DiploJournal
Second Tour Bidding
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Although I’m still over a month away from arriving in Pakistan, the time has come for bidding the follow-on post. Because this next assignment will technically be my second tour (the year in Pakistan is taking the place of what was supposed to be the second year in Ottawa), I am going through what’s called directed bidding. For the last time in my career, we have the opportunity to peruse through a long list of open assignments, compile a list in order of preference, and leave it up to the gods, aka the Career Development Officers, to sort out.
Of the 150 or so assignments, including jobs in every category located in six continents, I put together a sub-list of 30 that fit our timing. This was actually a little more complicated than it sounds. I started with the expected departure date from Pakistan. I scratched any job targeted to start before Spring 2012. I then scratched every job that did not require foreign language fluency. Some of those were brutal to line out, but I have to satisfy the language proficiency for tenure.
I then added the month or so of mandatory home leave — time Congress mandates that I spend decompressing from my prior two years abroad. I then needed to figure out what training is required for each job I wanted to bid. Public affairs job in Bishkek, Kyrgystan? Factor in 8 months for Russian language fluency and a month and a half for public diplomacy tradecraft. Scratch a bunch more jobs that start too early or too late for the requisite training.
Amazingly, when the smoke cleared, we had a list of 30 that more or less fit. E and I then spent several days passing it back in forth to get the preference order right, finalizing the order together in the tea room at the Mandarin-Oriental looking out over the Vegas strip. We knew we’d have a good shot at one of our top 10 picks because State provides so-called equity points points for serving in hardship posts, additional equity for serving in high-danger posts, and yet more equity for serving in hard-to-fill jobs. Volunteering to spend a year in Lahore comes close to maxing out all three.
In the end, we had a pretty clear first choice pick, but the timing didn’t work out precisely. We are allowed to include on the list a maximum of eight jobs that don’t fit exactly, but are within a 90-day window. We are told up front, however, that while we can include these so-called “imperfect bids,” it is highly unlikely that we’ll get one. Unfortunately, we had a pretty big gap — ok, a chasm, really — between our imperfect top choice and everything else. We filed our final list over a week ago and since that time have focused on being happy with what we expected to get: either a political job in Algiers, Algeria, or a political job in Kiev, Ukraine. Both would be interesting jobs and require us to learn a language that was at the top of our priority list.
We thought for sure the decision would come by end of day last Friday. The week-end arrived with no word. Monday came and went with nothing.
After lunch today, my email preview popped with just the subject line: “Your Onward Assignment” and the first line of the contents that just read “Congratulations”. I got the same “Congratulations” intro when I received my assignment to Pakistan, so I knew that had no bearing on where we were going. After a suitably dramatic pause, I opened the email to find we had been assigned our first pick: Paris.
After I’m back from Lahore in the Spring 2012, we’ll have our month of home leave, and then jump into a very intensive five to six months of full-time, French language training. Four years of college French will get one to about a 2/2 on the spoken/written Foreign Service scale. The job requires that I arrive in the Fall of 2012 with a 3/3, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. Thankfully, E will likely be able to go through the class with me and she’s a language whiz. As for the job, I won’t be working in the Embassy. Instead, I’ll be joining the U.S. delegation to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD has an incredibly broad mandate so I have no idea what my portfolio will include, but they get involved in a lot of very interesting issues. We couldn’t be happier.
The adventure continues.
Decorating Doors
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With the weather turning cold and snowy, I found a silly project that ended up being a lot of fun to put together. There’s a longstanding December tradition at Embassy Ottawa for the various agencies and sections to decorate their main entrance doors for the holidays. The various efforts, elaborate and simple, face a committee of judges after which the winners receive awards and, more importantly, bragging rights at the mission’s holiday party.
The Public Affairs department has consistently excelled in the competition and entered this year as the defending champions. My beloved Consular group, while competitive, has not won the contest for years. After tossing around a few ideas for theme, we came up with an idea that merged our strategic mission with the season. What would happen if Kris Kringle applied for a visa? The result: Santagate. I put together a mock-up of the local newspaper, The Ottawa Citzen, and wrote a couple thousand words about how Kris Kringle came in for visa and faced some unexpected skepticism from our consular officers given his 60+ aliases, the lack of a proper passport, and some unexpected attitude.
