dp's Blog

So, I’m officially a man of leisure again.  See ya, meaningless job in the Mission!  My last day was Oct. 28, and I haven’t looked back.  It feels… good.

My business is humming along pretty well.  Have had three pretty successful weeks of meals (spaghetti & meatballs, chicken noodle soup, and enchiladas), and this week’s beef stew should go over well.  Still having a few growing pains in the whole process, but they should all work themselves out after I run through the majority of my recipes.  I’m taking notes on each recipe and trying to better schedule the prep and cooking to make me not go crazy.  Luckily my housekeeper knows her way around a kitchen, and can help out a great deal with prep work and cleaning.

I took last week off from the business, as I had plenty to do with Thanksgiving and all.  I made a Cajun smoked turkey, sausage and sage dressing, and a pecan pie.  All three were delicious, and much fun was had at our friends’ house.  Son ate nothing but tortilla chips (to be expected), and I was actually pretty good about my consumption (i.e. no seconds).  But, like every other year, I always forget that turkey + wine = sleepy time.  We got home at about 8:30 p.m., put Son to bed, and I promptly put myself to bed.

Really not a whole heck of a lot more going on here.  The nice weather has finally arrived, and I will be enjoying the heck out of the next few months.  We’re prepping a little for the move back to D.C. and then onwards to Surabaya, figuring out logistics of schools, language, cars, dogs, etc.  We also got a place in Maine for our Home Leave… way out there, but after living in this city for 2 years, I think the change of pace and peace and quiet will be welcome additions to my life.  My family isn’t so pleased about it (it’s 6 hours past Boston), but for the price and the ability to bring the dogs, I’ll take it.  If you’re interested in visiting us, email me for details.

That’s about all for now…. I’ve got a lot of prep work to do today.

Meh, what are you going to do? I’m busy. So there.

No, really. Stop laughing over there… I really am! See, a little over 2 weeks ago, I decided to do something crazy and quit my job. Insanity, I know… how could anyone part with such a cushy 30-hour-a-week, $25K-a-year gig? It was tough, and I DO feel bad (again, stop laughing over there!) about it, but it’s the best thing to do for me & the family.

There’s a bright side to all this, however… Really, there is. I’m quitting to, wait for it…. Start. My. Own. Business. Indeed! My wife has been encouraging me for some time to do something with my love of the culinary arts, and well, damn it, I’m going to do something with my love of the culinary arts! So, here’s to the official launch of “The Expat Chef!”

“Well, just what the heck is ‘The Expat Chef’?” you ask.

I’m glad you asked… It’s a catering company! For diplomats! Run by an expat! My main focus will be making the food we miss So. Much. here in the D.R. with mostly local ingredients. Fried chicken! Bagels! Lasagne! Spaghetti & meatballs! Indian food! Thai food! Chili! I’m setting up a once-weekly delivery to the Consular Section and the Chancery with a subscription service; i.e. sign up for the week, pay, take food home with you on Thursday to either pop in the oven, reheat, or cook on the grill (with simple step-by-step instructions). Ta-da! Good food that you can’t get here.

So, this is why I’ve been busy. I’ve got a week until launch, and I’m gearing up while gearing down in my Embassy position. Good vibes always welcome from afar… I hope I’ll some modicum of success in this venture, as I plan on having it move from post to post with me. Imagine, gumbo and bagels in Surabaya. Fried chicken and lasagne in Maputo. Fajitas and deep-dish pizza in Dushanbe. Genius, I tell ya!

So that’s it… I’m sticking it to the man. And I also learned something here today: posts will never, ever, ever be able to recruit and retain solid talent for EFM positions if they continue to offer the pittances they call salaries. I felt like a grad student here at post: captive audience = cheap-ass labor. Even if I were to have worked full-time, my salary would have been just a shade above $30K. I haven’t made that little in about 10 years. Yes the position gets me out of the house and involved in the Mission, but come on folks, $17/hr.at the age of 35? With an B.A. and significant work towards a M.A. at top-tier universities? And more than 10 years of experience? I know other spouses here who were web producers, lawyers, engineers, etc. who are taking $50K+ pay-cuts just so they can work. That’s crazy!

