Tenure, a birthday and expat cravings

Yes, I am aware that it has been well over a month since I have last written here. I have not given up. There were several contributing factors, some of them good and some – not so much. To begin with, I recently learned that I did not receive tenure. Now, for those of you uninitiated folks, tenure in the Foreign Service means that, unless you manage to offend the local government to the point of destroying our diplomatic relations with your host country and they refuse to visit the U.S. even for cheap shopping and to visit Disney, you cannot be fired. Just like in an academic setting. One becomes eligible for tenure on the third anniversary of entering the Foreign Service. There are tenuring boards, comprised of senior FS folks, who convene a couple of times during the year in some deep secret place, armed with stacks of entry level officers’ annual evaluations, coffee and stale donuts, and a week or so later re-emerge with decisions who gets tenured that time around. An officer gets 3 bites at the apple – each on the consecutive anniversaries of her entry to the Foreign Service. If you do not get tenured on the 3^rd time (i.e., your 6^th year as a FSO), as Heidi Klum would say, “you are out!” and your blissful FS career is over. Rumor has it that only about 5% of tenure-hopefuls do not end up getting it and as a result are back on the hopeless, barren non-governmental job streets.  For more on that, read the State Department’s own missive about this wholesome process.

Public FS lore indicates that typically about 40-60% of a given A100 class will get tenure during their very first review. The Diplomat’s class was a glorious testament to that.  It became a complete mystery then as to what exactly happened to my class as we learned that only about 20% or so of us got tenured last month. Granted, the folks who did get it were stars and did some pretty amazing things as first-tour officers. I didn’t. I did some fantastic things. I came up with awesome innovations, made things more efficient, outreached to anyone who’d listen in Bangladesh, networked like a banshee and spread the good American word. But I did not save people from burning buildings or serve as the acting Ambassador in my second month or bust a drug ring or TDY (temporary duty) to Kamchatka. I guess that’s what it takes.  So, I have been busy being amazing these days.

Lovely life in Brazil continues. I must say that Cariocas are probably the most relaxed, casual people I have seen in my life. Everyone feels amazingly free in their own skin and clothes (or lack thereof). It is an enviable attitude to life, I admit. And speaking of clothing, animal print is all the rage in Rio right now. Cheetah print is especially cherished. I have seen cheetah pants, cheetah shorts, cheetah tanktops, cheetah dresses, cheetah running shorts, cheetah running leggings and cheetah compression socks for the gym, cheetah skinny shorts, cheetah bags, cheetah bathing suits, cheetah skirts, scarves, cheetah jewelry, all spiced up by a sprinkle of snake skin overalls and shirts! It is the jungle out here in Rio and people relate to it naturally! The day I see a man wearing animal print, I promise to give up and buy my own leopard skinny pants.

Last week we also celebrated Son’s 6^th birthday! And to think that I started this blog when he was about 6 months old. That is a LOT of time spent writing rather than doing something more productive, say – play with Son. At any rate, I decided to defy the Brazilian way and to actually host his birthday party in our home. Celebrating kid birthdays is an industry in Brazil, and folks go out of their way to throw their precious prodigy lavish and entertaining birthday parties. They rent big kid party rooms with all kinds of cool entertainment, hire magicians, clowns, what have you. Ever the dissenter (and being cheap), I decided that we were going to have Son’s birthday “American style.” Which meant at home, with me cooking and decorating and preparing party favors. In lieu of a clown, I offered Fat Cat. Sadly, one of Son’s little lady friends was a bit scared of the portly and reluctant entertainment so we locked him to away to his immense relief. Fat Cat does NOT enjoy children very much. I decided to make cupcakes instead of a big cake, something I have never baked in my life before. The thing is, it is one thing to choose to make red velvet cupcakes according to Martha Stewart and actually having the ingredients to do so. Like, for example, red food dye. You’d think that food dye is all the rage in Brazil, but shockingly –no. So, I sent the Diplomat on a wild goose chase on his bike in the heat of a Saturday afternoon to procure the dye. And procure he did, in a small cake shop in Copacabana. Mission accomplished – and the birthday and the resplendent cupcakes were a resounding success.

