The illusion of cooking

 The 100-Acre Sandbox is a self-contained city. We have a power plant, a water facility, road construction and the like. In addition to those things you just have to have to survive in the middle of a desert, we also have some fixins of a much nicer place, like a couple of gyms, pools and a wonderful corniche where people hang out at lunch and after hours.

We have a couple of little stores, but they’re not really grocery stores. One has a limited amount of food for sale, but that’s mostly for stuff like Red Bull and Copenhagen, which seem to be hot sellers. They also have toiletries and an ever-changing variety of “Embassy Baghdad” clothing and lots of booze.

There’s really no need for grocery stores because we also have a cafeteria and two snack bars that have food available from morning to late in the evening. Last time I was here, there was food available 24/7 but they’ve cut back, but boy, there is still enough.

So far this tour, though, I’ve tried to back off a bit. First, I was pretty much sequestering myself so that I could focus on the degree, but I’ve now gotten into the habit of doing lunch in my apartment. Since the portions are sized for He Man Security Team Members, there’s generally enough for dinner, too. Plus, since I was essentially jettisoned from Minsk, I wound up with lots of staples left from there. I’ve been cooking, in a limited fashion, rice and lentils for awhile now and just eating on it as the week wears on.

I’m nearing the end of the stockpile, though, and I’m kind of sad. There’s more satisfaction in eating when you prepare it yourself, but it’s hard to justify buying ingredients when there’s a cornucopia right in front of you. However, the food’s pretty routine, especially after the six-month mark, which I hit on March 15.  Since the cafeteria is halfway across the compound from me, I usually just go to the snack bar, and their menu hasn’t changed since I arrived. Although there are cold sandwiches and usually a boxed salad available, the hot dish is the same for whatever day of the week it is. I’m good with Sunday – chicken sandwich (not even close to Chick) and Wednesday, “fried rice” day, but other than that … meh.

Some days are worse than others. Tuesday is some kind of chicken day in all the facilities and I’m just not a fan. But that’s the one night where one of the snack bars – the one that has a Fred Flintstone-sized Buffalo wing-like drumstick – has carrot and celery sticks. So far, if I’ve run out of Minsk food for the week, I’ve gone and gotten a cup full of them and then a soft-serve ice cream for dessert.

But this past week, I got an idea. I’m going to start scavenging for ingredients and pretend to cook. One day had cream of mushroom soup. That’s not a meal to me – it’s something you put in rice. So I got a cup and came home and froze it. Then Tuesday rolled around and I snagged carrots and sautéed them and tossed in with the soup. (I got celery too, but I also got hungry and then the celery was no more.)

The next move is to head to the other snack bar, which is closest to me. It always has this dahl soup and unseasoned steamed white rice. It’s probably the plainest and flavorless rice ever, but the plan is to take a bunch, toss it in a pot, add some spices (which I have from Minsk) and then add the carrots and cream of mushroom soup. Then I can shred one of the Sunday chicken breasts and have a real meal.

It’s no exactly home-cooked meal, but it has the illusion of one, and that’s a nice change of pace.

Jack of all trades, master of two

 

After what seems like an agonizingly long time but really was just over a year, I finished my second masters degree! Yay! I am done! In the end, it will likely turn out as useless as the first, but my hope is that it helps me get an “excursion” tour in HR after I finish up my tour here. Technically, it isn’t needed, but the idea at the time had been to secure an HR tour after this, do it for three years and then apply as an HR officer down the road. (Waaaay down the road.) Circumstances may change, but that’s still an option.

And oh man I am just so glad it’s over. Let’s just say that the theoretical world of academia doesn’t fit into the real world of the Department of State. I’ve endured a whole bunch of “this will work in your organization” while I am thinking, uh, no, that doesn’t happen.

But now I can check a box and, hopefully, will be able to apply for our student loan reimbursement program. I’ve never had a student loan before and technically could have swung this without one, but the idea of it costing $3k rather than $13k was a lovely thought, so I took out a loan. My God, that’s an insurmountable amount of paperwork. I barely had the patience and can’t imagine how complicated it must be for kids to maneuver through it. How about this – lower the cost of college tuition so people can afford it without mortgaging their future?