Although, there are a lot of inside jokes that aren’t nearly as funny to those who don’t know our people, it provided the construct for the real star of the presentation — the photographs. We stages a series of shots involving Santa working his way through the visa section, being fingerprinted, pleading his case to an officer, being refused, and finally, being physically removed by our intrepid security guards. From a photographic standpoint, it was a fun lighting challenge shooting through the glass with remote lights hidden on the client side (lighting it directly would have resulted in massive reflection and glare).
Part of the story involved a massive protest and ensuing political pressure for Canada to offer Santa asylum and immediate citizenship. As a Canadian citizen, Santa wouldn’t need a visa to travel over the border. We thought maybe some pictures of crying kids might work, but over the week-end I found a couple of pics online that, with the help of Photoshop, fit the bill.
With Santa’s online visa application, letters from protesting children, and some ribbon trim, the door told a good story.
We had lots of visitors loitering outside the door and, at this afternoon’s embassy party, Ambassador Jacobson called out Consular for both Most Original and Overall Winner.
On to the next obsessive project…
Tags: consular, Foreign Service, holiday door decorating contest, Ottawa
I hate quitting
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With less than six months left in my Ottawa tour, I confess to be spending a lot of my time thinking about what’s next. That little piece of obsessive-compulsiveness has limited my reading list to only Pakistan-related titles, both fiction and non. I get my daily news feeds, follow the internal communications, and have my Google Alerts set to let me know when something of import happens in that part of the world.
I have my Ottawa departure date and follow-on training schedule set. Although I still have my regular Canadian-focused full-time consular duties, there are not many additional extra projects on the near-term schedule. In search of a project, I saw that State offers a distance learning program for Urdu. My one-year post in Lahore does not require any language training as English is also an official language of Pakistan, but learning Urdu sounded like a good idea.
I should have realized what I was getting into when my first reaction mimicked John Candy in Stripes:
Instead of Ox’s 6-8 week training program, the Urdu distance learning program is 14 weeks. I’d agree to spend 8-10 hours a week working on my own and then do an hour a week on the phone with the tutor. That sounded perfect for me. I’d dutifully work the software program as the evenings grow cold, review a few flash cards, chat on the phone, and hit my formal training with a working knowledge of Urdu.
I then received the software and started working on the alphabet. It’s difficult. Really difficult.
Urdu is Pakistan’s national language. The word Urdu means ‘foreign’ in Turkish and traces its origins to the combination of foreign influences in South Asia. The grammar is very similar to Hindi, but it merges various elements of Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit. Urdu is typically written in the Nastaliq calligraphy style of script but the characters are not entirely uniform, depending on who is writing and for what audience. Needless to say, I’ve been struggling.
Read right to left, Urdu has a mix of characters from the Arabic and Persian alphabets. As a result, there are multiple letters for most sounds. There are, for example, three different letters for the sound of an S, five Z’s, 3 H’s, etc. Each of the sound family letters sound identical but look completely different. Oh, and just to make it more interesting, each letter has four different looks: the independent character (when you want to make a list of the letters but not actually make a word), the Initial (when the character is the first letter in a word), the Medial (when the letter is somewhere in the middle of a word), and the Final (when the letter ends a word). Some letters connect together and some don’t.
I took Russian in college and learning Cyrillic was challenging, but I didn’t find it that difficult. The characters are easy to distinguish and, once I learned what character makes what sound, I found it easy to sound out words and start reading. Russian grammar is a whole different story, but that came later. The first year moved quickly and, although languages are not my academic strength, it felt like I made great progress. Urdu, not so much.
Last Friday was the final day to drop the course without penalty. By Tuesday, I was beyond frustrated. I just could not imagine getting to the point of reading a paragraph in Urdu out loud — forget about understanding it. I just want to be able to recognize the characters and voice them correctly. I’m ashamed to report that I gave up. I wrote an email to the language department with some lame excuse that I just wasn’t going to have time to do it justice.
It didn’t sit well. I’ve certainly quit things before, but usually on my terms for good reasons. Not because it was too hard. With some prodding from the department and lots of encouragement from my tutor on Wednesday, I started really drilling. I still have no clue how one gets to the point of reading fluidly. Words still look like an amalgam of beautiful lines and dots, but specific letters and sounds are not jumping out at me.
It’s clear to me that I’m going to have to double the 8-10 hours a week they recommend just to keep up. Despite my better judgment, I retracted my drop notice on Friday, installed a software-based Urdu keyboard on my mac, and started memorizing numbers (which also have different characters), colors, and greetings. My next tutorial is on Wednesday and its already weighing on me.
