Ask not for whom the duty phone rings…

This week I’m duty officer; I was supposed to take my turn over Labor Day weekend, but had to switch because Ginny was only a month old then and I was still on sick leave. Basically, if you’ve been assigned the duty phone over a holiday, the only people that are going to switch with you are the ones with a bigger holiday. Not only was this week Thanksgiving, but Monday is Bonifacio Day, so the Embassy doesn’t reopen till Tuesday. The duty officer is the person the embassy operator rings if an American citizen calls with an emergency after hours. Under most circumstances, it’s an exercise in saying “no” to people nicely. Can I get a passport tonight so I don’t miss my flight tomorrow morning? No, there aren’t any after hours passport services here. Can the embassy represent me legally? No, sorry, but I have a list of lawyers I can send you. If someone gets arrested locally, I’ll need to go visit them and there are a few other kinds of cases that would require action, but hopefully none of those will happen (knock wood, etc.)

Sometimes American Citizen Services work reminds me of doing tech support for my old employer; most customers understood that we were really trying to fix their problems as best as we could, but others seemed to think there was a switch somewhere that was labeled “Static on John Smith’s Phone Lines” and it was malice or incompetence that was keeping me from turning it off. There isn’t really a cavalry of humanitarian miracle workers behind the embassy gates ready to swoop down and solve problems overseas, and I’m not withholding their services from you just to be contrary. Really, I promise! Yes, the U.S. military can have an injured soldier airlifted from Baghdad to Germany in 8 hours and perform miraculous lifesaving surgery when the soldier arrives, but if a tourist gets sick or injured while overseas, he has to pay his own doctor bills and medevac charges. And unless you are well enough to sit up in an economy class seat on a regular flight, that medevac is going to be EXPENSIVE. Like, at least new car expensive, nice new car expensive, maybe even house expensive depending on where you are and what services you need in flight. And if you are in a foreign country and think if things get really bad, you can always call the embassy and a team of well-trained professionals will come to your location in an air-conditioned helicopter to bring a layer of American-style justice complete with the Bill of Rights, or maybe airlift you out? No, sorry, you’ll just get me on the phone telling you I have a list of lawyers I can fax you.

Ixnay on Angkokbay

Well, we had big plans to go to Bangkok at the end of December, but as the cutoff date to purchase the tickets got closer, Steve and I admitted to each other we were dreading the trip. Ginny still doesn’t stay awake more than two hours at a stretch, and even that is pushing it sometimes, especially in the late afternoon. I started imagining what exactly that would translate to in Bangkok, and it started looking like we’d probably be taking six quick sorties from our hotel a day; Ginny hasn’t had to learn to nap anywhere but in her crib (or her swing if she’s feeling particularly fractious) so making plans assuming she’d nod off in the stroller during a tour of Wat Pho seemed like a bad idea.

Friday evening was the kicker when we walked over and tried to drop in on a happy hour at the recreation club. Ginny was in the place less than 2 minutes before she had a total meltdown. Was it the smell of the chips and salsa? The several new people that came to say hello to her? The music playing? Who knows, but she stayed pretty much a mess the rest of the evening. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around paying $1000 for airfare so she could do the same thing in another city while we ordered room service and wished we had her swing or her bouncy chair or whatever. So her first trip out of a 5 mile radius of where she was born is probably going to be the Mother of All Trips, 24 hours back to the U.S.! Pity our planemates!

Aunt Mary

My aunt Mary passed away on November 8th after suffering a stroke in early October. She was 96 years old, so I guess she was nearly retirement age the first time I met her, but she always seemed to have such a youthful outlook. She loved to travel and had wonderful souvenirs from all over the world; saris from Varanasi, weird little cookies from Japan that seemed to never get stale, lace from Belgium, things like that. As a former art professor with a special interest in textiles, she kept a house full of things that fascinated my little girl self. Spinning wheels, drop spindles, and looms, and she taught me how to use them all. I remember one visit when we dyed wool using natural dyes; onion skins heated in water made the wool turn various shades of yellow depending on which kind of metallic salt the wool had been treated with. A particular species of lichen made it a brown color. Tiny Mexican cochineal bugs turned it red. At the end of every visit I would always cry when it was time to leave; we had never stayed long enough, and there were never plans to return any time soon.

When I was older, she wanted to share her love of travel with me and two of my cousins and invited us on a trip to Europe. If she hadn’t done that, I don’t think I’d be in the Foreign Service today. She was fiercely independent and accomplished so much that it’s easy for me to forget that her scholarly and professional achievement happened before the women’s movement ever came along. I’m not doing her justice in this post, but she was a wonderful aunt and role model for me and I loved her very much; I’ll really miss her.

Happy Birthday, GrandDaddy!