But anyway, the coursework is in the past – for now. In an ironic twist of fate, as soon as my final class started, I got word that I also was accepted to a separate certificate program through work. It’s a diversity and inclusion certificate out of Cornell and is a shadow of what the masters program was. All four classes combined should be complete in eight weeks, which is the amount of time that one of the other courses took.

Gosh, I am just so relieved it’s over.

This weekend – and my weekend is Friday-Saturday – was wonderful because I didn’t spend half of it in the office doing coursework. (The internet is better there, and I have a giant computer screen instead of the little laptop one, so I can get more done.) On Friday, we had a practice drill with some defense stuff so I got to hang out outside (albeit wearing an armored vest and helmet) and on Sunday, we did a large-scale medical drill and I got to drive around three visitors. Both were out-of-the-ordinary things that were fun to do while not having to stress about writing some academic paper.

I also read a book strictly for pleasure, which I haven’t had a chance to do in awhile. (Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am.) Now, I plan on just totally vegging out and watching TV for a bit, just to detox my brain. We also have a St. Patrick’s Day run on March 18, after whatever even there is on March 17.

At some point, I really should take a stab at playing guitar; the one I bought for my last go-round in Baghdad is sitting again by the sofa, just waiting. But right now, it’s back to R&R planning. America is not the No. 1 plan this time but is a secondary destination. No. 1 is Mexico, where I hope to go to the dentist. That wasn’t the original plan, but now that I’ve learned Mexico is a dental tourist destination I’m kind of excited because I haven’t been in probably a year, and then it was only a cleaning. It’s a little sad that I’ve never been to Mexico at all and instead of researching Cozumel or whatever that I am looking at dentists! But I figure Cozumel will be available once I get there; the dentist is something I should line up first.

Key West is also on the agenda; the songwriters’ festival is a bucket list item. So stoked for that. I hope everything comes together. There’s still so many obstacles in the way; I wrote out a timeline of every movement that has to happen and it was a bit daunting. But one day at a time

Today is my lucky day

Chair Saddam sat in
during his trial

It doesn’t get any better than this. I opened my spam email today and discovered I’ve won gift cards from Bank of America, T-Mobile, Sam’s, Best Buy and Costco! And, so that I look good doing all that, I can get discount invisible aligners with my new Mastercard! However, I have to move fast to not miss out on my senior perks or fear I miss out on some vague number of limited prizes. I should probably consider buying a lottery ticket, huh? 

Saddam swung here

Even better than that, though, is the fact that I’m officially four weeks from finishing this last class, which is killing me. It’s this whole “theoretical framework” kind of thing and I live and work in the real world. It just doesn’t work like that, which makes it frustrating. I’ve selected a real issue but the whole “let’s go through this pretend exercise like it would really work” is futile. I know how I would approach the problem if I had the power to fix it, and it’s not theoretical.

I hate it so very much but I can see the end. What’s somewhat ironic is that after I finish this, I have five days off of classes before I begin a new certificate program. This one is through work and is only two months long. It’s a diversity and inclusion certification through Cornell. I’m going to be the most educated person without a Ph.D. Maybe one day I will use some of this knowledge. Inchallah.

Last stairs Saddam climbed 

Right now, it’s tough coming up for air. Work is insane because we’re doing a staffing review on top of everything else. I’m up for this since I am weirdly stoked by HR stuff (hence the pursuit of a second masters’ degree) but I work in a place where the right hand doesn’t speak to the left hand. It’s kind of frightening with your HR department asks you what your staffing situation is. You’d think they’d know. I sent a query for something, say X, to the head office and got back an email asking me for X. Sigh. Fun project.

In other news at work, I got to take a short field trip. It was the third time I’ve been allowed to leave the walls of the 100 Acre Sandbox and the destination was closer than the other two times but oh man, it was far more fascinating. Our office is located at the site of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, and it’s next door to the court where he was tried. Presently, there’s a small museum that houses a bunch of artifacts related to his case.

By that I mean it’s mostly paperwork – paperwork used to convict him. Evidence, like rosters of people he’d executed, pictures of mass graves and records from trial. They even showed us seven containers (think semi-truck) that were still filled with paperwork that they had yet to record, and a storage room filled with shelves upon shelves of boxes containing files. It was just so sad. 