On the bright side, Ox made it through basic training.
American Citizen Services
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A few weeks ago, I took on a new portfolio. That’s State-speak for a new set of responsibilities. For the remaining six months of my tour in Ottawa, I am the ACS officer. In some posts, American Citizen Services is a full-time job, dealing with every conceivable issue relevant to Americans living permanently or temporarily abroad. Here, because we have such an unbelievable local staff, the ACS work load can be managed in addition to my regular consular duties.
The portfolio includes passports, births, deaths, arrests, domestic disputes, abducted children, taxes, social security, voting, and scores of other issues. We deal with urgent matters whenever they come up and schedule appointments for more routine issues.
While I’m on the line adjudicating visa cases in the morning, I usually need to step out every half-hour or so to deal with an ACS case. Most of the routine cases involve passport applications and certificates of birth abroad. There are a series of complex rules to determine citizenship and they all come in to play over the course of a month or two. We get newborns, but also parents who want to get a birth certificate and passport for their 17-year-olds. The process often requires a review of stacks of old papers to establish birthdates, marriage dates, military service dates, employment dates, school attendance dates, etc. Sometimes the puzzle gets very complicated.
When Americans find themselves under arrest, it falls on the ACS officer to ensure they are getting fair treatment. I made my first prison visit a couple weeks ago, meeting with three inmates back-to-back. Although this is Canada, prison is still prison. I’ve been to a few in the U.S. visiting pro bono clients. I had the same visceral reaction to hearing the metal doors clang shut behind me after entering. There’s no such thing as easy time. Even in Canada.
Surviving the G8 and Canada Day
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Tom McEvoy describes the game of poker as “Hours of boredom followed by moments of sheer terror.” While that description could well apply to any number of activities, it fit quite well for those of us working on the G8 advance team. There was actually a fair bit going on behind the scenes in and around Huntsville, Ontario, leading up to the G8 meeting. I had the honor/privilege/burden of wearing several different hats for the Embassy’s support team: site officer, thank you officer, gifts officer, and control officer for two Under Secretaries.
It was a kick to spend a couple of weeks in new surroundings. For two weeks, we lived out of rustic cabins just down the road from Algonquin Park, 7500 square kilometers of amazing hiking and canoeing, about 4 hours west of Ottawa and 3 hours north of Toronto. We shared the environment with chipmunks, fish, ducks, lots of bugs, moose, and a bear. During my daily commute from our cabin to the control room, I came perilously close to hitting a deer. Twice.
Without going into any detail, however, supporting a POTUS visit was a great assignment. The Embassy Ottawa team is a very experienced crew so I learned a lot from people who had been through the drill dozens of times around the world. Some days were pretty quiet, interacting with the White House advance teams and getting things set up. Other days had more than their share of sheer terror moments, juggling resources and making sure everything was covered.
In the end, everything went off as planned. The President arrived. The meetings took place. Many bilateral meetings took place. The President left. My Under Secretaries arrived, met their counterparts, received seamless support, and left.
Upon return to Ottawa, we (E and G are joining me for the summer) had the pleasure of seeing our first Canada Day up close. July 1st was the 143rd anniversary of Canadian Confederation. Nationalism here seems to be at an all-time high after the Vancouver Olympics. In addition, Queen Elizaveth and Prince Philip were in town. There were free concerts and activities set up all over town and hundreds of thousands descended on downtown Ottawa. Where else can you find a free double-bill of Bare Naked Ladies and the Queen?
After dark, we headed over to the Embassy and staked out a great spot on the roof to catch the fireworks. Promptly at 10:00pm, they started. We were so close, we could feel the explosions and feel the ash falling from the sky. I took advantage of the great spot by trying my hand at some fireworks photography. Here are a few:
For those who can’t get enough of fireworks pics, you can find the full set here: Happy Birthday, Canada!
Special Relationship on Hold for Two Hours
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On March 5, 1946, during his Sinews of Peace address, Winston Churchill referred to the special relationship between the British Commonwealth and the United States. Through triumph and challenge, the relationship has continued to be close ever since, underscored by diplomatic and military cooperation. Today, replaying a hiccup in 1950, we took a time out.
