Bidding Wars: The Phantom Position

As the pre-bidding season continues, I feel like I should give an update on what I've been up to. This summer... has been rough. I spent about a month as the only IMS (normally we have 4) at post. Covering 4 positions would be a challenge, so naturally I prepared for it by getting walking pneumonia. Also, FUN FACT, did you know: you can break a rib from coughing? I didn't either. I am painfully aware of it now though.

But enough about me! Bidding. At this point in previous bidding cycles, I'd have a decent idea of where I stand with my top bidding choices. This year the bidding cycle has been compressed. Instead of starting in August, it starts September 20th. Post and bureaus seem to be taking this to heart and are holding off on much of their normal bidding contact.

Many of my cohort-mates have been reaching out to incumbents for tentative positions and some of the supervisors anyway, because it can't hurt to start early. How can they contact posts, if the bid list isn't out, you may ask? Well, they use the dubiously accurate Projected Vacancy tool in FSBID (our bidding software). This tool tells you which positions will be open this year, based on when the current occupant arrived at post. I have, of course, been eyeballing the projected vacancy list for months (practically a year, don't judge me), but I have absolutely failed at making first contact. Part of this I can blame on being sick and busy, but part of it is the absolute dread I feel toward cold-calling people to tell them how great I am. Especially when the projected list doesn't account for extensions, curtailments, position freezing or removal, ceding to entry level, or the whims of bureaus and posts. It seems silly to spend all this effort schmoozing a post for a position you can't even bid on.

Who knows, I have an R&R coming up, I should probably get some messages sent before I leave for that. At least... that's what I keep telling myself.

Gentleman, an Elegant Canned Corn, for a More Civilized Age

I don't eat canned corn often, but when I do, it's gentleman.

Ind-glish

I love language. I especially love listening to the different ways that other cultures use English. India has been an endless supply of quirky phrases that form a kind of code among those of us who have spent time here. I assume with time, we'll phase out our use of these phrases, but in the mean time, we'll continue to amuse ourselves by using them.

Here are a handful of common ones that we love.

The oil was very less in the pot.

I am here only. 

On Thursday itself. 

Do the needful.
I am knowing.
I have a doubt.
They are having a marriage.
"Kay-gees" for kilograms.
Playing pool, my opponent announced which "port" he would sink the 8 ball in.

In a similar vein, we've very much enjoyed listening to people speaking in Tamil... with random bits of English included. E.g. Tamil. Tamil, Tamil, Tamil, ask the driver, Tamil, Tamil, Tamil, cannot do it, Tamil, Tamil, informally only, Tamil...

Finally... As part of a team building exercise, we were instructed to walk to separate sides of the room, depending on our answers to various questions. When the question, "Would you rather never watch TV again or never listen to music again?" came up, one of my local employees leaned over to me and asked, "How can you listen to music without TV?" I was pretty confused, until I realized... all popular music in India is from movies. The culture doesn't support bands, just singing actors. So in his mind, if the TV industry disappeared... so would popular music.

PS: That sign sure was "a Quality..." 

Indian Sports

Quick note here... over a year ago, my boss was telling me about a bunch of games he used to play as a kid living in rural India. Some of these games would be just this side of terrifying for most parents. Below are brief descriptions of several that I can remember.

Gilli Danda (? or a local variant) is played with a long stick and a short stick. You balance the short stick on a rock like a see-saw, then hit the raised end to launch it into the air. Then you have to hit it with the long stick and call out the number of paces it went. If the other team agrees, you get that many points. If they disagree, you have to hop on one foot to the short stick. If your other foot touches, the other team will hit you until you're on one foot again. If you over-estimated the distance, you receive no points, if you underestimated, you get double points.

Kabaddi (or a local variant) is played by having one team send one player to the other team's side of the field. His goal is to touch as many players as possible while holding his breath and return to his side of the field. If he returns before inhaling again, his team gets one point for each opponent he touched. The other team, of course, tries to tackle, grab, or assault the player into exhaling...

Lagori/dikori is a game where a pile of stones are set up in a particular manner by one team. The other team attempts to hit the pile with another rock to known pieces down. Then the defending team tries to rebuild the pile, while the offensive team tries to hit the defenders with balls or rocks. Each defender that gets hit is out of the round.

Heart-felt Statue

I'm not one to talk about political topics on this blog, so I won't. However, you can't spend two years in Chennai without commenting on the sheer number of billboards for the Chief Minister (Governor): Jayalalithaa. The attached image shows 4, but panning the camera would have revealed at least 6 more, for one intersection. I even read of a man who sculpted a bust in her honor, using his own frozen blood.

Text Messages in India

Junk calls and texts are a part of life here. It's a slow day if I only receive one advertisement or scam text. Wrong number calls are generally a weekly occurence. However, yesterday (and again today) I received this pleasant gem. I assume it's a Public Service Announcement and not some ornate hoax/scam. Either way, it made us chuckle! 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to text this guy back; apparently I can get a 12 lakh life insurance plan for just 50 rupees a month!