Today is the 88th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite people.  For the last 6 years now I’ve been thinking how lucky I was to discover so much later than most people, that there really was that one person out there made just for me, and I finally found her.  And shortly after doing so, I met the people responsible for making her.  I’m speaking of course of my Lisa, and her Mama, and her Daddy, Tom .  And today is Tom’s birthday, and Lisa and Ginny and I want to send all our love in his and MamaJean’s direction today.

We open the post with a picture of  GrandDaddy a few years ago…. OK, QUITE a few years ago…  on his commission as a Navy officer and aviator.  Since this pic was taken, he fought a world war, opened and operated his own business for a while, married a true Southern Belle, and sired my favorite person in the whole world, my wife Lisa.   There are no pictures of Tom and Ginny together yet, but we’ll correct that in January; for now, they’ll have to be happy with being together in the same blogpost.   Here’s Ginny with a big smile for GrandDaddy on his birthday!

A Smile for GrandDaddy

Happy Birthday, Tom, and I hope you have many many more!
We’re looking forward to seeing everybody in January; we’ve finally got approval at work for Lisa’s leave, and we’re working out details now to see everybody we can; we’ll be in touch to let you know where we’ll be and when.
We had a pretty big weekend here; one of the highlights of the year on US Embassies around the world is the annual Marine Corps Birthday Ball, held as close to November 10th as possible.  This year’s was Friday the 6th, at the fancy Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati City here in the Manila Metro area.  I told a little about the ceremony last year, with the cake, and the youngest Marine in the Philippines, and the oldest… well, I guess last year’s oldest shipped back out, cuz this year’s oldest was a relatively young 60 year old, and the youngest was one of our Guard Detachment Marines again.  We stuck around long enough to taste the cake this year; it wasn’t quite as pretty as last year’s, but the party was a Hoot! (Shout out to all my Wisconsin friends, for the word Hoot as something other than the noise an owl makes).  I’ve mentioned time and again what a treat it is to get Lisa on the dance floor on those rare occaisions she’s willing to humor me; this year it was her idea at least half of the time, and we had a blast!!
I have pictures of the Marine Ball, of course, but a weird thing happened, and I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera after uploading some more pictures of Ginny.  Well, no problem, the camera has a little bit of on-board memory for just such emergencies… but since I always use the card, and I snatch the pictures off by removing the card from the camera and reading it in a reader on the PC (faster that way), I can’t figure out where I’ve hidden the proprietary cord that connects the camera to the PC.   So when I find it, I’ll post some pictures of happy people in party clothes!
In the meantime, Peace, Love, and Happiness to all y’all, and one more Big Happy Birthday to GrandDaddy Tom!

Three Months Old

Little Ginny Bean turned 3 months old today, and to celebrate we went into Rockwell (an area of Makati, which is itself a subset of Metropolitan Manila) to visit Dra. Pia Lorenzo, her paediatrician.  Final verdict is Ginny is very healthy and happy, and nearly on the money development-wise; we got her weight immediately up to the 50th percentile after the admonition of “too skinny” way back in September, and she’s hewing right to the 50th P line ever since.  She’s a little taller than average, at 25 inches today, and she’s got a big ol’ head, like her Daddy.  Hopefully, she’ll grow in to it.  It’s a beautiful head though, as evidenced here:

BigHead Ginny

We got some homework from the doctor; developmentally, she’s doing well, but she doesn’t get enough head, neck, and back exercise – “Tummy Time” is the key to that development, so she’s gotta have more tummy time, which she and most babies appear to like almost as much as I like liver and onions.  Which isn’t much.  But she and Daddy are now on a workout program, ten minutes at least 4 times a day.  There is some screaming involved, but she’ll get used to it, and soon she’ll be sitting up!!

We FINALLY got our leave dates approved from Lisa’s work, so we’re cementing details on a trip home to the US roughly Jan 9 to 29.   We’ll be barnstorming a bit, having to hit Atlanta, Jackson MS, and the DC-MD area, but we’ll get an itinerary to those who care, maybe you can come find us in one of those places.   David and Katie, this means you two, specifically   You’re not morally obligated to visit your uncle Steve, but you are obligated to visit your mothers… I just think you should do it when your Uncle Steve happens to be in town…

On an interesting but unrelated note, I’ve got some additional news… I told some of y’all when I was home in June that I had been scheduled to take the Foreign Service Officer Test that week; well, I missed it of course, but they re-tested in Manila in October, and I’ve passed!   That’s only step 1, of course; I now have to write a series of essays to indicate that my resume isn’t a pack of lies, then if that goes OK I’ll be invited to attend an Oral Assessment and Review.  That happens in the US, so I’ll get to make one more trip home before next September!! Exciting!