That was the last time the United States and England played each other in a World Cup finals match. As the dominant favorite (or as they’d say, favourite), our British counterparts graciously invited the U.S. diplomatic corps in Ottawa to raise a few pints and watch the match at the High Commission. Shared language and geopolitical goals, for 90 minutes, gave way to revisiting a 60-year-old bitter rivalry. At least, it was bitter from their point of view.
The United States and England have played in World Cup group play only once before. In what has since been dubbed the Miracle on Grass, a plucky group of American amateurs upset the dominant team in the world, 1-0, after having lost its prior 7 international matches by a combined score of 45-2. So sure were the English newspapers that the wire report contained a typo, they published the score as a 10-1 England victory. Apparently, nobody in the United States knows about it because it happened over 20 years ago and because Disney never made a movie about it. Most everyone in England, however, remembers it like it was yesterday.
Once again, the United States found itself as a dominant underdog to a powerhouse English team. After exchanging pleasantries, thanking our hosts, and finishing my first pint of Speckled Hen, the match began. From the start, England dictated the pace and it seemed as if we were always on defense. After four minutes, the Three Lions’ captain, Steven Girrard, found the back of the net and our hosts went wild. The American section fell silent, imagining a long afternoon of polite smiles and embarrassed congratulations.
Although the Englishmen continued to attack, American goalkeeper Tim Howard made a series of miraculous saves. In the 40th minute, what looked to be an easy save slipped past Robert Green’s grasp and trickled into the English goal. It wasn’t pretty, but it gave the Americans an excuse to stand up and cheer. Our hosts couldn’t believe it.
The rest of the match, although a tense exercise of repelling repeated English attacks, reminded us why soccer will never become as popular in America. Lots of tension, but no scoring. It ended in a tie.
Although we could hold our heads high and claim the moral victory with a draw, it still felt unsatisfying. Just like the players in South Africa, we all shook hands and headed for the exit. At least the special relationship remains intact.
From the Other Side of the Glass
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I am the first to admit that I’ve had a privileged existence. As a teen-ager in the late 70s and early 80s, my first jobs always involved a keyboard in a cubicle or an office. I learned to type in a junior high school classroom filled with manual typewriters, a skill that ultimately spared me from the fast-food and other typical service-oriented, part-time jobs available to teens of my era. I’ve never had a name tag, a paper hat, or a uniform.
I became fascinated with the emerging personal computer industry, learned programming as a precocious 13-year-old, and found a series of relatively well-paying temporary jobs. When programming jobs were unavailable, there were always clerical opportunities for people who could type 100 words per minute and use Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Pro on a PC, or a dedicated Wang word processor. These days, first graders can text faster than I type but, back in the day, it was unique skill.
Thus, now in my mid-40s, I find myself for the first time at a window serving the public one at a time. A few weeks ago, as I waited for my number to be called at the Ottawa City Hall to register my car and to obtain my Ontario driver’s license, I found myself watching the clerks behind the window. Although I’ve certainly been in similar situations many times before, it was the first time since I started working the other side of the glass.
The crew processing motor vehicle issues appeared to be under-staffed, with a large waiting room of anxious clients. Whether typical or not, I waited for the better part of an hour for my number to appear on the overhead monitors. It was a great opportunity to watch and learn.
All three clerks spoke French and English interchangeably. They dealt efficiently with a wide spectrum of clients: nervous young adults sitting for their driver’s tests with even more nervous onlooking parents, angry people who waited a long time in the wrong office, and confused elderly patrons who did not understand the particular process they were in line to complete. Through all the chaos, the clerks remained composed, patient, and helpful. Most importantly, they each kept their sense of humor and smiled.
I’ve tried to embody these traits in my daily work from the other side of the window. My clients have been in the Embassy — submitting forms, paying fees, and giving fingerprints — for an hour or more before I see them. They are typically nervous about being judged during the interview. Sometimes my brand of humor, sprinkled heavily with sarcasm, doesn’t always translate, particularly for the very nervous applicant. For those clients, I have to work a little harder to reach beyond the memorized speech describing their work history and why they want to visit the United States.
My goal, which I think I achieve in most cases, is to ensure that the client feels they received a fair hearing. The vast majority of my applicants will laugh, or at least give me a polite smile. For those that receive a refusal, I try to spend a little time explaining the basis for the decision. In many cases, I try to describe what they could do to improve their chances the next time. I can be blunt, but that’s reserved for the relatively rare case in which the applicant has several prior refusals, when they are clearly lying in an obvious manner, or when they appear completely unprepared despite numerous instructions to bring key documents.
