Fogbow

Just a brief heads up that I may be incommunicado for most of the next 6 weeks if all does not go well.

My current country of assignment started cracking down on certain ISP 'liberties' today, and that includes a lot of the stuff that most Americans take for granted like VPNs and social media. ISPs are following the party line on this. If y'all only hear from me sporadically for awhile, it's because the workarounds are being stomped out faster than we can come up with them.

I'll try to stay safe, I promise.

ETA: '6 weeks' is because I'm wheels up from here to head back to D.C. for training, then Florida for home leave, then my next assignment, 6 weeks from Sunday. So.

Well, that sounds like a full lather-rinse-repeat cycle to me. Enjoy the change of pace, and may your new desk have a better view than the last one.

Keep safe!

If it comes to pass, you will be missed but we'll look forward to your return.

Take care, keep safe and come back soon!

We’ll miss you!

Give us a heads up when you get to Florida. There’s a few of us down here, maybe we can do a mini meet up.

Take care! We’ll miss you

If you would prefer a third world posting perhaps you might consider the Uk?

Take care.

Uninformed wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 5:46 pm If you would prefer a third world posting perhaps you might consider the Uk?

Take care.

That was my post before here, actually. Did two years commuting daily from East Putney to Vauxhall. Enjoyed my time immensely but the 45 minute minimum mass transit commute each way did stretch that enjoyment some. But, you know, weekends in Soho & Chinatown, the occasional trip to far side of town for fresh baked 'beigels' from Brick Lane, wandering South Bank with friends who came to town (the Clink Museum was my go-to for a quick just-a-couple-of-hours quirky thing to do with visitors). One of my employees did a side hustle as a professional photographer and his amazingly great black and white shot of the London Eye is sitting in a storage unit waiting to be hung at my next apartment.

All very pedestrian, I know, but I truly enjoyed my time and the team keeps asking me to come back for visits. I may have to go later this year.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 2:20 pm

Give us a heads up when you get to Florida. There’s a few of us down here, maybe we can do a mini meet up.

Good plan. I should be in the tri-county area between mid-Aug and mid-Sept (my first few weeks back in the States, I need to do some periodic required retraining, and some mid-level post-promotion training, plus some meetings with some folks who can bring me up to speed on the projects I'll be handling in my next assignment, so I'll get to 'enjoy' DC in the late Summer, then come back down to the other East Coast swamp region).

Take care and hope you can still reach out to family and friends.

We found a Day One workaround. We'll see if it's still working around by Day Two, I suppose. One day at a time, for the next 6 weeks. I don't want to say "and then it's someone else's problem", since, uh, that's not a great mindset, but it'll be less of a drain, at the very least, when I can consult from afar.

Ben-Prime wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 9:24 am My current country of assignment started cracking down on certain ISP 'liberties' today, and that includes a lot of the stuff that most Americans take for granted like VPNs and social media. ISPs are following the party line on this. If y'all only hear from me sporadically for awhile, it's because the workarounds are being stomped out faster than we can come up with them.

When you are on safer shores, will you be able to tell us what country your now-finishing assignment is in? I have a suspicion and would be interested in whether I'm right or not.

johnpcapitalist wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 11:22 pm

Ben-Prime wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 9:24 am My current country of assignment started cracking down on certain ISP 'liberties' today, and that includes a lot of the stuff that most Americans take for granted like VPNs and social media. ISPs are following the party line on this. If y'all only hear from me sporadically for awhile, it's because the workarounds are being stomped out faster than we can come up with them.

When you are on safer shores, will you be able to tell us what country your now-finishing assignment is in? I have a suspicion and would be interested in whether I'm right or not.

Yes. I can also say for now that my next assignment will be a reasonably safe Latin American country and I'll be there by mid-September. So that'll be nice.

So, after 34 total hours of airport layovers and flight time, I am back in D.C. for a few weeks of meetings and trainings. Safe and sound. I was, as some of you guessed, in Myanmar (or Burma, if you prefer) for my previous assignment. I'll leave any further comment there except to say I found the individual people kind, the food amazing, and the dollar went far enough that I bought some nice teak furniture for my next apartment.

More important, I am sitting in a hotel eating a nice takeout sammich and drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and all is right with my world. I will likely crash in a few hours, I stayed up as long as I could, but it's already 2am Tuesday to my body and I've gotten only 4 hours of sleep since what was Sunday morning my time. I'm beat.

But safe. Let's not forget that.

Most excellent.

Welcome back to the States!

Ben’s back!