Ah – further explanation, or lack thereof – neither Lisa nor I can remember exactly when or why we started calling Ginny “the bean” but we did, and it’s kinda stuck.  I also call her GinnyBinny on occaision, and her YaYa (nanny, in Tagalog) can’t seem to grasp the phonetic difference between Ginny and Jenny, so calls her the latter.  This same YaYa, Ednalyn, also meows and sings “here kittykittykitty” to calm “Jenny” down when she cries.  She’s a little strange, but she’s great with the Bean, and loves spending time with her, and dressing her up and showing her off to the other compound YaYas.  And for that reason, I got a little schoolin’ from Ednalyn this morning when it was time to take Ginny to see Dra. Pia.  I fed Ginny her 9 am bottle, shared an invigorating belching session with her, and changed her diaper, then picked out something for her to wear to the doctor, a pretty little pink onesie with the words “Little Girl” on the front.  I thought with the ongoing lack-of-hair situation, it was only fair to give people a little hint.   So I’ve got her all dressed, and up comes Ednalyn, to make sure I’ve not forgotten anything, or done anything stupid (she knows her job very well).  The scene played out like this:

EDNALYN (Sees Ginny, adopts a troubled expression): That what she going to wear, sir?

ME:   Yes, isn’t it nice?  (sees troubled expression) it’s clean!!   (expression persists) Is it OK?

EDNALYN (In a tone of voice one might use to address a retarded child):  No Sir.  Something Nice.  She going out.

At which point Ginny was whisked from my arms, and quickly redressed in a beautiful pink dress with flowery bloomers and a print of Pooh and Piglet on the front.  Of course, you know everybody who saw her at the doctor’s office commented on how beautiful she was, and what a nice outfit she had on.  That lady’s worth her weight in gold.

Well, I could write all night, but I’ll save some for later… we’ve topped the One Thousand mark on pictures of Ginny, and I’ve shared a hunk of  ‘em, but she changes nearly every day still, so I’m always taking more.  I send a packet of new ones to Pop every once in a while; if anyone’s jealous and wants prints, lemme know.

Peace!

BOO!

Ginny's First Halloween!

There’s Ginny in her first ever Halloween costume, sent by her grandmother! She celebrated by sleeping her longest sleep ever, 10 1/2 hours from 8:05 pm – 6:35 am!  Coincidentally (or not), another typhoon was passing through; she really seems to sleep well when these storms are happening.  Maybe the darkness helps, maybe the additional white noise helps, I don’t know.  The fact that the darn things always happen on the weekend doesn’t hurt, since I don’t have to wake her up to eat before I leave for work.

The eye of this typhoon (named Santi in the Philippines, international name Mirinae) passed just south of us, and was a category 2 when it made landfall but had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it reached the west side of Luzon where we are.  Manila was at Storm Signal #3, which means banana plants will probably be destroyed and coconut trees may be downed.  A tree fell across our neighbor’s front walk, the power went out last night about 3, and I think we are still on generator backup.   The wind and rain have stopped, though, and it’s getting brighter outside.

A weekend storm like this doesn’t change the routine much, since I usually spend all but a couple of hours in the house anyway.  My world has shrunk down considerably since Ginny’s arrival, and is mostly reduced during the week to wake up at 0530,  work, have three hours of baby time in the evening, then sleep, lather, rinse, repeat.  Last Friday Steve and I went with some co-workers to the Hobbit House for our first evening out since the baby arrived, and while it was fun, the two hours of sleep I lost have stalked me ever since.   I think I made up for it last night though, which is good because the Marine Ball is next weekend, and I can’t miss a once a year event like that just for being tired.  I couldn’t organize getting a new dress, so I’m wearing one I wore to another event last year even though it’s kind of ill-fitting right now like most of my other clothes.  Who wants to buy a fancy dress for a three month postpartum body, anyway?

19.5 degrees North x 99 degrees West; AKA Ciudad de Mexico!

We’ve been given our Forward Assignment!!  I know, yes, it’s quite early – we have another year here in Manila, they just do the assignments a year in advance of your exit – so for Junior Officers, who do 2-year tours, you learn at the halfway point where you’re going next.  Anyway -

  The picture above is Ciudad de Mexico, or Mexico City, or the Federal District of Mexico.  It’s known as “DF,” short for Federal District Backwards and In Spanish, in State-Department-speak.
It’s stop #2 on the New World Tour, announced last week via an e-mail from the Department of State.  It’s a gigantic city, nearly 9 million in the city, 19 million in the Metro area, compared to 1.6 city, 12 million metro for Manila.  The complaint we’ve heard that DF is crowded though rings a little hollow – according to WikiPedia, Manila’s population density is 111,500 people per square mile, whereas the DF is “only” 6500 per square mile. By comparison, LA is 8200/sq. mile, NYC is 27,000, and Atlanta is 4018/sq. mile inside the city.

It’s tropical, it’s Latin, it’s rich in history, and sometime around May or June of 2011, it’ll be Home!