After the interview, I have little patience for those who continue to argue after I’ve rendered a decision and returned the passport. This is as much for my own sanity as for the other applicants that deserve to reach the window. I’ve quickly developed a good sense for discerning those that believe they can succeed by not taking no for an answer from those that have legitimate questions. For some cultures, a civil servant’s no is simply the first volley in a protracted negotiation. Without yelling, I definitely raise the volume a bit, cut them off quickly, and make my decision’s finality abundantly clear. The applicant then typically makes an extremely slow effort to gather papers, apparently hoping that the longer they remain in front of me, the more likely I will change my mind.
After a sip of tea from my thermos to wipe the slate clean, I greet the next applicant with a smile. “Welcome the United States Embassy.”
Back from the Moon
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It’s been a long week. On a trek to explore six universities in five days, my daughter and I enjoyed some long overdue one-on-one time. Starting and ending in Ottawa, I drove over 1,000 miles. We ate some good food, caught up with a one of our best friends in Boston and family in New York, stayed in some good hotels, and had our fill of campus tours and information sessions. We had an amazing time and made some good progress on the college search. After dropping her at JFK, I drove 8 hours back to Ottawa, unpacked and slept well.
On Sunday, I did some laundry, ran some errands, packed some heavier winter gear, and headed toward the North Pole. Really.
OK, so I didn’t make it all the way to the North Pole, but I did get within 500 miles. I still don’t know why I got so lucky, but a few weeks ago I received a very cryptic message that the Ambassador wanted to know if I could accompany him on a trip. Sure, no problem. I didn’t know where or why, but the dates fit in well right after the long-standing date with my daughter so I quickly agreed. I learned later that I’d be joining a small group on a trip to Alert, Nunavuk, the northernmost permanently inhabited place on the planet.
Here’s a map that shows roughly where we went (clicking on the image will blow it up big enough to actually see).
I’m not sure why, but it seems that most military flights leave at ridiculous times. I arrived at the Embassy at 2:30 am on Monday. In my distinctly non-military life, that counts as Sunday night, particularly since I never slept. We drove to a private terminal at the airport where the traveling party met. After some prep time, we walked the tarmac to a Canadian Air Force C-17. The flight plan was pretty simple. 6 hours non-stop to Alert, Nunavuk. Due North.
I’m told by those in the know that this flight made a little bit of history. This was the first ever direct flight from Ottawa to CFS Alert and most likely the first flight ever from a national capital direct to any point of landing above 82° latitude. Kinda cool.
Unlike passenger jets, there are not a lot of windows in the C-17. This thing is made to carry tanks, not passengers. We were afforded a lot more freedom to walk around, however, so I caught the sun rising.
The sun didn’t set again until we returned to Ottawa.
The C-17 is not the typical aircraft used for Arctic flights. In fact, this was the second time ever the C-17 had landed on the gravel and ice runway at Alert. The first time was last week just to make sure it would work. Aside from me, the passengers on board were VIPs and it would be bad form to make a completely experimental run with such an important passenger list. Here’s a shot of the plane just after we landed.
The landscape was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It’s not just the snow and ice. It’s the vastness of the land and the complete absence of any visible plants or trees. The closest I’ve come to anything like this is Death Valley, but that doesn’t really compare. It felt like what I’d imagine it’d be like to walk on the moon. It was a challenging environment for photography because everything is just so white. I had to underexpose significantly and struggle with the sun which was at a constant 45-degree angle. Instead of going up and down, it just rotated around the horizon.
The station has an incredible staff and they kept us moving, virtually non-stop, until about midnight. We visited the memorial for the 9 crew members of the RCAF Lancaster that crashed in 1950, and then headed to the base for a series of briefings.
After a quick lunch, we jumped in a Swedish SnowCat contraption — picture a minivan with tank treads instead of wheels — and rumbled into the Arctic for about a half an hour. We came upon two temporary campsites. One built by Canadian Rangers and one built by a Danish military sled dog team. The Rangers were mostly locals who participate as a sub-group of Canadian Forces Reserve. They do periodic Arctic surveillance missions and exchange survival techniques with members of the CSB Alert forces. The Rangers showed us how to build an igloo and a 20-minute survival shelter with nothing more than an ice knife and saw. They also treated us to an Arctic Char Stew — a whole new meaning to fresh, frozen.
