Back to normal

After the short Kabul trip, it didn't take long to get back in the DC swing of things - making my own lunch, commuting, appreciating the slightly reduced gun-per-person ratio...the transition was almost seamless. I did have some daily breakfast bacon withdrawal, but I’m over the hump now.

I did get nice personal notes from Hillary and John during the #SecState transition. (I like to think that I'm on a first name basis with both of them.) (But I'm not.) And while technically I was blind carbon copied on the notes, I know when someone bcc's you that means they really like you.

After a week of relative normality back in DC, I headed to the Foreign Service Institute for a week of contracting officer's representative training. I ended up driving each day, and on the first day of walking through the parking lot, I noticed a detail that confirmed I was at FSI. I think there are a lot more personalized license plates in VA compared to CO, but I assume only in the Foreign Service do people use their Posts for their license plates: I saw variations of cities in Turkey and Georgia (not GA). The training is a prerequisite for my COR certification, which is required for my job, so it was pretty important. I managed to pass the test without violating the ethics rules, so I'm good to go.

The most exciting news was the recent arrival of the OBO Construction Management bid list! Of course, it probably doesn’t directly impact us new hires since we're generally supposed to be in DC for 1 to 2 years for our first tour. We'll see though! It also seems like the OBO bidding process is somewhat continuous.  I don't expect any resolution soon, but it'll at least be interesting to watch and learn.

(This post written while listening to Oasis Fade In-Out)

Kabul

I just got back from two weeks on my first temporary duty trip: Kabul! It was fascinating on many levels, as you'd imagine.

Getting from DC to Kabul takes quite a while, but at least I was able to score a window seat for my flight into Kabul. The landscape was beautiful, with sharp mountain crests everywhere:

The ~$700M embassy upgrade project has many components, including five new buildings, so there was a lot to see. On my third day, the contractor placed 300 cubic meters of concrete for the first part of a building foundation. The contractor did a good job of managing his workforce to install the rebar and prepare for cold weather concrete placement. The Overseas Buildings Operations staff did a great job of keeping the contractor in line and providing feedback on the work.

Probably the strangest thing about Kabul was the scent. I noticed it as soon as I stepped off the plane, but I couldn't quite place it. Someone finally explained it was soot. Kabul residents burn wood and anything they can to keep warm in the winter. The result from the fires is an almost continual soot cloud. Sometimes it thins out in the afternoon if the winds pick up, but it looks like a fog at night. Not surprisingly, some people experience respiratory problems from the combination of the 6000-foot elevation and the soot. Of course, you get used to it - except for me there was one time daily: when I got out of the shower, pulled my towel up to my clean face...and it smelled like soot. I would've burned my clothes when I got home if I didn't feel like I would just be enabling the cycle somehow. Coincidentally, while I was there, the NY Times ran an interesting article about how crappy the Kabul air quality is.

Speaking of my clothes, another OBO visitor before me bought some laundry detergent from the embassy's convenience store and gave me the rest. Unfortunately the packaging only had a total of seven English words: Comfort, Sense of Pleasure, Airflow, Laos, and Cambodia.

Was the liquid detergent or was it actually fabric softener? Which would be more likely to improve Airflow? And don't get me started on the Sense of Pleasure. It didn't really matter anyway, I was a lost cause even WITH instructions I could read because the washing machine I was trying to use appeared to be Turkish. (I later realized it appeared to be Turkish because the wifi connection I was using was routing through Turkey.) I couldn't figure out where to put the detergent for the life of me. Being an engineer, I was not going to let this washing machine beat me - it was a matter of pride, you see. So I found the model number of the Beko DCU9330 and looked up its user manual on the internet. It took a while to find one in english, but the cover page told me what I needed to know: Dryer. The washing machines were in another container also named "Laundry". Chalk up a win for the "Measure Twice Cut Once" philosophy since I didn't pour the Comfort into the dryer somewhere (like the condensation collector), but the laundry facilities clearly weren't engineer-proofed.

