I knew going in that one of the hardest things I’d have to deal with was moving away and out of the lives of the many good friends I had back home, consequently missing out on all of the fun activities and gatherings we enjoyed. Staying in touch and connected with someone half a world away is a tall feat, even today with the vast array of social media available to us.
One of the many things we’ve enjoy doing since we were teenagers was having LAN parties (local area network). For the unitiatited, these are gatherings where the attendees bring their computers, connect them together and proceed to play games together until the wee hours of the morning. Repeat for multiple days if desired. It’s anything but healthy, but for the geeks among us, it sure is fun!
What a large LAN party might look like
In my home life I greatly enjoyed planning and organizing these, and that’ll be on my to-do list whenever I have the opportunity to make it back. These were great ways to spend quality side-by-side time with friends, drink in a friendly and relaxed environment, and generally unwind as guys. I’ve lost track of the great memories and friendships forged over the games we’ve played together at these events in the past.
In any event, there was a small gathering of friends back home that got together to do just that over this last weekend. I’ve never attended a LAN party remotely, but with the luxury of high-speed internet connections, the opportunity to join them remotely was afoot. I grabbed a 6-pack of a tasty-looking IPA, fired up Skype to share video, joined them on voice comms, and proceeded to spend a significant chunk of the weekend playing games with them remotely. It wasn’t quite like being there, but it’s the closest I’m likely to get for a while, and it was immensely enjoyable to see everyone, game, and trade bullshit.
It’s definitely moments like these that will allow me to stay connected in a meaningful way to my friends back home. Not everyone will be lucky enough find an activity like this that can be done together remotely, but keeping in touch with friends and loved ones back home will be an important aspect to maintain in this new life.
The weeks leading up to orientation were spent in a flurry of preparation. Of immediate importance was providing notice to my current employers, transferring ownership of tasks and systems management to other employees, bringing them up to speed on processes they are unfamiliar with and performing general knowledge transfers. While giving my notice wasn’t difficult, it was emotional. I’d been with my previous employer for many years and had formed strong working relationships with those within and without my department alike. My manager and coworkers were a pleasure, and I genuinely enjoyed the work I performed as well as the flexibility offered by my position. The looming change before me was intimidating not only because of the uncertainty of the future it offered, but also because I knew what I was leaving behind. Still, I had been there long enough to know that complacency was kicking in, and I was overdue for a change. It didn’t make it any easier.
My last two weeks flew by, and when I wasn’t at work I was spending my time going through my effects, cleaning up, packing, figuring out what to keep, and what to part with. Many cones in our class of specialists only received around three weeks of notice before they were scheduled to start orientation in Washington D.C., which after providing notice to previous employers only provided about a week or so of downtime to sort out the myriad of loose ends this life change would inevitably leave. Of primary importance during this time was maintaining communication with the State Department HR folks, and other staff resources which were assisting with the impending move, and sorting personal belongings for packout.
At this point, new hires have already received and responded to an initial offer letter and are waiting on or following up with a number of other forms and documents required to complete the employment on-boarding process and get themselves to D.C. Sometime after responding to the initial offer, candidates should receive the highly anticipated e-mail that contains their grade, stepping. and salary information. New hires are responsible for researching the various direct billing housing facilities available to them and making the appropriate arrangements for the duration of their training. They’ll also need to schedule and arrange a packout with with an approved moving agency. While the packout can be scheduled before receiving orders, travel orders must be issued and on-hand for the packout to occur. All of the information needed to complete this should be available to the new hires via the resources provided and communicated to them from HR and their orientation coordinators.
A simple sticker/tape labeling system to keep track of my posessions
On the home front, new hires will be referring to their packout guide for the complete details regarding the process and answers to many of their obscure questions. In general though, items will fall into one of the following categories:
Carry-ons and Baggage
Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB)
Household Effects (HHE / Storage)
Leftover junk that you don’t want to take with you
Obviously one must attend to packing their own carry-ons and other baggage they intend on traveling to D.C. with. These are the essentials, clothes, professional attire, toiletries, and other necessary objects of life that one cannot go without for several weeks. Next up is Unaccompanied Air Baggage, which has a hard size restriction and a weight restriction based on the number of people in your household. Generally, UAB will be the first of your personal effects to arrive independently at post – and it will be the only shipment you’ll get while you’re in D.C. – so you’ll want to use the UAB allowance for the things you’ll want and need that wouldn’t fit into your baggage, as well as other comforts (favorite kitchen appliances, entertainment, favorite household fixtures, stuff that couldn’t fit on your carry-on or baggage for travel).