In addition to the paperwork, though, they had the gallows where he had been executed, complete with “FBI evidence” sticker on it. There was a replica of his hidey-hole (which was underground), and several display cases of the stuff with him when they found him. Think Q-tips, prayer beads and corn pads. They also had the clothes he was wearing as well as his sunglasses and knife. It was really creepy. 

Torture chamber used by 
Saddam's son to punish
Olmpic athlets who
didn't perform well.

There was also an iron maiden-type torture device that one of Saddam’s sons found at their Olympic training center. He tortured athletes and fed poor performers to the tigers. The device on display was an iron cage, and he would lock people in and hang in in the sun like some giant Christmas ornament, or hook up to electricity and shock them. There was still electrical tape on it.

That was just a very bad family.

Then we went into the courthouse, which hasn’t been used as a courthouse since 2012. I can see it from the embassy and wondered what it was, although people probably have told me before. I mean, this place is literally right across the street from the 100 Acre Sandbox. That street is al-Kindi and the traffic just zooms by. Anyway, both the museum and the old courthouse as essentially in the same place and the museum will eventually move into the same building.

Like in Belarus (and I guess a lot of Soviet countries), defendants are kept in cages, but unlike the Soviet ones, they are merely playpens and not the whole cage. In this courtroom, there were four rows of cages, each with two seats.  He showed us the one where Saddam was caged, next to, I guess, his attorney. Apparently Saddam had told that guy for years to burn the evidence, but he didn’t and that’s what got him convicted. 

View from front

View from rear

In the Iraqi court, the judge (and maybe jury?) sit on a raised platform. There’s a “scales of justice” thing on the back end of the wall. To the judge’s right, there’s a long row for the prosecution and o the judges left, there’s what looks like a large changing room. It is a box with curtains; it’s the witness stand. The entryway to the witness stand is from the next room over; it’s so that the witness can be hidden from the view of the defendants, who sit in their caged playpens in front of the judge.

There are no observers in the courtroom; instead, there are two rooms at the very back, one on that floor and one on the floor up. (Speaking of which, there is no elevator in the building and I think we went up five floors to get to the top.)

America can wait

Well, I didn’t make it to America. My four weeks off from class were blissful, but I had a nagging cold for three of those four weeks. It wasn’t omicron, just a good old-fashioned cold, which sucked enough for me to decided to cancel (or postpone, we’ll see) my R&R. I had something planned in DC and that got pushed back indefinitely and the only other thing was to drive to see family across multiple states, which didn’t seem like the brightest of ideas during a hot wave of COVID, even if that particular wave seems to be more like a bad cold or the flu than anything else.

Either way, I canceled my seat on the charter flight a couple days before and tried to mentally prepare to start the last class. As it’s turned out, I’m glad I opted to stay because during the time I would have been traveling, I wound up having two mandatory calls with the professor. Now I am two weeks in just hate it so much.

What is it with academia that in no way mirrors the real world? We are supposed to do some kind of paper (25 pages, and it’s only worth half the grade) on exploring some problem for change, or something like that, and recommending what to do. This is completely at odds at what I do, which I am good at: fixing problems. Not recommending things, just doing it.

I’ve got a “change” in mind, but the professor keeps saying that it has to be something that affects us, that we have the power to change, etc. Um, I have no power and I work for the federal government. If there was some kind of change I really could propose to someone who’d hear me out and that person could champion it, it would still be eight years before anything happened.

Immediate results? I get this degree and take a long hot bath. That’s my goal. It’s not academic, but neither am I. I’m a practical person who works in the real world.

In my class, I’m not the only one. Several of us were on a call with the professor yesterday and one, who’s struggling like I and other are, mentioned something about being tied to a particular expertise she’s developed over a 17-year career with the same federal agency. The teacher said, “Why don’t you just quit?”

All of us on the call, I think, were too flabbergasted to respond, but the professor pushed on, telling this 55-year-old professional, who’s a wife, a mom and a grandmother, that she should just quit and go to work “in academia; there are lots of jobs in HR.” Um … she doesn’t want to start a brand-new career at $17 an hour, even if there were “lots” of options in her particular geographic area. She’s happy where she is; she just wants to expand a bit.