As fascinated as I was with the Rangers and their techniques for living in such a harsh environment, my eyes get coming back to the dogs. I love dogs and, other than movies (my kids will gladly tell the tale of my crying my way through Eight Below), I’ve never seen a dog team up close. When we arrived, the team was having a good-natured argument.
The Danes travel over 5,000km each year with the team throughout Greenland and the High Arctic, often 10 hours a day. The dogs work hard and, apparently, play hard. The Danes described how they regularly have to stitch up the dogs when they get a little too rambunctious with each other. Although a little intimidated by the growling, howling, and snapping, I asked if I could get close.
It turns out that they absolutely love people. As I held out my hand, they each pulled at their chains to jump and play with me. Working my way up the line, I ended up wrestling with each dog in turn. They immediately transitioned from snarling wolves to wagging, flopping on their backs, domesticated puppies.
Time seems to have a lot less meaning when the sun doesn’t change elevation. I think we were out there (at 20 below) for about an hour and half or so. We headed back to the base, ate a quick dinner, and then headed back out in a different direction.
This time, we visited a tent pitched over the Arctic Ocean. Outside were huge triangles of ice. Inside, was a triangular hole in the ice with each side approx 10-15 feet long. They were not fishing. Instead, a team of divers were taking turns doing 150-ft. dives into the Arctic. For fun. The process of creating a diving hole was a modern engineering marvel involving a water saw (picture a copper tube drilled into the ice, connected to a pump, connected to a heater that boils the water, connected to another narrow copper pipe that turns the boiled water into a thin stream that “cuts” through the ice). It took over two hours to make the cuts, and a forklift to pull the tons of ice out.
The water was crystal clear like the Caribbean. Except with 5-1/2 feet of ice on top. The divers went in two at a time and could last about 15 minutes or so before the cold really started to penetrate their suits. A relatively small hole and thousands of miles of ice? Not in my lifetime, but it was fascinating talking to the divers while they worked.
We left the dive site around 9:15 or so and that was supposed to be it for the night. We were tired, but the 24-hour sun made it tough to call it a day. A couple of us were anxious to get a chance to explore on the ski-doo snowmobiles so this was the perfect time. We had to wait awhile for others to return to the base during which I realized that I was heading out with two very experienced fighter pilots for a little speedy fun in a wide open playground.
The fact that none of us had ever driven a snowmobile and the fact that the ground was filled with lots of moguls kept me in the game. One of the snowmobiles ended up rolling over, but I won’t identify the culprit. I will say that it wasn’t me, no blood hit the ice, and there were no casualties. Except for the rear view mirror that formerly adorned the left side of the ski-doo. The crew presented the mirror on an ornate polar bear-shaped plaque to the unnamed driver in a quiet ceremony.
We rode about a half-hour out to a glacier, parked the ski-doos, and made the short climb to the top for some photos.
We returned to the base unscathed, albeit a little chilly. I finally got to sleep at midnight, about 40 hours since I’d last slept. Because we had so little time in Alert, we didn’t waste much with sleep. My alarm went off at 5:30 and I was packed up, dressed in winter gear, and in line for breakfast at 6:30.
Although we were scheduled to head home, we had a morning of activity still on the Alert schedule. After breakfast, we immediately headed toward the airfield. No plane to board just yet, however. Instead, we climbed into a Sikorsky helicopter and took off for tiny Ward Hunt Island — further north into the Arctic Ocean. The scenery during that flight was simply breathtaking.
After landing on Ward Hunt, we did a whirlwind tour of a temporary Canadian Forces camp, attended a briefing by the team, and took in the vistas.
Ward Hunt serves as the final stop for adventurers trekking to the North Pole so there are a few monuments to those missions. We ended up giving a ride back to Ottawa to an Australian who came within a few hours of giving his life to his attempt.
It was an amazing story. Had it not been for a lucky coincidence, he would surely have perished on the ice. While heading toward the Pole on a solo cross-country skiing attempt, Mr. Smitheringale fell through the ice, spending 10 minutes up to his neck in the Arctic. Although he managed to pull himself onto the ice, his timely rescue occurred only because the Canadian Forces and Rangers happen to be doing their annual military exercise in the region at the same time.
Despite his severe frostbite, he insisted that this would not be his last attempt. Although I think they are all a little nuts, he makes the ice divers and dog sledders seem like pikers.
