Fair Share and Bidding Privileges

Bidding Bidding Bidding. It has begun. Possibly the worst part of the Foreign Service (or the best?) is the process of determining your next Post. It's not unlike my former life, as a contractor, where we continually interviewed for positions for new contracts, as our old ones ended.

This year marks the beginning of the condensed bidding cycle (more on that later), but today is our first 'surprise' for the season. Many factors play in to determining which positions you are eligible to bid on. Two of those factors changed today and I'll break down each of them:

Fair Share Bidding is a requirement that you serve in a hardship positions every 7(ish) years. The general idea is to keep someone from spending 20 years doing 7 tours in London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, etc. This year the definition of a hardship to fulfill this requirement changed from 15% to 20%. This means that if you are bidding this year and have not served in a 20% hardship position in the last 7 years, you are required to either bid on exclusively domestic assignments or include at least 3 at-grade and in-specialty positions with 20% or higher differential, in at least two geographic regions. Fair share bidders are required to accept any offered handshake (or find another hardship handshake) within two weeks of it being offered. If, by some weird turn of fate, they are continually not offered a handshake for 5 months... then they can accept any position offered. This increase of just 5% therefore drastically changes the 'popularity' of certain posts in the bidding cycle. A 15% post is now substantially less appealing, because it doesn't meet this requirement (and I imagine we'll see a proportional drop in their overall bids.)

Bidding privileges allow a person to bid one grade higher than their current grade if they're bidding on, or currently serving in, a hardship. However, the definition of a hardship for this changed also, but instead of increasing 5%, it went from 15% to 30%! This is a gigantic increase and drastically reduces the viability of stretching into a higher position (which had become quite common among people looking to get promoted early). This change will also effectively hinder bidding at 15% posts, with a possible benefit to 30+% posts. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Bidding privileges are also granted for employees receiving a Meritorious Step Increase award or if the post has been designated as historically hard to staff.

Keep in mind, much like going to a non-fair-share-post as a fair share bidder, it is possible to go just about anywhere, but only at the tail end of the bidding season. Initial handshakes go out ~early November, but in March the restrictions drastically relax for the poor posts and bidders that have been left out in the cold.

It's going to be an interesting next few months.

Happy 3rd Anniversary, 132nd Specialist Class

Happy 3 year anniversary to the 132nd Foreign Service Specialist Class! I know what you're thinking: what's the big deal? Well, this pay period (for those of us without prior government service) we begin the next phase of our careers. That's right, we now accrue 6 hours of annual leave per pay period. Let the partying begin! (You know, at whatever vacation location you choose!)

Blog Fading

I have to apologize for the absence of my blog postings... I don't have any particularly great excuse, except to say it's been a busy few months. Between moving to Argentina, having a new baby, and an 'aggressive' leave schedule among my coworkers... I guess I just haven't gotten around to writing. Anyway, I'll try to catch up again... this year. My wife has continually suggested that I just write some shorter posts, to get the juices moving again, but we'll see, I'm never really a fan of too-short-posts.

PS: I guess I'm a real Foreign Service Officer now; I have to constantly fight the urge to capitalize the 'p' in 'post.'

PPS: I found the keyboard at work... It uh... is old..... and funky. F18? No CTRL key? Who knows.

Culture Shock? More like language shock.

Culture shock is a strange thing. I know I've written about it before, but I'll recap. Culture shock (at least for me) does not play out like in the movies. It isn't screaming and crying in a crowd while being overwhelmed by different sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. It's the insidious sapping of your morale and will to function. You notice it in small ways, like deciding to eat in (because it means not having to deal with a server at a restaurant) or an increase in how much Netflix or TV you watch. I never really ran into this living in Chennai, though I did run into some difficulty adjusting to the different work culture of the State Department (vs my previous jobs as a contractor to the Defense Department).

However, mere days after arriving in Buenos Aires, I hit a pretty hard language wall. The city of Buenos Aires is not unlike large cities in the US, however (unsurprisingly) everyone speaks Spanish. Surprisingly few people can or are willing to speak English in day-to-day life. Similarly, I've never been particularly adept at languages, even when studying abroad. This fact has been particularly poignant here. In retrospect, Chennai sidesteps this problem as practically every single person you meet speaks English AND as someone who doesn't look Indian, people would default to speaking to me in English. Other than my clothes (and general lack of fashion), I very easily blend in with the Argentines, so I am regularly confronted by my inability to communicate. Writing this many many months later, I can say I've reached an equilibrium with my discomfort and awkwardness.

I have, of course, been trying to learn Spanish, both for work and for my personal sanity outside work, but we also had a new baby shortly after arriving. Any parent knows that your time mysteriously disappears when children are involved, and you start to really cherish your free time (which makes me less likely to spend it on studying!). I've been pretty consistent with Duolingo, so I guess we'll see how effective that is. (Spoiler alert, not very!) I do 3 'lessons' or 30xp per day at a minimum, and I've maintained that streak for over 200 days. My goal is to keep it up for my entire tour or until I'm comfortable speaking Spanish... so yeah, my entire tour!

In the mean time, I leave you with the most valuable phrase to know when traveling in a Spanish-speaking country (if you don't speak Spanish):

Mi aerodeslizador esta lleno de anguilas : My hovercraft is full of eels.

You never know when you need to show someone just how completely you don't understand a word they are saying. Open with this and, trust me, they'll know.

Buenos Aires Holidays: Touristic Bridge Holiday(?)

Today we observe the solemn and important Argentine holiday known as the "touristic bridge." When Argentine fixed day holidays occur on Tuesday or Thursday, they bridge the days to the weekend with an extra day off. So here's to celebrating yesterday's holiday with a super long weekend! Huzzah!