There were a lot of things to do on the compound, and the embassy appeared to have a pretty active night life. One night the CLO hosted a film event for a short collection of interviews called Kabul at Work presented by the director. I haven’t watched them all – the film I saw included only about 8 of the 81 currently on the website – but I highly recommend a few in particular: The Film Producer, The Postman (not on YouTube yet), and The Golf Pro. The director wanted to illustrate that Kabul is a much more ordinary city with interesting people than most people probably realize. Kabul typically only ends up in American news because of acts of violence (or air quality, evidently), but of course the minority doesn't have to define the majority. I found it very interesting – I hope you do too!

It was a great trip; I learned a LOT about running an OBO construction project as well as embassy life. I'd like to go back for a tour, and my wife would like to join me (it looks like there are openings for jobs she could do), our only constraint is what we would do with our two dogs. Hmmm...

(This post written while listening to Nick Drake Road.)

Man Card: Suspended

Today we decided to go visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore, so we drove from DC to check it out. I was extremely embarrassed when I realized both the Ravens' and the Redskins' playoff games were home games today, and the route I picked went right past both stadiums. We were lucky that we didn't get stuck in traffic, but I can't believe I lost track of the playoff games - bad Mark, very bad.

The aquarium was cool. My wife and I were trying to pick our favorite parts. She liked the dolphins the best: not exactly a shocker. In fact, she said she'd like to be a dolphin trainer some day, BUT she doesn't have a degree in a biology-related field, and apparently employers can be sortof picky about that background check stuff. I think my favorite part was when we were watching an animal handler describe a blue-tongued skink (lizard) and the handler asked the children an arm's length away what the skink eats. I mumbled, "Children?" but I'm pretty sure none of the kids heard me. The odd and impressive variety of poisonous frogs they had were cool too.

Work's good.

(This post written while listening to R.E.M. South Central Rain.)

New construction project

My project workload has continued to increase and has been very interesting. I worked on my first cable (formal memo), which also happened to be on a rather sensitive subject, so that was a bit of trial by fire. Very interesting though. Today I went to the top floor to get one of the final signoffs - it was my first trip up there! While I'm thinking about the top floor...

Recently the Project Director (site manager) for a project I'm supporting was granted tenure. This is a significant (and mandatory) step in the Foreign Service, so I congratulated him. I asked him to let me know what the executive bathroom on our building's top floor was like. He didn't seem to think my joke was funny. Who knows - maybe I wasn't joking because there actually IS a special bathroom up there. I didn't see one today but I didn't stay long. I think I'll keep asking people about it until someone confesses that there actually IS an Italian tailor who can let out your pants (that are clearly shrinking) while you wait. I fear Mario's job may be in jeopardy due to budget cuts though.

We had our holiday party yesterday. Our floor seemed to schedule it later than any other floor or department, I guess it's just how it worked out. We all ponied up and a volunteer group bought stuff and brought it in. There was some solid hanging out for an hour or so, good times. For reasons I can't explain, the rumors of an incoming karaoke machine failed to materialize. Too bad. I sortof suspect it had something to do with someone walking around the party with a video camera.

If you're interested in becoming a Foreign Service Specialist, there's a new Oral Assessment Study Guide available here. Of course, they don't list a sample hypothetical exercise for construction engineers. I'm sure it's because ours is the most challenging specialty and they couldn't think of a single construction engineering question that could possibly be answered in two pages. Or it was totally random. Anyway, it's still helpful.

By the way, those of you who slam the DC area should note that I got a happy holidays card from my bus driver. That's right: my bus driver. There are lots of good people here.

I volunteered for the technical evaluation panel for this new government construction project petition but I haven't heard back yet. I'm concerned they might think I have a conflict of interest. Popular Science even had a short article about it. Talk about a sweet post! It might be considered a stretch post for me but I'd finally get to use my astronaut pen as it was intended. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

(This post written while listening to Van Halen Top Jimmy.)

Get a job.

The Construction Engineer position is open again until January 2, 2013: get on it!  There's definitely more than enough work to keep everyone busy.  Most of us new hires feel like we're getting close to a full workload already, although we also feel like it's taking us twice as long to do things as it should.  We'll fix that with experience, though, right?  RIGHT?  Yeah.

