Collecting Postcards

Foreign Service Housing

by pennypostcard • May 24, 2019 • 2 Comments

Over the years, I have received lots of questions about housing benefits in the Foreign Service (FS) – primarily what my houses have looked like, if I liked them, and whether I got to pick them. Foreign Service Officers are assigned government-owned (or leased) housing to live in during overseas tours as a benefit of our employment. There can be a misconception that diplomats overseas “live like kings,” but where we live is much more about what is available within the applicable regulations – and sometimes that isn’t great – unless you are an ambassador or deputy chief of mission with a representational residence. (For more on housing sacrifices made by FS families, please read this really terrific article by former FS spouse Donna Scaramastra Gorman, “The Reality of Being a Foreign Service Spouse.”)

Whether you feel like your FS housing is an odd temporary space to put up with, or adore it and cherish it as your own home, the topic of housing inspires a lot of discussion – worry and questions, complaints and gratitude, and plenty of laughs. One post in an FS-related Facebook group asking for submissions of the strangest FS housing quirks led to hundreds of comments and hilarious photos that had me in stitches. I had a submission or two of my own, but so far we have been very lucky. Here I share my perspectives, along with never-before seen photos of our official residences from our first two tours in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Canberra, Australia.

Australia, Foreign Service

But Who’s Counting?… PCS Update I

by pennypostcard • May 19, 2019 • 1 Comment

We have now entered the 75 days-remaining-in-Australia window… but who’s counting? As the days grow fewer, I’m ramping up my departure preparations and trying to keep the details from becoming a bigger lift than necessary. Here is a snapshot of how V and I are getting ready for yet another Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move.

Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture

Work-Life, Unbalanced

by pennypostcard • May 11, 2019 • 2 Comments

Lately, I have been thinking a lot (and feeling all the feels) about the issue of work-life balance: why does balance going sideways seem to happen to some people more often than others? And is getting the balance back really as simple as just “leaving work?” I can’t say that I have all the answers, but I’m getting closer to my own personal solutions.

Australia, Foreign Service

Lest We Forget

by pennypostcard • April 26, 2019 • 0 Comments

Each year on April 25, Australians and New Zealanders hold a day of remembrance to honor their fallen service members. Anzac Day was originally meant to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) volunteer soldiers who landed at Gallipoli, Turkey on April 25, 1915. The battle at Gallipoli, sometimes also called the Dardanelles Campaign, was the first time Australian and New Zealand troops fought together in World War I. More than 11,000 ANZAC soldiers were killed and a further 23,500 wounded at Gallipoli. In the decades that followed, the holiday broadened to honor the fighting Anzac spirit that is a large part of the national identity.

All over Australia, Australians mark Anzac Day with dawn services, marches, and remembrance ceremonies, and reflect on the lives of those who persevered and died protecting the freedoms and values we enjoy.

Australia

I Love a Sunburnt Country (Wide Brown Land)

by pennypostcard • April 24, 2019 • 1 Comment

More than 100 years ago, a young woman living in England penned a poem about her abject homesickness for Australia. When she returned to Sydney a few years later, her poem was published and became one of Australia’s most iconic patriotic poems.

Australia, Foreign Service

Making Memories in Canberra

by pennypostcard • April 21, 2019 • 5 Comments

Since I came back from leave at the end of February, I have been working at breakneck speed. I’ve managed visits from Washington across two separate weekends, and spent several nights in the office until 10pm trying to catch up and stay on top of workload. It honestly feels a bit like a losing battle, although in a few more days, the 100 days-left-at-Post countdown will start. With that in mind, I have tried to focus at least somewhat on having fun and enjoying the time we have left in Canberra while it lasts. Here are some memories of doing that over the last several weeks.

Foreign Service

Collecting Postcards Turns Five

by pennypostcard • April 13, 2019 • 1 Comment

I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that five years have passed since I first launched the Collecting Postcards blog on April 13, 2014. Some parts of the last five years are easy to quantify. Two agencies, five job assignments. Three cars. Homes on three continents. Travel in 14 countries. Five hospitalizations. Two pets. I’ve written 180 blog posts which 33,000 visitors from over 165 countries have viewed nearly 105,000 times. Everything else that’s harder to quantify? Well, that’s where you’ll have to read more deeply.

Leadership & Work Culture, U.S.

Work Email: A Love-Hate Relationship

by pennypostcard • April 4, 2019 • 1 Comment

In early 2018, I got hooked on a Harvard Business Review podcast called “Dear HBR” that a former Peace Corps colleague and LinkedIn contact recommended.