If State would like to re-think the compensation packages for EFMs, I’d be willing to reconsider my stance and give a Mission job another shot. Not a moment before, however. Since they’re already paying our housing, travel, health insurance, etc., and the only real costs of us working are our salary, pension, life & disability insurances, and security clearance process (if applicable), don’t you think they could make the compensation packages a little more attractive? Wouldn’t it be great if there was actual competition for the offered positions, and Post was able to hire the best and brightest instead of the simply available to work?

I won’t be applying for any Embassy jobs any time soon. Sorry HR… there’s a lot of talent going to waste in me. Wish we could have started off on a better foot.

Regardless, here’s to new beginnings! Wish me luck.

Mahalo.

Ahh, 19 days in the States. It all seemed so surreal, touching down at JFK, boarding the bus to Immigration, crossing through the tiny lines for the Diplomats, being welcomed “home” by the friendly INS/CBP/ICE/whatever they are these days agent. Was I “home?” I guess I was, w/r/t being back in the motherland and all, but I really wasn’t. It was nice to speak my native tongue for 19 days, not having to search for words to describe simple concepts, not having to constantly look over my shoulder all the time, not having to fight through the incessant traffic jams, etc. But I wasn’t home. So much had changed since I was last there. Not so much that the physical had changed (with the exception of people being a little older and some new additions to the circle in the form of kids), but my perceptions had changed of the world around me. I was grateful for things that just 365 short days ago I had taken for granted.

Living abroad is a lot more difficult than I had imagined. You miss so much. Facebook and the blogs can only substitute so much for actual experience and interaction. But at the same time, it was as if I had never left in many regards with my friends and immediate family. I did not get a chance to see my extended family, which sucked, but if they can’t make time to see me in the 19 days we had there with 3 months’ advance notice of my arrival, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Instead, I’ll probably just cross them off the list of priorities for next time.

I ate a lot. I shopped a lot. I relished in the fact that I had almost nothing to do for 3 weeks. I took my time enjoying the things that I had deemed important. It all came to an end too soon, and before I realized that I was back into my comfort zone, I was forcibly removed from it by a JetBlue flight back to reality. A reality we have created for ourselves.

Do I miss the States? Sure. Do I miss my friends and family? Absolutely. Would I trade my life now for the ability to return to normalcy in the States? Not a chance. I will miss many milestones living abroad, and I will be saddened by the fact that I am missing them. I will not, however, feel bad about it. My wife is presented with the opportunity to do what she has dreamed about since she was a child, and I am happy to follow where she leads me. I am happy to make a life (and a good one at that) out of what is presented to us. I am happy to forever be labeled a “trailing spouse” and be secondary to her in all things, since behind every good FSO is a good trailing spouse.

The one prevailing lesson taken away from my time on R&R is that R&R is really expensive. To those of you noobs out there not realizing this I say simply, “start saving now.”

Surabaya, Indonesia!!!

We are excited. Number two on our list. Sad to not have gotten Tunis, but living an hour from Bali will be an alright consolation prize.

…since we will have had both during our R&R in New England. It’s like the Dominican Republic is pissed we left and is sending its natural disasters to punish us.

The earthquake was minimal…. I barely felt it in Westport, CT (but I chalk that up to the fact that I was walking at the time it struck), but my wife told me it shook the hell out of the car. Apparently NYC came to an end, DC blew up, and the Cali folks are laughing down their upturned noses at our pitiful frenzy over such a small tremble. Whatever, California… we’re clearly not as cool as you here in CT. But, hey, at least some of the states in New England have a budget surplus!

Hurricane Irene has triggered the French Toast Alert System in the summer for the first time in my memory. I like the addition of rum to the list of supplies… good thing we brought some from the D.R.