The professor’s comments shocked me and others and it reinforced how out of touch she is with the real world. I felt so bad for the adult student; it was just such an inappropriate comment to make and no one, including her, could formulate a response as the professor went on and on about how, if this student wanted a job in HR, she didn’t just walk away from her 17-year career and into the unknown. It wasn’t like “put down your nets and follow me,” but just going on about how easy HR jobs were to find, which is not true if you have zero experience in it – especially when you’re trying to move to a new employer.

Gosh, it was just weird.

The class is only eight weeks long and will one day be over, but until it is, the name of the game is misery. I really don’t understand what it is I’m supposed to do, despite three conversations with the professor and several other email exchanges. Once I get a grasp on it, I have to crank it out. The draft is due in the seventh week, which is just over a month away. As much as I want to get to the finish line, I’m really not making a lot of progress.

My days now consist of an hour in the morning in the gym or something, then breakfast and then work. After work, I come home and slave over it, except I haven’t made it to the paper at night. There’s still a class in addition to this behemoth, and the weekly papers and discussions account for 50 percent of the final grade. Which, BTW, I don’t care about. I’ve already emailed my advisor to ask what the lowest passing grade is for a class, but I haven’t gotten a response yet. Although I’d like a decent grade, my sanity may not be worth the tradeoff. I just want it done.

The discussions themselves wear me out because I just don’t really understand what I’m supposed to be doing. The last one was what my takeaways were and I noticed most people basically summarized the material, whereas I selected a couple of, well, takeaways.

That’s the practical realist in me; I just don’t have a grasp on the fantasy world of academia.  

Baghdad ranks a 9 out of 10

Baghdad is a bit different than the last time I was here; the numbers have been cut and COVID lingered for awhile, pulling people off the streets and shuttering the social things like exercise class. One of my favorite things before was sitting with random people in the cafeteria, but now people social distance so there’s none of that.

Still, it’s really good to be back and earning the big money again, although with the social stuff only starting to come back, it can set up some boring evenings. Fortunately (or not), I’ve had a heavy workload, working 9-10 hours days for the first couple of months.

Plus, there’s been this side hustle of working on a second masters degree, this time in HR. My goal for this is to be able to check a box that says “I have an degree in HR,” and a masters seemed like a quicker route.

I started last March, I think it was, in a program out of Champlain College (Vermont) that offers discounted federal rates. At the time, I knew Baghdad was in the pipeline so I opted to take out a student loan; I will then qualify for the student loan repayment program.

The program is a total of 10 classes and required me to pick a certificate in addition to HR. I can’t remember what the other options were, but I went with leadership because the others sounded like they’d be unrelated to the Department of State. Well, as it turns out, “leadership” was “shared leadership,” and DoS is about the most hierarchical organization on the planet. The classes have been entirely unrelatable, to the point of, in one discussion (a post I had to do once a week) I responded to the question of “how does shared leadership fit in your organization” by quoting Luke Skywalker. He once said something like, “If there’s a bright spot in the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” I said that was as far as my organization was from embracing shared leadership.

Still, with only four classes in the certificate program (which is guess is a minor for your masters), I stuck with it, somehow landing As even though I didn’t “get” the material. I mean, I understand it theoretically but I don’t see it playing out.

Anyway, this last class about killed me. I’m so glad it’s over.

For the first 8 weeks of the entire program – that’s how long the classes take – I took one class. This was when I was in Minsk, and I figured I could manage two classes at a time. I tried it and did fine – got two As – and realized for the next two 8-week terms I’d be in America for part of the time, so I doubled up again and again. That left two more classes prior to the “capstone,” which is supposed to be the last one. I looked at the calendar and realized that even though I’d be in Baghdad (and therefore have a brutal workload), I would not take and R&R until January, which meant that I’d have nothing to do outside work. So I doubled up again, which was horrific but with only eight weeks, there’s no turning back.

