Learning My Job

Since A100 ended in October I've spent the last 8 weeks training for my new job as a vice consul in U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo. The first couple of weeks were composed of area studies where I was able to better familiarize myself with the history of Latin America and specifically Hispaniola, the island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti. It was great being able to take that time to learn the history as it very much informs the current environment on the island, and that'll help me better do my job.

Those of you who are not familiar with the State Department will be unfamiliar with what consular work entails. The Bureau of Consular Affairs says its mission is "to protect the lives and interests of American citizens abroad and to strengthen the security of United States' borders through the vigilant adjudication of visas and passports." That means our work is a lot more than just visa interviews. For example, if you have a baby overseas, we provide the documents that certify the kid is American.  If you lose your passport, we'll print you a new one. If you find yourself destitute overseas, call us, we can get you home. If you happen to get arrested overseas, we'll come visit you and make sure you get treated fairly. If you happen to die overseas, we call your family and notify them and help make arrangements for your body. This is heavy and serious work. Most Americans will never meet a consular officer, but if you do, it's likely at a very important and sensitive time in your life. All of this is our priority; service to our fellow Americans takes precedence always. But we also have a national security function as well. The citizens of most nations are required to obtain a visa to visit the U.S. All of these people must come into one of our missions to be interviewed. The security and background vetting that each applicant goes through is impressive. Every law enforcement and counterterrorism database you can think of is cross-referenced with our applicant's information. Facial recognition software and fingerprints are also used and crosschecked against any face or finger that has ever come before any of our systems. All of this information is then provided to us for our interviews.

You may wonder why I'm going into such detail on this point. That is because the work of visa officers is in the news lately since someone who entered the country on a visa went into a building in California and killed a lot of people a few weeks back. This has brought scrutiny to our work not seen since 9/11. This means a lot of ignorant people now have opinions about things they know nothing about. Being ignorant is not a crime, mind you. The amount of things I know is a drop in the ocean when compared to the amount of things I don't. What I have a problem with, however, is people talking about things as if they're an authority on the subject when, in fact,  they have no idea what we do. As of one week ago, I have completed the training all consular officers get before being sent abroad to do the work in the field. And I can tell you that I am impressed with the seriousness with which the security of the country is taken. Any American who got to see what we do to vet applicants would be heartened by the process. That said, we can't read minds. Until she went into that disability center in San Bernardino and shot all those people, the woman here on that K-1 visa was a law abiding citizen. There was no reason to refuse her visa. If someone with the exact same background applies tomorrow, they'll get a visa too. I get why this is disconcerting, but these are the risks you take when you have an open society. We've decided that letting people visit and immigrate to the U.S. is better than closing them out. (The research backs that up, mind you.) If you close our borders, nobody will kill Americans except other Americans. And we're very good at killing each other. So, that wouldn't make us any safer when you think about it.

Ok, rant over.

The training was really well done. The Consular Affairs Bureau is one of our better financed bureaus (being the only fee-collecting branch of the Department helps) so they have fun toys to make the learning environment conducive for maximum absorption. The course, colloquially known as ConGen,  is six weeks long and is broken into four modules: Nonimmigrant visas, Immigrant visas, American Citizen Services, and Special Citizen Services. The course starts with reading the law, then thinking about how it applies in case studies, then, the fun part, role playing. The CA bureau has a fake visa interview room with about 20 windows for us to practice interviewing. So, we take turns playing officers and applicants. The instructors have typed up roles for the applicants complete with fake-backgrounds in our systems for us to investigate. In my very first role-play, I issued a visa to someone who was in our system as being suspected of terrorism. Whoops! I was actually quite shaken by the experience. There is a big red light on the screen and I just ignored it. I was heartened later, however, when I learned that in the real-world, while you can tell the system to issue that visa, you can't actually print it until that little terrorism business is cleared up. You'll be pleased to know, I didn't miss another hit in the system for the rest of training. Lesson learned. The first 5 weeks of the training proceeded basically the same way with slightly different subject matter. The final week, however, things turned suddenly morbid. This is the Special Citizen Services week where we practice jail visits, death notifications and crisis management. In addition to the visa section, the CA bureau has also furnished a jail for our training environment. You practice talking to jail administration and talking to the prisoners, some of whom are being abused by the government. Then for the death calls, we have to break the news to people that they've lost a loved on and then walk them through the logistics of dealing with the remains shortly thereafter. Grim stuff for sure. In years past, students in this course were taken to the local morgue to get experience around dead bodies. The reality is that in consular work, you will be exposed to death. You'd like to avoid the first time being on the job, but I was told they had to discontinue that program since the morgues couldn't handle to volume of students.  The final simulation of the training is a crisis management exercise in which a bus has been hit by a mudslide or a plane has crashed (depending on what group you were in) and you had to manage finding out who was there, what needs to happen inside the embassy, and how to communicate with worried relatives calling you. It's a well-conceived project. We were running around trying to solve all these problems with very limited information. Although the crisis was artificial,  I think they did a good job simulating what these things look like in the real world.

