonize over the Noles, how awful was that? – has been to edit a friend’s doctoral thesis. Originally it was due in April, so when I got it in August I sat it on the back burner until I arrived. Then he turned in the first draft, and I guess it was so clean they said he could turn it in a semester early, or Oct. 15, to get his doctorate early. Yikes! We cranked it up and, hopefully, it’s almost done. Either way, it’s in his court at the moment; I sent up my latest version yesterday and am awaiting two things before I can send up what it, hopefully, the final version.

The stepped-up timeline will be a coup for me, because as much as I’ve jumped in feet-first here, I’ve held off on a few things that I planned on doing after the paper. If it’s done by the end of October, that’s all the earlier I can get going on the other stuff.

As I’ve said, there’s a full slate of stuff you can do, both formal and information, regular and one-time. The kickball, for example, is as a warm-up for a tournament that’s coming up. I don’t think it’s an ongoing thing. (We also have a Balls of Steel Ping Pong tournament coming up, too.)

And if you don’t see it on the calendar, you can find a space and stick it on yourself. And that’s what I hope to do with guitar. I bought a little one in Istanbul with the hope of figuring out how to pick it, but wanted to wait until the paper was done. Not only does it look like I will have the time before April, but I’ve already found someone else who also has a guitar but no clue.

How, exactly, I’m going to fit it in is an unknown; this long weekend notwithstanding, I’m unbelievably busy with stuff, and I keep taking on more. This week, I added tae kwon do (hi Riley!) to my list of things I want to try, which is taught by one of the salsa guys.

I don’t think the salsa guys recognize me as a lost cause just yet. So very optimistic, they seem think that one day I will suddenly become coordinated and graceful. As I’ve been me for almost five decades, I’m not as optimistic, but I’m willing to humor them by joining the other classes they seem to think will turn me into a swan. I enjoy the step classes, but after each class I apologize to the instructor for sucking so bad. At this point in the game, I’m too scared to even step across the little stair thing for fear I twist/sprain/break my ankle. I stick to the up-and-down on just the one side. It’s kind of repetitious, but I haven’t turned any body parts bruise blue yet.

Abs class is pretty much ditto. Due to the shoulder surgery (or so I tell myself), I just can’t do a side plank, and some of those other moves just don’t mesh with rehab, either. Sometimes I find myself having to modify the modified version. Between shoulder and foot, the left side of my body doesn’t work every well.