And now, I’ve done 9 out of 10, with the capstone project (whatever the heck that is) the only thing left. When I signed on to Baghdad, I hoped to do some big and fun R&Rs, but since that last eight weeks starts the same day the charter flight to DC departs, I figured I’d just go to America for my first R&R. It’s boring, but I couldn’t risk having crappy internet for the first three weeks of the class.

So bring on America and bring on the last class. I’m 90 percent done and can see the finish line

Still here. Or there.

Yeah, it’s been awhile. Since I was here last, I departed Vilnius, went to both Chattanooga and Nashville on home leave, flew to DC and then departed for Baghdad, where I’m about to enter my third week. In addition to trying to get through two course towards a second masters degree.

That’s about to kill me. The classes start out interesting, but quickly become not relevant to my workplace. Shared leadership? Yeah, uh … no. The other class, about diversity and inclusion has potential but it’s frustrating because the papers are geared around “what can you do through your leadership position?” and “what is the organization doing now?” Well, I’m on the bottom of the totem pole and not in a leadership position, and have almost zero insight to what my overall organization is doing; only small bits of it are visible.

Just a good ole boy at the Grand Ole Opry

The 8-week term ends on October 22. The way the courses are scheduled is that there are two due dates, on Wednesday and Sunday. Every Sunday, I am a little more relieved to be 1/8 of the way closer to the finish line. When I hit October 22, I’ll be 70 percent of the way through the program but will only have about 36 hours off. The new material for the upcoming classes is posted on Sundays.

This particular 8-week term is especially rough, not because of the material but that there are group projects. My group is fine, but I’m seven hours ahead, and none of them can meet until after 5 p.m.

In essence, it sucks to be me right now, but one day, hopefully in mid-March, I will be able to check a box and look back on the last 11 months like a blip. And since I am back in Baghdad, I should be able to get tuition somewhat reimbursed. I just need to get there.

Tennessee was pretty cool both times. I took Z to a softball tournament one weekend and then 10 days later turned around and drove up to Nashville with a friend to meet another friend and go to the USA-Canada World Cup qualifier. It was my first professional soccer game and ended in a draw.

Although I love Nashville, I’d never stayed downtown and oh my, what an experience. I had no idea it was basically bachelorette party central. There’s a two-block area that is as packed as the Strip in Vegas, only 7 out of every 10 people are falling down drunk.

But I’m not saying it wasn’t fun. Being a fairly sober trio gave us a leg up on the loud, obnoxious drunks. Waitstaff, as stretched as they were, were falling down to accommodate us. We stayed right downtown – I’m racking up Marriott points – and just had a great time walking around.

Went to the old church as well - Ryman

Although Bluebird tickets evaded us, we made it to the Grand Ole Opry and wow, what an amazing show. I’d done the tour before but seeing a show was a whole new level. Of all the acts, I’d only heard of John Schneider – Bo Duke to me – but all were enjoyable. They did have a guy who had recent song I’d heard of (Morgan Somebody), but other than that, everyone was new to me. Well, except for the last group, Riders in the Sky, whom I’d never heard of but who recorded “Woody’s Roundup” for Toy Story. They’d been Opry members for 40 years and absolutely knew how to put on a show. They did “Rawhide,” too, and ended with “Happy Trails,” which is how it was supposed to be. I think I paid $80 each for the tickets, and I thought it was worth every penny.

Other than those two trips, home leave was short; I only had 20 working days Since I’d originally planned on going to a concert in London on September 18 and it was canceled, I just moved up my arrival date to Baghdad.

To get there, I flew to DC exactly 30 days after I flew from Vilnius to Tallahassee, so there really wasn’t a lot of recuperation time. I’ll have another one in a year – the Baghdad tour is 12 months – and by then the classes should be done, so hopefully it will be a better trip.

I started this program in March and it’s just been pedal-to-floor and will continue until it’s over. I should get two weeks off at Christmas, though.

For now, it’s just exhausting because I’m doing them and acclimating to a new position, and that’s so far required 10-hour days and additional work on weekends. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ve basically announced that I am hibernating in my Baghdad apartment until I get to December. I’d doubled up on the classes because I thought, first, that I’d be in America for stretches of time during two terms, but secondly, because I won’t get an R&R from Baghdad until January. Really, it’s a fairly productive thing to do while trapped in the 100 Acre Sandbox. But man, getting through it is a bear.