Which brings me to another philosophical point about living this nomadic, international life – no matter what, one naturally leans towards things known and comfortable and this is particularly true about food and cooking. I am so used to just going to the store and getting ready-made pie crusts, food dye, pickles (why are there no pickles in Brazil??), sour cream, mascarpone cheese, an olive bar, peaches, feta cheese, to just name a few. Well, here (and in many places in the world) you can find some of these things only in specialty stores at exorbitant prices, or not at all, frankly. At the same time, you can buy mangos and lychees for pennies, drink fresh coconut juice every day, eat cheeses you have never even heard about before and wear string bikinis on the beach (or anywhere for that matter) without a care in the world about your personal cellulite. I guess the only way to survive the constant culture shocks and clashes is to embrace your new environment immediately, try to understand it, use it in everyday life and end up ordering a lot of things from Amazon.com (God bless the diplomatic pouch!).  

Sadly and inexplicably, I continue to gain weight in Rio. I have now began running alongside the beach once or twice a week (read – I ran twice last week for the first time, and almost passed out the second time when I increased my running path to a whooping 2 miles). I have also adopted other, non-traditional exercise methods at work to help me in my quest for a late modeling career. For example, at least once a day, I climb up and down (admittedly, at the pace of a snail) the stairs of the Consulate all the way up to the 12^th floor in my 5-inch high heels. It serves a dual purpose really – besides working out, I also warm up since our Consulate maintains a comfortable -23C degrees inside and after sitting down for 15 minutes, I can’t feel my frozen fingers clanking on the keyboard of the computer and fear that if I type faster, they’ll just break like icicles. There are several structural reasons why the damned building is maintained so cold, but I don’t care. I am tired of walking around wrapped in massive colorful woolen scarves like an eccentric Buddhist monk. Climbing stairs warms me up and the people from the building across get a kick out of watching me stretch every 3 floors.

Another tough aspect of living overseas is not getting the TV channels you are used to and getting a bunch of new ones in a foreign language that you just learned. No matter how well you learned it in the past 6 months, and how strong your resolve to watching the news in the native language is, you are still barely understanding a small fraction of whatever the pretty lady is prattling about on TV or the gorgeous made-up creature is crying and hurling herself about in the soap opera. You will sit there, in your first days, still dedicated, straining your neck to hear better in the hopes of understanding better. You will not. You will give up. Unless you are the Press Officer at post, in which case you must.

And so you begin craving and missing your U.S. channels and all the good shows you were into and all the stupid ones you were REALLY into even though you never told anyone you watch them. The only channel that appears to be universally available anywhere in the world is actually CNN and so we end up watching a ton of it anywhere we go. At least we are always in the know.

But the world has moved much technologically in the last few years and now, thanks to a combination of wires, lack of wires, some pluggy thingamajigies, some random stuff that I honestly do not understand, some stuff that hides where my computer is and many more machinations, we are able to watch most U.S. TV shows. Yup, including the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Even the Kardashians show (did you know there was more than one??). Not that I do watch them. But I could if I felt the sudden urge to dumb myself down. So, life has definitely improved for the poor expat. And speaking of shows, I am hooked on a new one, called Married at First Sight, the premise of which is that a bunch of singles leave themselves in the hands of 4 experts with perfectly coiffed hair and eclectic tie choices to choose them a spouse and meet that spouse for the first time at the altar. Then they marry them sight unseen and get shipped off to a honeymoon and then back for a month of marital bliss. I freely admit to spending 4 straight hours on Saturday night and another 3 on Sunday and another 2 on Monday morning watching the whole shebang on FYI.com. It is a good show, people!

What else is going on? Ah, yes. I finally managed to attend a real reception with some fancy schmancy people hosted by our own Consul General where I met some really cool people. Then I got inspired and organized a reception for our own consular section and consular contacts in one of the swankiest hotels in Copacabana where I met even more cool people. Life is looking up, folks!