The nomadic nature of the job seems to apply even to people working in DC.  People who are visiting from a post often migrate between offices to use the computers of people who are out on training, on temporary duty, or just in the bathroom.  There are occasional reorganizations of the DC-posted as well that have resulted in permanent people moving around a bit too.  Some rumors suggest our floor will soon be "right-sized" to make the cubicles the correct (read: smaller) sizes.  I didn't take this job for the cubicle, so it's not a big deal to me.  Although I have to admit that the potential for getting booted has made me plan ahead, including affecting even how I organize files on "my" computer.  These are things I never thought of - and not exactly of major consequence - it's just all part of the adventure.

On a completely unrelated but potentially helpful note, if you're really having trouble finding that special gift for that special aluminum-foil-hat-wearing someone, you might find one of these 6 gifts useful.

Hemlow Island - Nova Scotia, Canada - $30k CAD and it's yours! (Well, maybe just one of its eight lots)

(This post written while listening to The BoDeans Good Work.)

And then there were 6

One of our group of seven new construction engineers had been seriously considering leaving for quite a while, and two weeks ago he made the final decision to that it wasn't for him and left. His primary reason was because he found he didn't like working for a large bureaucracy, but I think the real reason was because there's no free coffee on our floor. We may never know for sure. (Just kidding - I know it's the coffee.) We talked a lot about it with him. He's going to have to repay a very substantial amount to the government, but it's probably better to make the decision sooner than later since he knew it wasn't a good fit. It's unusual for someone to leave so early so it raised many eyebrows, but the "No coffee? NO WORK!" protest just isn't going to work, grammatically or otherwise. He admitted it was an expensive way to make friends in far away places that he'll be able to visit. He used to refer to our group as The Magnificent Seven, and now we're just the So-So Six.  We certainly all wish him the best - he's a great guy with a bright future, and hopefully our paths will cross again.

I had my first project-related secret meeting recently, which was very interesting. We have a project in [redacted], and we're [redacted] granny smith [redacted] mango [redacted]. Then he said "Hurry up" so we left. We'll see how it works out.

Speaking of secret stuff, I need to tell you all about our super awesome shredder for secret stuff. It produces what I would almost call a paper mist, it's unreal - far different from the 70s shredders shown in Argo. The first thing I thought when I saw it was "They'll never get that out of the carpet." To ordinary mortals, this might not seem interesting. But to the particularly mischievous, that fine paper purée has some amazingly messy potential. In my first year I'm probably unlikely to take too many risks, but I definitely need to keep that product in mind. Maybe I could put presents I give in a box of it to "protect" the present? Something to keep in mind for this holiday season...

(This post written while listening to Bruce Springsteen Working On The Highway.)

Yvan Eht Nioj

Sandy turned out to be a non-issue for most of Northern Virginia, so we were fortunate. I'm still trying to use the rest of the water I'd hoarded in camping containers, but it's almost gone now.  I don't think I'd prepared adequately for losing power to the refrigerator, though - something to think about next time.

Work quickly returned to normal, and I'm continuing my transition from mostly training to mostly work. I did end up training for 3 days last week on Earned Value Management, which is similar in principle to what is already common in the construction industry.

I'm getting involved in projects at a variety of phases: design, pre-bidding, construction, warranty, and even post-warranty.  It's very helpful to see how they/we handle the different phases, particularly for observing issues that are coming up and how I might avoid them in the future.

I'm also slowly becoming more familiar with the issues surrounding construction in Africa, including contractor-subcontractor arrangements, security, and travel issues.  On travel, I'd never heard of Asky Airlines before, but our contractors fly them sometimes so I thought I'd look up a bit of info on them as a random air carrier example.  Asky apparently has 4-6 planes (depending on whose data you trust) and flies to many of the West and Central African locations where we have projects.  Africa is just such a different market to me that I'm not sure how it will differ exactly from US carriers, if much at all.  It sounds like I'll generally fly US carriers due to the Fly America Act, but I might fly others depending on route specifics.

After seeing Argo and its obvious Foreign Service recruitment message, I was pleased with the State Department's less in-your-face recruitment effort in Skyfall last night.  I believe the term is nanosubliminal.  Good stuff.

(This post written while listening to Adele Skyfall.)