We piled back on to the helicopter and walked over to the C-17. It was certainly the most unique flight connection I’ve ever experienced. On the way home, we stopped at the US Air Force base in Thule, Greenland. While they refueled the C-17, we drove to the base and received a tour of the facility and a briefing on their mission. Sorry, no pictures from Thule.
We landed back in Ottawa around 7:00 pm and, despite our extraordinary mode of transport, the crew handed out customs declaration cards as we prepared to land. Nope, I didn’t bring back over $10,000 in cash and I didn’t visit any farms.
iPad and the Foreign Service
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Since I’ve arrived in Ottawa, I haven’t really driven anywhere. Before arriving, I found a place to live that is walking distance to both the Embassy and the downtown Byward Market area. Restaurants, bars, shopping, coffee shops, dry cleaning, and music venues are all within a 15 minute walk from my front door. Thus, other than grocery shopping and the occasional run to the airport to pick up visitors, the car has remained in the garage.
So, what could motivate me to jump in the car on a beautiful Saturday morning and drive over an hour into the countryside, over a nerve-wracking rickety metal bridge over the St. Lawrence River, to a small town that promotes on the front of its web site a petition drive to “Save our Prison“? A UPS store, of course. More specifically, a UPS store just over the border that took delivery of my new Apple iPad.
Yeah, a little twisted, but I love gadgets. I pre-ordered the day it was announced with complete confidence that it’d be a hit. At least for me.
I won’t bother writing a general review of the iPad. Just do a Google search (or use Bing if you think Google has become the new Microsoft) and you’ll find scores of in-depth reviews making conflicting conclusions. It’s the best thing since sliced bread. It’s just a big iPhone. It’s wonderful. It’s awful. You’ll find an opinion to match your own gut reaction to Apple products and marketing.
After a few days playing with it, I think Slate got it right. You don’t need an iPad, but once you try one, you’ll probably want it. For me, the iPad does everything I was expecting (books, photo display, email, newspapers), along with a couple of surprises (Netflix). It does not replace a laptop or the iPhone, but that’s not the intent.
The new buzz-phrase used to describe the iPad’s core functionality is “content consumption.” If what we do now is consume newspaper, books, magazines, TV shows, movies, and web sites, then Apple has just invented a pretty damn good fork. I like the feel of chopsticks (newsprint and books) every once in awhile, but I can see myself sticking to the Apple’s new-fangled fork for most meals. Here’s a quick run-down of my initial key apps:
iBooks. I’ve been using an e-reader for several years, but my first generation Sony died a few months ago. I filled out the online order form a couple of times for an Amazon.com Kindle and a Barnes and Noble Nook, before deciding to hold out for Apple’s entry. I was not disappointed. For the geeks out there that know and care about e-ink vs. backlit LCD, I actually like the iPad better for reading. Between work and home, I have already spent more time reading from a backlit screen than from paper and my eyes haven’t yet felt tired as a result. I’m not even sure what “tired eyes” means.
Reading books is the one function that I required of this device and the experience is very satisfying. It took less than a minute to download my first book from the Apple bookstore (Ali Sethi’s The Wish Maker). It launches very quickly and brings up the last page I was reading when I left the book. Screen brightness can be lowered for bedtime reading (it is very bright, even at half-power) and the font can quickly be adjusted, both size and style, to match what I find most comfortable. I can search for specific passages (not necessary for a novel, but very useful for non-fiction), and set multiple bookmarks that create an instantly accessible index. All this, and it still feels like I’m reading a book.
Newspapers and Magazines. This is a category rather than a specific app. Every morning over coffee in my dining room, I can finally read pieces from the New York Times, USA Today, NPR, the San Jose Mercury, and the BBC. It’s not perfect, but give them time. The New York Times’s Editors’ Choice app is beautiful, seamlessly merging the paper’s traditional layout with color photos and video. It’d be perfect if the app provided the entire paper rather than just a few regularly updated pieces. The iPhone app actually has more content and the website has everything so it’s just a matter of time.
Magazines will be revolutionized by electronic distribution. Some have their own dedicated app (Men’s Health, Time, Outdoors, and more to come) while others distribute through an app called Zinio. Again, the interface is very intuitive to swipe through pages or use the more interactive options. It will only get better as publishers and advertisers maximize the technology (wait for Wired‘s app — the description looks amazing).
One app that I haven’t read much about but has the potential to catch on is Fluent News which aggregates news material from a variety of sources. It organizes the content in sections the way a newspaper would and let’s you decide which sources to promote or eliminate (e.g., more content from the Washington Post and none from Fox News).
