Welcome Back - Part 1

Wow, it's been almost a year since my last posting.  A lot has happened since last January but every time I thought about sitting down and writing about it, something else always came up.  Rather than write a long essay on what I did over my summer, I'll parse it out into smaller postings, in no chronological order.

First up:  Bidding, aka where do we go next.  To end the suspense:

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We'll be trading West Africa for Southeast Asia.  We're very excited - Phnom Penh was our number one choice.  It will be a three-year tour, so I expect a few visitors, certainly more than we have had in Bamako.

This will be our first post to post transfer (remember, my first posting was Charleston, SC).  That means we'll have home leave - and we are thinking of spending most of it in Provincetown, MA.  Just in time for Carnival in August.  It will be great to spend time on the beaches, riding the Provincelands Dune Trails, and most of all seeing some of my favorite performers:  Varla Jean Merman, Miss Richfield 1981, Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans and Showgirls, Dina Martina.  Maybe even RuPauls Drag Race Tour and Well Strung might have some appearances in PTown this summer.

After some training in DC, home leave, and visiting family and friends, we should be in Phnom Penh mid-September.

Since I'm now a seasoned Foreign Service bidder (ha!) I'll give you my advice (that worked for me - but may not for you)

1. Build up your "corridor reputation", by whatever means.  Give good service, be nice to people (even when you don't want to), follow-up on your tasks, check in with your network and contacts, and just be an all-around great person.  Deliver things on time, especially to people in the regional and functional bureaus back in the U.S.  They remember that stuff.
2. Meet people.  Do consultations whenever you're in DC or any regional hub for your cone or speciality.  For me that means Charleston and Bangkok, too.  Take the opportunity to meet people who come to post on temporary assignments - you never know.  Go to conferences or regional meetings or training opportunities and meet people.
3. Decide what's important to your career and quality of life and choose posts accordingly.  Yeah, I know, most people already do this.  But I think the key is to really narrow it down to just two or three make-or-break criteria.  For me, that was a) diplomatic accreditation for Mark; b) keeping a 20% or higher differential to keep eligibility for the student loan repayment program; and c) ease of getting Cosmo to post.  Everything else is just icing on the cake, so to speak.
4. Pick three or four posts and concentrate on those.  Yes, we had to have at least five bids in the system.  I was given great advice - what you bid you own.  So don't put something in your bid list you aren't either 100% happy to get or that you know there's no way you'll get.  I had four posts that I really wanted and the other five were, well, throwaways.  Don't get me wrong, I would have been happy with Sofia - but there's no way I was getting it (not at this stage of my career) and I know that.
5. Make your interest in your top choices known.  I met with budget offices in the regional bureaus and told them what I was interested in.  I reached out to current incumbents to get their info.  I emailed my future bosses to introduce myself.  This was all before bidding opened.  That way when it came time to put in bids, the posts and bureaus knew me and knew I was interested.
6. Do your homework on your prospective posts.  I read over budgets and integrated country strategies and mission resource requests.  I visited their internal and external web pages and perused bios on leadership.  It's surprised me that people didn't do this.  I'm a financial management officer, so of course budgets and mission resources and the like are fundamental, as well as section staffing, systems, and upcoming projects.  I'm convinced that it doesn't take much due diligence to set yourself apart from the herd.

Having given all that advice - who knows if I just got lucky or it all really worked.  It was my first time bidding for my own tour, after all; Charleston and Bamako were chosen for me.  We'll see if this holds true in the next three years when we bid for our next assignment.

Of course an equally viable but opposite strategy is to just throw caution to the wind and let the bidding and assignment gods pick for you.  I know some who have done this and have had some great posts.  I'm a bit too controlling for that, though.

Next up - hopefully in the next couple of weeks - is a quick look back at 2018.  It was quite an exciting year.

Now for some of my favorite photos of Provincetown through the years