Looking like we’re going to get a bulls-eye here in SE CT. Wish us luck.

See you on the other side.

Looks like abother another few weeks have gone by without a blog post, eh? And that was probably the best Freudian slip I’ve had in a while w/r/t this blog. It feels like such a bother to sit down and write when I have so many more pressing things to do… like sleep! or pay bills! or have 3 minutes of quiet to myself!

I started working on 5/23. I’m in the office each day by 7:00 a.m. Son is in our bed each morning at 3:30 a.m. taking turns kicking me in the face or ribs or giving my wife a few “Glasgow Kisses“. Needless to say, I don’t sleep much anymore. So time that could be spent doing any number of productive activities is now spent fruitlessly catching up on lost sleep. I can’t wait until Son grows out of this.

Anyhoo, working at post as an EFM is both awesome and complete crap all at the same time. While I started on 5/23, I still haven’t seen a paycheck. No word on when that might happen. Blame has been passed once or twice. In general, every step of my hiring process has been botched in some way. From the clearance process to the hiring cable to the level of clearance granted to my addition to payroll and beyond, there has not been one aspect of this process that HR at post has not FUBAR’ed. I actually hope Main State is reading this, because something has to give in SDO. What’s worse is that I’m not the only one to whom this has happened. You’d think someone would get a clue after the first, oh, I don’t know, FIVE royal f*ck-ups here. But then again, I think we all understand by now…..

One lovely thing I have going for me is R & R. We’re heading back to [REDACTED] for [REDACTED] days of fun and respite from Santo Domingo, coming back on [REDACTED], hopefully recharged and ready for another year here. I’ve already planned my meals for the [REDACTED] days we’re there, eating at some of my favorite restaurants in [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED].

(I love security measures.)

(I wanted to write a paragraph about hurricane preparedness but also would like to keep my blog intact. Hence: [REDACTED])

That’s all for now…. I guess. We’re all surviving and looking forward to R & R. Thoughts of cheeseburgers from [REDACTED] and pizzas from [REDACTED] keep me plugging until [REDACTED] when we finally go home.

Mahalo.

I know you all have been eagerly anticipating my debriefing after the FSOT I signed up for….. well, you’ll have to wait longer. The test was scheduled for June 4 here in Santo Domingo, and wouldn’t you know it, that day was also my birthday. So no long-ass test is going to get in the way of going to see “Rio” in Spanish with my son and his little friend, eating crappy fast-food before that, and staying out far too late that night (and possibly babysitting a decidedly-drunk, non-birthday boy).

I’m kind of still on the fence about the whole FSO thing… I thought the test would be “fun” to take, much like the LSATs were “fun” when I took them in 2006. It’d be nice to have the option of joining the Foreign Service, but I still am not sure where I’d fit. Management seems like a good fit, but Consular work is very interesting, and I do like a lot of aspects of PD. Probably good that I didn’t take the test to be branded Management when I’m not really positive it’s what I want to do. And Conal Rectification sounds painful (as well as dirty… seriously DoS?).

Right now I’m happy being a trailing spouse, err, EFM, err, whatever the hell I am.

…Will I ever be a prolific blogger? Nope. Not a chance.

My blog, for all intents and purposes, is a means to communicate a little about our life overseas to those who care to read about it (I’m looking at you, Mom). Sometimes I wax poetic about things that strike my fancy, there are times in which I may actually give some decent insight to what like is like in a Foreign Service Family (FSF), and sometimes I’m really only scratching my itch to produce something on paper (well, a computer screen, but let’s not split hairs).

I read a lot of blogs. Some have a single purpose (Serious Eats, The Wednesday Chef, Consumerist, Lifehacker) . Some are interesting reads into life and politics in the FS (Life after Jerusalem, Email from the Embassy, Diplopundit, The Pearlman Update). Some are guilty pleasures (Texts from Last Night, Hyperbole and a Half, Wonkette). Some are leftovers from my former jobs (TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Agency Spy, Adscam/The Horror!, Make the Logo Bigger). Almost all of them interest me on some level.