Typhoon Headed North

Just a quick note to say that Typhoon Parma/Pepeng is now forecast to hit the extreme northern end of Luzon (that’s the big island that Manila is on the southern part of) and we shouldn’t get anything too bad. It’s been overcast and a little rainy this morning, but nothing serious.

Ondoy and Beyond

Typhoon Ondoy came through the Manila area last weekend and caused a lot of flooding and damage in the city. Sadly, many of our Filipino colleagues at the Embassy suffered significant flooding as the rains continued, and some folks got stranded away from home but we stayed dry where we were. I didn’t realize until later that the storm had made international news and people back in the U.S. were concerned about us. Although one of the parking lots here had some deep water in it and a couple of cars got flooded out, we and all our possessions stayed dry. The compound has backup generators that remained online the whole time so we didn’t even lose power. The water purification system may not have been able to keep up with contamination introduced by the floodwaters, but testing is still underway to verify. I kept drinking the tap water for several days after the storm and nothing bad happened, but I’ve switched to bottled water until the taps are given the all clear. The baby’s formula has always been mixed with bottled distilled water, so I’m a lot less concerned than I could be. Incidentally, the day of the heavy rains marked the least fussy day she’s had her whole life, with proper naps and everything.

There’s another storm on the way that’s scheduled to pass north of Manila, but might bring significant rain to the already waterlogged city. We’ve talked about which items to grab first to move up to the second floor if the water gets deep, but that’s more about me being paranoid than about any real worry right now. Our townhouse has three floors and the drainpipes work well to shunt water off the upper balconies, so there’s plenty of room to move upward to stay dry. There’s not enough high ground for every car in the compound to have a dry spot if it gets too deep, but the VW has 150,000 miles on her and has certainly had a good run if it comes to that. In any case, I’ll post updates sooner after the storm this time.

And Success!

We managed to get back to the Picture Company a week or so after Lisa’s disappointed post entitled “Thwarted.”  This time Ginny was a little more receptive, and the photographer, Abu, managed to get some nice ones.  Here’s a montage we got from them.

If you click on the photo, you’ll get a monstrous-big version so you can look at the individual photos that made up the montage.  Lisa’s hands making the heart and Ginny holding my thumb were Abu’s creative contributions to the thing, and he was very patient and easygoing with her; I was pleased with both the experience and the results, which were far better than I expected on both counts.

Time is flying by as it has become accustomed to doing; Lisa goes back to work a week from today and we’ll adjust to yet another new reality.  I won’t be flying solo, of course; the “Ya-ya” or Household Helper/Nanny we’ve hired is starting to take more of a role with Ginny these days, and she’ll help out.  Til recently, she’d been taking care of cooking and housework leaving us free to worry about Nothing But The Baby, but now she may do a “put down for nap” or pick up from a nap, so I can take a nap or two myself.  I’m going to try to take the bulk of the overnight responsibility so Lisa can get enough sleep to function at work.  

Ginny is getting about 2/3 of her diet from breastfeeding, the rest supplemented with formula in a bottle; to keep that going Lisa will extract and store milk a couple of times a day at work, and at first at least, Ginny and I will make a run up to the Embassy at lunchtime for a little boobysnack for the baby.   That way we’ll be able to keep the breastmilk percentage up as high as possible, and I’ll get to have lunch with Lisa, which we’ve really come to enjoy doing with her being home these last 7 weeks.

Ginny is healthy and happy and gaining weight at a healthily-fast rate, according to her doctor; we’re at 9 lbs. 12 oz. as of this morning, or two pounds over initial birth weight.  Hard to believe some babies are born this big and even bigger – Ouch!!

We’re starting to think about making a little trip the weekend after Christmas, over the New Year holiday; we think it might be nice to do a touristy thing with Ginny, so we’re going to visit Bangkok for a few days, and tick another country on my “Cool Places I’ve visited that a lot of people haven’t” list.   I might never catch cousin Tony, but I’m going to give it a run.

Also, we’ll be home for a long stay in January of 2010, and should get to see most everybody.  We’re going to land in ATL, visit Mississippi, and finish up in MD/DC/VA on a three-week trip in mid-January.   We’re in the process of what the State Department calls The Bidding Cycle, where they give us a list of available jobs for Lisa to move to for her second tour, we give them around 20 “bids” rated High, Medium, and Low, which indicates our level of desire to work there.  The cynic in me says we then get a letter from the government assigning us to another city altogether, not among our bids, but in reality they try to assign us to a High post, as long as we’re realistic about our High bids.   They’re in the process of revising the list of places we can choose from now; the original list was full of awesome and fascinating places, many of which have already been removed from it, so we’ll have to see what the final chapter is.  We’ll know something very soon, though – it’s very exciting!

That’s enough for now – more pics, and more on the Onward Assignment, in a future post.