Photos. At work, the iPad provides an amazing photo frame, cycling through hundreds of family photos at my desk. The interface to sort through photos is beautiful and the screen really shines.
Video. I have a bunch of video files ripped from DVDs that I can drop straight onto the iPad through iTunes and they look great. The speaker is surprisingly full and loud so headphones are not necessary unless you’re in a public space. The NetFlix app was a fantastic bonus. There’s a ton of content, movies and TV shows, all of which loads in about 25 seconds at the tap of an icon. Same with the ABC Player (although the content is limited by that network’s offerings, there are a couple of my guilty pleasures like Modern Family and V).
WordsHD. I’ve already blogged about my obsession with this Scrabble game. The iPad version is a bigger/slicker version of the same thing that allows me to continue playing my friends and family who are using the iPhone version.
No doubt there will be many more apps that I’ll find useful and entertaining in the months to come. The bottom line is that the device provide a very convenient way for me to stay current on what I find important from home while being thousands of miles away.
Suddenly my iPhone screen feels puny.
Intregrated Bilingualism
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The other night, I had the pleasure of attending the Governor General’s Awards in visual and Media Arts at the National Gallery on behalf of the U.S. Embassy. The prizes were essentially lifetime achievement awards for a diverse group of Canadian visual artists. The National Gallery’s great hall on a beautiful early evening was the perfect spot for the cocktail party and presentation.
The crowd included members of the younger art scene, local luminaries, as well as the friends and families of the honorees. I did the rounds, having previously mastered the art of holding a glass of wine with a napkin of cheese and crackers in one hand, so as to leave the other free for spontaneous new acquaintance hand-shaking. As I made the rounds around the circular hall, I met several artists and one woman who works for the Canadian government funding international development programs.
We all took our seats for the award presentation and short speeches by the recipients. The first speaker described the history of the awards and process by which the Canada Council for the Arts received nominations and selected the ultimate winners. I have become used to a certain level of Canadian bilingualism, just in my interactions on the street, in shops, and in restaurants. I was at first surprised to hear so much French in what I expected to be an English-dominated province. What really struck me during the hour-long presentation, however, was how every speaker incorporated both French and English.
I’ve been to many presentations that included two or more languages. Typically, these become very tedious in that the speaker repeats the same paragraph verbatim in each language. Every flight from the U.S. to Europe, for example, will have the most language-gifted flight attendant demonstrate his or her proficiency by repeating the standard buckle-your-seatbelt-don’t-smoke-save-the-kids-first diatribe in multiple tongues. Similarly, the law here requires all public signage to reflect both languages, repeating the warning or instruction in both languages.
This was different. Each speaker at the event, presenters and recipients alike, switched mid-speech between French and English. Instead of repeating the prior part of the speech, however, each simply continued in the alternate language. It was pretty clear for each speaker which language was most comfortable. The part of the speech, whether at the beginning or the end, that had the most jokes reflected the individual’s dominant language.
Although my three years of high school French failed me years ago, I’m slowly improving. My French language comprehension has improved in the last month from panic-inducing non-existence to simple incompetence. Thankfully, my seat-mate was kind enough to translate the jokes for me every time I frowned in concentration (“OK, I know that one was about a talking fish, right?”).
On the street, just about every shop, cart, and restaurant staffer will make an instantaneous guess as to whether you speak English or French and address you in that language. For whatever reason, I have a Gallic look as more often than not the greeting comes in rapid-fire French. My tortured accent, however, always undermines my attempt to blend and the conversation typically reverts quickly to English. I’m working on it.
For most foreign service posts, I will have to pass a certain level of fluency in the local language. In Ottawa, one of our consular officers is fluent in French while another is fluent in Spanish. Me, I guess I’m fluent in sarcasm (which doesn’t always translate here in Canada). For those with an interest, even if the current job is not language-designated, the Foreign Service provides access to an online version of Rosetta Stone.
I was skeptical. How can anything sold primarily through infomercials and mall carts actually be worthwhile? It turns out to be pretty good. I’m working at glacial speed, mostly because I’m lazy, but I do find it useful. My goals are modest, but still well beyond my current grasp. To be seated in a restaurant and receive the French language menu from the hostess. And, of course, to understand the jokes without translation.
Tags: arts, bilingual, bilingualism, Canada, Foreign Service, French, Ottawa, representation events