I hope that my blog interests someone on some level. In my glamorous life as a trailing spouse there has to be something of interest to talk about, right? The truth is, lately there hasn’t been. Our life here is just like our life would be in the States, or Europe, or the Middle East (OK, we have fewer ordered departures and revolutions happening), or Africa. We deal with all the same issues any family would deal with, except we do so in a foreign language with our support network (family and friends) far, far away. Luckily, no huge challenges have met us yet, and we continue to live like a normal, middle-class family.

One of the reasons I like reading the FS blog network is that I know that no matter what happens to us while living overseas, it’s happened to someone else in the past. Medical emergencies, deaths, financial crises, evacuations, disasters, robberies, violence, EERs, EFM employment issues, clearance issues, cultural differences, interesting culinary tales? Check. Our ability to band together and support each other in this community is uncanny. If I were to have a problem I couldn’t solve on my own or with the help of my family, I’m positive I’d be able to reach out to the FS Blog community for help. These are people I’ve never met, mind you (or at least I think I’ve never met), but I like to think that they’re my extended family. I read about their trials and tribulations, they (hopefully) read about mine, and we’re all in it together (though sometimes separated by huge geographical distances).

Every day my RSS feed is graced by their presences—some with more frequency than others. There are certain blogs that it brings a smile to my face just to see that they have been updated. There are many “Starred Items” in my Google Reader that come from the FS blogs. But with each word I read, the more I know that our little family here in Santo Domingo is part of a much larger, globally-disparate group with stronger ties than most nuclear families.

So, basically, thanks. Thanks to each and every FS blogger out there. Thanks for sharing, thanks for “being there”, thanks for your opinions and experiences. Without the blogs, I think I’d feel a little more lost.

Yes, I’m guilty of it too. Seems like a lot of people are neglecting their blogs these days. Somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40% of the posts I’ve read in the Google Reader FS blog aggregate are along the lines of, “Oh my god, it’s been x weeks?” Whatever… we’ve all got places to go, people to see, stuff to do.

Like my man Jim Anchower always says, “Hola, amigos. What up? I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but things got crazy, if you know what I mean.” Basically, I’ve spent the last few weeks agonizing over the dilemma of “to work or not to work?” After beating a dead horse for what seemed like forever, my decision was made for me yesterday. My clearance actually came through only 2 days after the target date, and my boss was ecstatic, calling my wife and asking her when I could start. Mind you, neither HR nor DSS informed me of this new development, so my boss and wife found out about my clearance before I did. Neat, huh?

Anyways, I’ve decided to take the job, as it’s the right thing to do “diplomatically” speaking. Yes, it’s clerical. Yes, the logistics are going to suck to arrange (especially with summer vacation coming). But, on the flip side, yes, it’s extra money. Yes I have a clearance. Yes, we’ll be able to do a lot more than we would have been able to do one only one salary.

It’ll be nice to get out of the house, nice to deal with adults for a while each day, and it’ll be nice to not have to stretch our money so far. So, there’s good and there’s bad. Same with any job. Such is life.

Recent events:

-Kentucky Derby get-together with some friends. Frantically searched for a live stream of it for about an hour. Finally found it, served some Kentucky burgoo over corn bread and, of course, mint juleps (trust me when I say there’s no place for muddling in a julep).

-Cinco de Mayo Happy Hour, or Why Dave Only Drinks Tequila Once A Year.

-Mother’s Day Brunch in the mountains overlooking San Cristobal. View of the mountains and the Caribbean in the distance? Gorgeous. German restaurant with Dominican-German food? Meh. What kind of German restaurant is out of almost all their German beers. Isn’t that their draw?

-Drive to Constanza and the mountains to the south with the Director General and Lead Botanist of the Jardin Botanico Nacional. Beautiful country, cool temperatures, absolute sh*t roads. I could easily live there full-time. 80s by day, lows as low as 25 at night (during Dec. and Jan.). Did you know some of the rivers ice over at night in the Dominican Republic? Neither did I.