Watching Music

So... back in January I was in Agra to support the (cancelled) Presidential visit. While there, we did some "Ice Breaker" games, one of which involved choosing (by walking to one side of the room or the other) which of two options you prefer. When the question "Would you rather never watch TV again or never listen to music again?" came up, one of the Locally Engage Staff with me leaned over and said, "I don't understand the question, how can you listen to music without TV?" I chuckled with him and didn't really think much of it. However, several months later, I was again faced with this cultural difference. Another local mentioned that he'd purchased an iPad so his wife could "watch music"! This made me realize that, in India, music and film aren't seperate. All (or nearly all) music is created with a "music video" or as part of a movie soundtrack. So the idea that a song could be created just as audio... doesn't really make sense. Don't get me wrong, people here listen to music with headphones and no visual all the time, and they've clearly had traditional music from before the time of television. That being said, the two are so closely coupled that I've been asked what would be a good song to download, by an American, "such as Arnold Swartznegger, Silvester Stalone, or Michael Jackson."

Mowing the Lawn, India Edition

When I owned a house (which I no longer do!), I was known to complain about mowing the lawn. I'd go embarrassingly long without mowing it and then rely on the lawn mower (and patience) to chew through practically shoulder height grass. In India... there are plenty of people to fill landscaping jobs; however, some of these people have better employers than others. This first guy was 'mowing' a football field sized lot outside a hotel in New Delhi.

Yes... he's cutting the grass with hedge clippers. He took fairly frequent breaks to text on his phone... but STILL. Once he completed that patch of grass, he hand carried away the clippings as well. 

This next picture is a much luckier gardener, who was using a push mower at Agra Fort. It was a two person job (the other person is not in the picture, but would use a stick to empty the clippings bucket). In this case, they were both tickled pink by my son's incredible interest in what they were doing. They even helped him jump the fence onto the the grass so he could help. (Have I ever mentioned how much people in India love children?)

Dogs and Traffic

I was eating dinner this evening and I saw a dog cross the road. That seems pretty uninteresting, right? WRONG! This dog walked to the edge of the road and looked both ways. He started to cross, saw some traffic coming and backed up. He waited until the traffic slowed, looked both ways again, crossed halfway, watched incoming traffic until a break opened, and then finished crossing. Honestly, I think he did it better than I do. Kudos to the feral animals here, I bet they're all good at that, because I haven't seen a single roadkill since getting here.

Holding Hands

Holding hands is definitely a cultural thing. In the US, it's rare to see adults, who aren't romantically involved, holding hands. In India, public displays of affection are frowned upon, so you don't see couples walking around holding hands. However, I pretty regularly see men walking around holding hands. This wasn't a huge surprise, I knew that it was common in parts of the world. I expected to see people holding hands... much like the picture for this post. Instead, I regularly see much more involved hand holding often including both hands from one of the participants. What I really wasn't prepared for was middle school-esque level of playing/fiddling with each others hands. It's not uncommon for me to see two men holding hands and one of them is playfulling pulling the other's fingers, or caressing the inside of their palm. It's hard to describe, but it's so over the top I just had to mention it.

Two Years in India, Week 13: Sponsorship!

One Baker's dozen weeks in Chennai. I'm going to run out of unique ways to count weeks soon. Nothing major to report on the work front, things are just chugging along. 

The biggest news this week was that new officer I'm sponsoring came into town! I learned that there are a ton of work related responsibilities to being a sponsor that I totally failed at (like arranging the expediter to meet him and his family in baggage claim). Fortunately, I was able to flag them down on their way out of the airport and things went fairly smoothly from there. Oh well, hopefully I can make up for it with awesome social sponsoring! 

I do feel a little weird being a sponsor when I haven't even received my HHE yet (at my first post, none-the-less), but the post was really hurting for sponsors since fully half of the officers transferred this summer. I've definitely been taking notes on "dos" and "do differentlys" of being a sponsor, so I hope to iron things out for next time. I'm a pretty social person, so I'm planning to volunteer as a social sponsor every transfer season. Let's face it, there's no better way to meet the new people than to pick them up at the airport in the middle of the night!

I have a funny work anecdote to share this week. When I was flying solo at post, before our IPO came, I had to make a list of end-of-year purchase items for my department. Being relatively new, both to post and to the Foreign Service, I didn't have a great idea on what we needed. This turned out to be a bummer when the IPO did arrive and pointed out all these great things I could have requested (doh)! Anyway, one of the purchase requests that I did put in was for safety shoes for the mail room staff. They regularly carry heavy pouches and it only takes one broken foot to more than cover for the cost of the shoes. This seemed like a pretty run-of-the-mill thing to me. However, now that we've received the steel-toed shoes, I realize that it was a much bigger deal for my staff than I'd realized. Shoes in India are kind of a status symbol (which I don't understand, because they're not that expensive, but people generally only wear sandals). Apparently many of the LES from other departments have been quite jealous of the mail room's new shoes... also, morale in the mail room has skyrocketed. All for something that seemed so trivial to me at first. Guess I still have a lot to learn about working with people from other cultures!

