The Bid List

I can't believe it's been almost three weeks since I've posted. I've had drafts of three posts ... but some how between William and Patrick I just never finished them. So they will be relegated to the trash and I'm just going to start afresh.

We have two-fold excitement in the house this week: leaving for the US in a few days and bidding on our next post. I don't think I need to say much more about getting on a plane for 30 hours ... so I'll tell a little bit about the bidding process.

As untenured officers, our assignments are "directed" - that is, they give us a list of jobs, we rank 20 of them, then they assign. As a tenured officer, the process is much more like finding a normal job -- you see what positions each bureau has available, you send in your resume and "lobby" (aka network), and then a "handshake" is offered. That's for later, though. For now we're still being directed.

The Winter 2010 bid list was just issued on Friday (after the first tranche of people in difficult places like Af-Pak-Iraq were given their jobs). For us, the revised list didn't matter so much. Some of our colleagues were upset that Berlin and Auckland were gone, but those were never options for us to begin with.

Even though the list contained about 300 jobs, realistically, we only had 4 (or maybe 8) cities to choose from. Our criteria: (1) two jobs together where we can take kids (and hopefully Bagwelle!) and (2) jobs with training requirements that fit the rules. Because we had a year of training before coming here (all that Telugu!), we are only eligible for an additional 6 months of training before our next post, which basically rules out learning another language - and rules out a significant number of potential jobs.

This has left us with jobs in Manila and Washington as "perfect" fits (meaning, we leave Hyderabad in January, as scheduled) and Kingston (Jamaica) and Kampala (Uganda) as "imperfect fits (meaning, we leave sometime between December and March). That's the whole kit and kaboodle. Not very much considering the list had 300 positions on it!

Now, we're not complaining; we're mostly just surprised at how short the options are. Both Manila and Kampala are reportedly good places for families. And we have a lot of friends in DC (not to mention family in the US) - though I would prefer not to have to pay for two kids full time in day care! Kingston is less appealing because of the significant crime and the difficulty of consular work there (no, we would not be living on an all-inclusive island resort!).

For awhile we thought we might be able to swing some bids on jobs in Tunis, Singapore and Frankfurt. Tunis and Frankfurt if they bent the time-in-training for one of us (Greg would learn French or me German). Singapore if they let one of us arrive early. But, as it turns out, the training rule is hard and fast. And if we ask for an exception for Singapore, we'd also have to add Lagos and Abuja (both in Nigeria) to the list ... a risk we're not so thrilled to take.

Assignments will likely happen the end of March or early April. Stay tuned ...