Household Effects (HHE) will contain the bulk of your possessions. Furniture, appliances, clothes, kitchenware, television, and all of the other fixtures that make you feel at home. Basically, anything that you want to keep. Your UAB and HHE will be packed out at the same time, with UAB eventually being delivered to your housing in D.C., and HHE being placed into storage until you arrive at your first post. At this point, you can determine which items in your HHE will follow you, and which will remain in storage. The major exception to this is D.C. posts, in which all of the items you have in storage will come out with your HHE. WHen you’re serving at post you’ll have the option to keep items in storage rather than have them delivered to you in your HHE shipment.
Now, for the most part you can rely on the moving company to do the heavy lifting for you. They’ll make sure things are packed according to their own policies, they may make an inventory, disassemble and move heavy furniture, etc. I would encourage new hires to take it upon themselves to be self-reliant when it comes to the documentation and packing of their desired effects. If the movers end up repacking it to suit their needs, so be it – but no one is going to care more about your effects than you are, so be diligent and don’t blindly trust in a third party to treat your possessions as if they were their own. I would also encourage new hires to create and maintain an inventory of their possessions and pick up the appropriate renter’s insurance. Diligence of this sort will come in handy if anything ever goes awry with your move and you need to account for lost, missing, or damaged items.
In my case, the schedule was so compacted that my pack-out date was scheduled for after my departure. This complicates things a bit more, but as long as you have a friend or family member willing to oversee it, it doesn’t pose too much of a problem. I’d definitely recommend giving the “It’s your move” guide a glossing over in order to fill in the gaps and get a better idea of the process. Don’t forget to provide some refreshments for your movers, they’ll really appreciate it and it will hopefully encourage them to go the extra mile for you!
Given that I wasn’t even able to attend my own packout, its probably not something I’m entirely qualified to write about – and I haven’t even seen the results of my HHE, and won’t until I get to post! I’ll definitely provide an update at that point, but until then I hope this is informative or helpful to some of you and I wish you the best of luck on your own packouts!
This week marks our annual family fishing trip to Canada. Strangely, it does not usually involve the entire family, nor do we go every year, but that’s what it is.
For years we have come up to Canada in pursuit of Kamloops trout which inhabit many of the lakes in interior British Columbia, and we almost always end up at the same fishing camp. This may be a puzzling aspect to some of you. What is a “fishing camp”? Well, try to imagine a remote wilderness, with a set of cabins and basic facilities in which you squeeze into for a few days to a week, while taking in the natural beauty of the world and sitting in a boat with a line in the water on one of the many lakes in the area. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you will even catch a fish.
Shameless plug: http://www.meadowlakefishing.com/
I was eagerly checking my email for FSI session invites the first few days of this week. I had been on the Foreign Service Register for about 9 months at this point, and had all but given up on getting an invite to the September 17th FSI session which we knew had resulted in invites to some Diplomatic Security applicants. So, I had pushed this to the back of my mind and focused on catching fish. Our luck had resulted in 10 fine fishy specimens in the first two days of the week, and perhaps we’d try our luck at the elusive, yet alluring “wall fish”.
A wall fish was simply the tradition of the camp we had been visiting and is considered a fish in excess of 4 pounds (which is hefty for these trout!). Generally, there are around a dozen that are caught in any given season, and catching one would result in a bit of a celebration and commemoration of catching the unwitting fish. Of course, fish of this sort were difficult to hook, and require an arcane combination of know-how and luck. I had never caught one, and after we had collected some smaller fish (which we would call “smokers” for their deliciousness and application as a tasty treat after they had been smoked) we would shift or focus to lakes which produced larger trout in order to hook a big one and come away with tall fishing tale.