Under Attack

It's 3:50am... And we just had a temple procession pass by that literally was launching fire works at our window height. The drums were fairly loud... But the cracks of fireworks (every 100 ft or so) sounded like gunshots. Every third or fourth one was a big one, sounding like a cannon. Scared the heck out of everyone in the house.

Note: I was told in the morning by our housekeeper that it was the end of Krishna Janmashtami. One of the local temples paraded their deity around at 12:00-3:00am. I'd say they were running a little behind!

Two Years in India, Week 6: Acting IPO

I sipped from the cup of IPO power this week, and it will be hard to let go. Actually, it was pretty much the same as every other week. I continued doing the day-to-day things that justify my presence in country, but as a bonus this week I got to go to the section heads meeting. (Note to self: when representing your section at a section head meeting, prepare something to say about your section.) Anyway, I spent the rest of week six cleaning up our space in preparation of the actual IPO's start date on Monday.

Fun fact: I've now shredded/disintegrated around 100 kgs of unneeded documents from the '80s, '90s and today (read: 2000s)!

Fun fact 2: I found a bunch of gas masks circa 1985... they're expired, so we have to destroy them (in case someone tried to use them in a real emergency and they didn't work... leading to government liability). Anyway, the fun fact is that oxygen cans from 1985 smell awful.

Lahks and Crores

Who wants to be a millionaire? Well you probably already are... in rupees. At 60 rupees to the dollar, it takes less than $17,000 to be a millionaire. Don't get me wrong, that's still a lot of money. Anyway, in South Asia I've seen things advertised using a counting metric I was not familiar with. Enter the lahk. One lahk is 100,000. That seems convenient, right? But wait, there's more. A lahk is not written in standard numerical notation. Instead of 100,000 you would write 1,00,000. So 1.2 million (a word I've never seen or heard here) would be 12 lahk or 12,00,000. Now, I know what you're thinking. What's above lahks? Well it turns out they thought of that too! Ten million is 100 lahk (1,00,00,000), or one crore. Of course you can take it one step further to one "lahk crore," which is 10,00,00,00,00,000.

Lets tie this all back into rupees:

5              ... tea
1 lahk       ... a moped
1 crore     ... a medium to high end two bedroom apartment (1000sqft)
1 lahk cr   ... Apollo Space Craft

I don't know about you, but I want to be a lahk-crore-ionaire.

Sugar Cane Season

Mango season is on the way out... just in time for SUGAR CANE SEASON! I've seen dozens of these sugar cane juicers around, but only in the last week.

Scary to visit America

This is a post I drafted while at FSI, but never managed to finish / post.

We've heard from several of the instructors that America is considered a scary/dangerous place to visit. Kind of the way we (Americans) joke that "EVERYTHING IN AUSTRALIA CAN AND WILL KILL YOU." However, unlike Australia where this is in fact true, the United States is relatively safe, right?

Well... it depends on how you look at it. Hurricanes, Tornados, Earthquakes, Volcanos, Floods, Landslides, Blizzards, Firestorms, Rattlesnakes, Alligators, Bears, Mountain Lions, Black Widows (albeit non-fatal, they still are often mistaken as such), and Crime are all in the news and in movies. Let's face it, that media exposure is how most people form their opinion of the US. Plus, I think most people who have never been to the United States don't really grasp how big it is (like us regarding Africa). They live in relatively small, geographically homogenous countries and therefore may not internalize the sheer size of the US. Even the Aussies, plan like one week to see the entire US and they live in a huge country as well, albeit sparsely populated (though to be fair, I only spent two weeks visiting Australia).  If you condense all of the US's various dangers into one place, say one state... I could see how that'd be pretty terrifying.

I bring this up because I was recently sitting next to an LES from Morocco in the breakroom while the news reported on a sinkhole in Baltimore that swallowed some (empty) cars. No one was hurt, but the guy I was talking to was pretty shaken up about it. He said he has the opportunity to move to the US soon, but he's not sure he'll take it. Apparently he wants to come, but the US is a "dangerous place." He then proceeded to list off a bunch of the dangers I mentioned above. I explained that only some of those apply to any one place you live. He didn't seem to convinced and said he never has to worry about any of those things in Morocco (though I've later learned that Morocco does in fact get some floods, earthquakes, and insect swarms...). In the end, we didn't talk long, but I was surprised to find out that our instructors weren't just pulling our legs about the "scary America" idea.

Take that Europe! Even your map distortion can't save you!

Ok, Ok, you win Africa.

There's a neat website where you can compare country sizes, aptly named OverlapMaps.com.