Jazzing up the last weekend

Moron that I am, when the embassy asked for a volunteer to “deliver remarks” at a jazz festival in a port city three hours away on my last Saturday in Vilnius, I offered. Somehow my mind skipped over the whole “you will speak in front of hundreds of people” to “free trip to Klaipeda, with music.” I skipped the lede for sure. But I did it, introducing (more or less) Karl Frierson, an American jazz musician based in Germany. (He’d served in the Army, was stationed there and “never left,” he told me.)

It wasn’t the first time I delivered remarks on behalf of the ambassador to Lithuania, but it was the first time I intended to. The previous time, a couple weeks ago, I had thought I was “representing the embassy,” not delivering remarks. When I discovered that I was, I was terrified but got through it.

That one was a much smaller, but more significant: it was a Holocaust memorial. I’m right where the Holocaust happened, and it’s been made more real to me this tour. Belarusians, Lithuanians, Poles – these were people who were slaughtered. In Lithuania, other Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis to do so, which is why events to remember the victims are so important here. (They hated the Soviets, so they sided with the Nazis.)

Those remarks were pretty scary to deliver, but there weren’t near as many people, like 50-75. I was nervous, but not terrified. The jazz event, while not as solemn or crucial to bilateral relations, would be hundreds of people, some of whom spoke English! (There was a translator at the Holocaust event.)

But I made a day of it, traveling with a colleague. It has been raining here for awhile, so a day in the sun was out because the sun wasn’t but we did go up to Palanga again and walked the beach in a drizzle. Just as we were coming off of it, the skies opened so we ducked into a restaurant for some good Lithuanian food and then headed down the half hour in the motor pool Ford.

We got to Klaipeda a bit earlier and had intended to wander around the riverfront, but we wanted to make sure we knew where to go, which took awhile. Somehow we managed to take a really long way around and didn’t want to risk being late if we took off again, so we just hung out there, assuming wrongly that it was going to start when we’d been told.

It didn’t, so we could have gone back about town, but it was fine. It was a festival, so there was stuff to see. Heck, I could have even lined up for a Johnson and Johnson shot and had a COVID test with rapid results right then and there. But I declined; I’d still to have one tomorrow.

The first act, who was of Asian descent but had been born and raised in Klaipeda, was pretty awesome, although I would not have classified her as jazz. Of course, “jazz” is fairly loosely defined, and the music poster depicted a guy in a cowboy hat riding a saxophone like a bull, so go figure. But this singer – I forget her first name but her last name was Liu – was not remotely country, although she physically and vocally reminded me of Lari White. She was more new age-y, but I liked it.

And focusing on her music gave me something to ponder rather than, “How did I get in here?” which I kept repeating all night. I mean, what had I been thinking?

The shows, we thought, were an hour, meaning I’d go on at 7, but it wasn’t until after 7:20 that someone came to tell me they’d get me later. I think she was supposed to end at 7:30 or something, but she wound up finishing close to 8.

None of that mattered for the crowd, though, because they were having a good time. I, on the other hand, was getting more and more nervous and also starting to wonder if I’d be able to make the 3-hour drive home that same evening.

The people at an embassy who speak are not normally the people who write the words, so it wasn’t like I was supposed to wing it or anything, but I’d practiced and practiced the “remarks” and they still sounded jilted. (Seriously, who starts with “Dear listeners!” So, by the time I actually did it, I kind of went off-script, but it was basically the same thing.

Still, I was terrified, and shaking like a leaf. I got through it and stepped off. And the funny thing was, Karl Frierson, wasn’t even there yet, I don’t think. It’s not like I announced him and he appeared in a cloud of smoke or anything.

He did come in, and I found him right away (it wasn’t crowded backstage) and said hi. He’s originally from South Carolina and I’m a Florida girl so we chatted a bit, and then I headed back to my table and colleague.

Unfortunately, because he went on much later than we thought he would, we could only stay for one of his songs, but I really enjoyed his voice. And it was much more fun after stood up in front of all those people.

I am gladed to have faced that fear, but I am not anxious to do it again.