During each episode, hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn read three listeners’ letters on workplace dilemmas and talk out solutions with a relevant industry expert. Some of my favorite topics have focused on toxic workplaces, getting sidelined, job-hopping, hard conversations, dysfunctional teams, poor communicators, ineffective leaders, personal rebranding, performance reviews, annoying subordinates, lateral moves, career transition, and bad bosses. I’m always happy to see a new available episode of “Dear HBR.” A couple of weeks ago, the third letter on a new episode called Benefits and Perks got my attention. It was about managing the crush of work email upon returning from leave, and that topic is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Australia, Foreign Service, Travel

Tasmania’s East Coast (Aussie Road Trip, Part III)

by pennypostcard • March 29, 2019 • 2 Comments

[This post is the third part in a series about the road trip I took last month with my mom and V. If you missed the first two posts, you can find them here and here.]

Day 9

The original plan had been to see more of Tasmania’s capital, Hobart on the afternoon of day eight and then move on to Port Arthur on day nine. However, we as human beings had not been able to move at the speed of my paper itinerary, after all. So after a quick redrafting of the plan, the morning of our ninth day we headed to the infamous Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), about nine miles away.

Australia, Foreign Service, Travel

Tassie or Bust (Aussie Road Trip, Part II)

by pennypostcard • March 20, 2019 • 4 Comments

After a wonderful but long day on Victoria state’s Great Ocean Road, we looked forward to a day of sightseeing in Melbourne, followed by an overnight ferry trip with the car to Tasmania. I hadn’t sailed on the Spirit of Tasmania since my grad school days in 2005, and I was excited about getting back to one of my favorite places in Oz. Only this time, I would sleep in a cabin with a bed rather than on the floor, and I wouldn’t have to drive on the left for the first time upon arrival!

[This is the second post in a series about the Australian road trip I took last month with my mom and V. If you missed the first post, you can find it here: Bush Capital to Great Ocean Road (Aussie Road Trip, Part I).]

Australia, Foreign Service

Career-Related News From the Field

by pennypostcard • March 13, 2019 • 3 Comments

In my prior post, I was recapping a February trip with my family to Melbourne and Tasmania. I’ll pick up where I left off on that very soon, but first wanted to share a little career-related news from down under.

Australia, Foreign Service, Travel

Bush Capital to Great Ocean Road (Aussie Road Trip, Part I)

by pennypostcard • March 11, 2019 • 4 Comments

Last month, my mom came to Australia for two weeks to visit V and I, and celebrate her milestone birthday. We spent a few days in Canberra (Australia’s “bush capital”), showing her around and letting her adjust to the 19 hour time difference (!). Then we took an epic eight-hour road trip through rural Victoria down to Melbourne, where we looked around the city and did a day trip down the Great Ocean Road. Afterwards, we loaded up ourselves – and my car – on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry and sailed 10.5 hours overnight to Australia’s island state of Tasmania. There we spent six days trying to circumnavigate the island’s breathtaking coastlines, lush valleys, and primordial forests. We then reversed our course all the way back to Canberra, spending a couple more days sightseeing around our little town and celebrating V’s own milestone birthday before my mom returned to American winter.

It will probably take me two or three posts to share all the cool things we did, so with no further ado – three Americans take an epic Aussie road trip across three states and one territory!

Australia, Foreign Service

Always Was, Always Will Be

by pennypostcard • March 6, 2019 • 3 Comments

If you have ever attended a celebration, speech, or conference in Australia, chances are it began with the speaker or master of ceremonies acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land you were on. That protocol is called an Acknowledgment of Country.

If you are truly lucky, you may have even experienced a Welcome to Country by an Aboriginal elder (sometimes also referred to as an Indigenous Australian). This Aboriginal welcome practice has been going on for thousands of years, long before the first white settlers landed in Australia. It is rooted in the Aboriginal cultural awareness of being in your vs. “another’s country,” how to ask properly for permission to cross into someone’s land, and how to welcome others into your land.

Australia, Foreign Service

Postcard from the Cricket

by pennypostcard • February 27, 2019 • 0 Comments

Earlier this month, V and I had our first Australian sporting experience: a game of cricket between the Sydney Thunder and the Hobart Hurricanes at Canberra’s Manuka Oval. I had bought the tickets a few weeks before in a sudden burst of enthusiasm for Australian sport, which I have paid almost zero attention to during my two and a half total years in Oz to date.

Australia, Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture

Five Weeks a’Furloughed

by pennypostcard • January 26, 2019 • 3 Comments

On Saturday, December 22, 2018, the United States government underwent a partial shutdown due to a lapse in appropriations, and V and I became two of the 800,000 federal employees furloughed without pay. This was my fourth furlough in 13+ years of federal service, but this one felt like it could potentially go on a lot longer than the others. Five weeks later, the longest shutdown in our nation’s history came to a temporary end with the passage of a continuing resolution, days before we planned to miss our second paycheck and our dental and vision plan (paid for through payroll withholdings) was about to start direct-billing me.

As I have said many times, I do not publicly discuss politics or comment on U.S. policy in my personal capacity. That is not going to change. There are a million people out there already doing that, and some even with considerable acumen. However, there are some takeaways I would like to share on the shutdown from my overseas perspective.

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