-Skipped school to go to the beach today. So much better. Aidan and I had a blast. I’m going to miss proximity to the beach when we move to our onward assignment. Wherever the hell that is.

-R & R planning is in full effect. Looking at mid- to late-August for a trip back to the States. If you’re in CT, NY, MA, NH, or RI and want to catch up… LMK. Limited time, but I see at least a day in both Boston and NYC as well as some time on the CT shoreline and the Cape. Shake Shack, Cafe Habana, Pepe’s, Bar, Azu, Shady Glen, Chez Henri, Nick’s House of Pizza, PJ’s, and a few others will be on the list (I hope). I plan to gain 10 lbs. in our time home. Will be at least another year before I get any of that food again.

Oh, and my good friend Anne arrives this Sunday! She’s here for a week! Fun! Sun! Punta Cana! Hooray!

Here’s to work, clearances, and days at the beach instead of school.

Mahalo.

After a couple of food-related posts, it’s time to get back into FS life. Ugh.

I don’t mean it that way (like ugh, I can’t believe I have to do this), more like I’m pretty cranky with a couple of decisions and potential life-changing things hanging over my head.

My dear readers, you may remember my being offered a job waaaaaayyyyyyyyy back in December. Yeah, I almost forgot about that too. Needless to say, I’m still not working and still waiting on a clearance. All this time and all this waiting have really made me question a lot of things:

1) Am I even going to like the job?
2) Am I comfortable putting my trust into another person to help raise my kid?
3) Will this job help me in any way with what I want to do in the FS life I have?
4) Do I even know what I want to do with my life?

I’ll speak a little to number 2 above for a bit…..

Maybe I’m crazy or to paranoid, but I have a really hard time with the whole nanny or housekeeper/babysitter thing. As much as I bitch about what a pain in the ass my kid is, I’m getting what a lot of working parents don’t get: an opportunity to watch my son grow and to help shape him in his most formative years (and seriously, who’s allowing me to do that anyways?). Just because house help is cheap here, I’m just supposed to dump my kid on a complete stranger and hope for the best? The experience we’ve had thus far with housekeepers, nannies, and the current string of “meh” interviews for our current needs really is beginning to make me question just exactly how much faith and trust I’ll actually have in someone if we do decide to hire them.

Neither my wife nor I ever really had to deal with many babysitters nor early childcare as our Moms were nice enough to stay home with us. My mother was a teacher, and I think she didn’t start working again until I was in kindergarten. I went to day-care during kindergarten, but only in the morning before school, and my Mom was always home when I got home. There was minimal trauma from this, as I recall.

We’ve really only found one person we trust here: our masseuse. She’s stayed with Son once or twice as we’ve had engagements in the city. Our recently-fired niñera was caught sleeping while she was watching Aidan, our former housekeeper stole from us, and our first housekeeper liked to compare us to her previous boss (and possibly paramour) to our faces while telling us how she was working too much and needed more money. You can see the trend here.

I started to work with an agency to find a nanny, but that plan crashed and burned as they had ONE nanny available with no idea when they’d get a new crop. Really? When I recruited, I ALWAYS had at least 4-5 suitable candidates for any job. Your whole purpose is running a nanny training center and then getting those nannies work, and you only have ONE available? As if I’m going to take the last nanny available from your most graduated class. That’s like taking the last puppy from a litter: asking for trouble.

I’m truly starting to lean towards the whole stay-at-home Dad thing. How many parents can say that they got to experience the bulk of their kids’ younger years? I think it will make a huge difference in the overall happiness of our family. Because a happy spouse and happy kid make for a happy FSO, in my opinion.

So, I’m taking the weekend to decide just what it is that I want to do. My security clearance’s target date is May 8, and if past experience is any indicator, that date will come and go without a clearance. But I’d rather just make the damn decision and get on with life rather than fret about it any more.