In any event, this meant that we were visiting a lake that, while being known for it’s larger fish, was often loathe to produce them, often resulting in coming home empty-handed (“skunked” in fishing terms). So, I settled into the boat and immersed myself into the audiobook I was enjoying at the time (Cormac McCarthys “Blood Meridian”), and spent the hours of the day fishing away.
Eventually, 6 PM rolled around – which marked the time we ought to consider packing it in and heading back to camp to enjoy a 7 o’clock meal. It hadn’t been a bad day. In fact, it had been uncharacteristically good, and we would be headed back with 3 fish in the 14-17 inch range, all of them quite fat. I elected to finish the chapter of the audiobook and head back in. I opted troll (row slowly with lines out) back over a particular spot that my father had identified as a “good place for fish to be” on my way out. It was at some point in the following minutes that I felt a rather substantial tug on one of my lines, to which I grabbed the rod and twitched the tip up to set the hook.
There was considerable resistance to this action on the other end of the line, so I knew the fight was on – and on it went, for over 10 minutes. The fish went long, it came close. It rose up out of the water, and dived down deep. I could see that it was no small fish by any means. It circled the boat multiple times, much like a shark – and finally just relied on it’s heft and gravity’s will to thwart my effort to bring it to heel. It was no small effort to balance just the right amount of tension on the line during all of this to ensure that the well-endowed fish did not snap the line entirely, but my efforts were rewarded when I was finally able to bring the exhausted fish to the surface and usher it into the net. It was by far the largest trout I had ever caught, and was beautiful (as far as fish go).
My father had already landed his boat, and was waiting for me at shore when I rowed up with my prize. It was most certainly a “wall fish” which was confirmed upon our triumphant return to camp. That night, we celebrated, I wore a loon party hat, talked about the occasion, and toasted our drinks in celebration. But this was not strictly a celebration of the fish, for I had checked my e-mail once I had returned to camp, and to my surprise there was an invite to the September 17th FSI session. I had been offered a position in the Foreign Service as an Information Management Specialist. Just like that, I knew my life was going to change.
The Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly the first place I’d look for war museum. The area has been entirely untouched by conflict aside from early confrontations with native peoples, and the Pig War, of which the only casualty was that of a (you guessed it) pig. That said, it’s not where I’d expect to find an amazing collection of military relics from a bygone era, but that’s exactly where one exists.
The Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum is a relatively unknown fixture of the area, yet in its hangars at Paine Field in Everett, you’ll find an impressive collection of aircraft, vehicles and other equipment from World War II and the adjoining eras. A number of them are unique, in that they are the last remaining example in the world of a particular model of aircraft – a feat made possible by the late Paul Allen, whose passion for history and aviation drove him to collect these relics and found the museum. The aircraft are painstakingly restored – many of them to flying condition. On pleasant summer weekends select aircraft will take to the sky and demonstrate in front of anyone who cares to watch.
A German Flak 88 fires as a Russian IL-2 makes a pass
Once a year, they have a premiere event called Skyfair, in which they invite other private owners and collectors to exhibit their own collections, and roll out a large number of their own aircraft for display and a subsequent airshow. Their tanks and other tracked vehicles will put on their own demonstration on a small parcel of land they’ve dubbed “The Tank Arena”. There’s a full gamut of family-friendly activities, exhibits, and demonstrations available on these days, helped along by knowledgeable docents and informational placards.
M4A2 Sherman tank
Low flying aircraft will buzz the crowds of spectators, in formation with, or perhaps in pursuit of other aircraft. Tanks will roll around the arena, fire their cannon, and generally struggle under their own weight. Banks of simulators will provide the opportunity for people of all ages to try flying their favorites. Of course, all of this is on top of the plethora of aircraft and other objects displayed by the museum on a daily basis.
For the experience offered by events like these, the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum is well worth the visit, even if you’re not propeller-head or military historian. It is rare to find such a large collection of lovingly cared-for artifacts in this corner of the world, as such I recommend anyone that lives in or visits the area to drop by and check it out.
Pursuit of Fockewulf 190 by a P-51 Mustang
P-47D taxiing for the spectators
RAF Spitfire delights the crowd
F4U Corsair on display with its distinctive gull-wings