And with that, ConGen was over. The course ends with a little graduation in which awards are handed out. There are class valedictorians awarded, those who scored 100% on each test, and then what they call the Z'Oscars are handed out. See, while you're in ConGen you're practicing adjudicating our cases in a fictional country called Z. The capital is Zug, its citizens are Zian, its neighbors are X and Y... you get the point. So, naturally. the awards had to have a Z-theme. There were awards given out for best acting in a visa roleplay, passport roleplay, jail visit, etc. I had my heart set on that visa-roleplay award (I really went all in on some of my characters), but it was not meant to be. I was surprised, however, to be awarded the "Most likely to run for President of Z" award. I'm not sure if that means my colleagues think I'm an attention whore or if they think that I'm smart and capable of managing complex and important issues. I'm going to assume the latter since it makes me feel better.

As you'll see below, all the Z'Oscar winners took a photo after the award ceremony. The national color of Z is purple, so we were encouraged to wear it in some fashion on graduation day. We were also donned with fun dress-up items as were were given our awards, hence the fancy clothing.

The President of Z gets a crown, apparently. I could get used to that...

After the Christmas holiday I will crank up a new course for the next six months: Spanish. It was my minor as an undergraduate, so I'm not starting from zero, but classroom Spanish is a lot different than conducting visa interviews in it all day long. It'll be a new and fun challenge. I've got 6 months to gain fluency. Should be a fun ride. As always, I'll keep you posted.

And So It Begins...

A100

Diplo-stylin' at the State Department.

September 8th, 2015 is a date that will forever have significance in my life as it was the day I officially started my diplomatic career. It was the culmination of years of hard work and perseverance. Long time readers will know how much and to whom I am indebted to and how I got to this point. Despite the work I put in and the skills I believe I bring to the table, I must confess that I still feel a bit like an imposter in this new field. I feel as though I bought the winning lottery ticket; a "new money" guy in a world of those from generational wealth. That is how I feel in my more self-conscious moments, but I don't necessarily feel like that is a bad thing. I like the feeling this complex produces in me: I feel grateful, I feel fortunate, and I feel like I don't want to squander my opportunities, which makes me work harder. So, all told, I'm in a good place. 

Day 1 of Orientation, known as A100, was a bit anti-climactic. While it was great to see my old Pickering cohort-mates and to meet the rest of my new colleagues, the day was otherwise purely administrative. Paperwork on paperwork on paperwork. "Welcome to the government!", was a frequent thought on this day. 

The real excitement of week one was getting our bid lists on the third day. I'd been dreaming about this list for years. It would be weeks before I would know which one, but one of the countries on that list would be my new home in the near future. I really enjoyed diving head first into my post research. Despite having an above-average knowledge of world geography, I had no idea where a full third of those places were. Over the next week and a half, Stephanie and I would debate, rank, re-rank and ultimately submit our choices to the will of the gods.

The six weeks of training were a "drinking from a firehose" experience. There is so much to get yourself acclimated to in State Department policy, governmental rules and diplomatic practice, that is hard to not feel like you're drowning a bit. But the training is designed to be introductory, most of the training will be on the job.

The Mighty 184th! These folks are going to rule the world. 

The best part of A100 was certainly getting to know my new colleagues. There were 55 of us in our class, the array of backgrounds couldn't have been more diverse. There were former lawyers, former military folks, and those just out of grad school. There were naturalized americans, 1st generation americans, they were young, and the not so young. They came from every region of the country and the wider world. Many speakers would comment on the wonderful diversity in our group as emblematic of America's greatest strength, and I was inclined to agree. These folks represent the most impressive collection of talent I've ever had the pleasure of associating myself with. Over the months together we did happy hours, Octoberfest outings, movies, and brunches together. It is sad to know that, soon, my new friends will literally be scattered to all ends of the Earth, but I will count them as friends forever, and the reunions are going to be epic.

Me and my man, Dave. I hope those guys in Togo have fire insurance. This dude is going to light it up...

I dreamt of this day for a long time. It was finally here...

The final week of A100 is the big one. It begins with Flag Day on the final day of the 5th week. I was grateful to have such an outpouring of support from my friends and family that day. For our class of 55, we had about 400 people RSVP to come watch our ceremony. Over 5% of those people were there to support me alone, I had 22 people commit to coming. My mom, sister, and my life friends, Bright and Whitney, flew in for the ceremony. In addition, two of my surrogate mom's flew in as well. My homie Nick drove throughout the night from Florida to be there, he even had to endure a detour that forced him to go around South Carolina due to the flooding there. His commitment to be there was emblematic of our relationship and my relationship with all my Florida people. My brother Spencer came through, I also had classmates from AU, old co-workers from the Amex days, and former professors in attendance. Most importantly, however, my wife and kids were there. They would learn their fate in this ceremony as well. 

My team rollin' deep on Flag Day

Bringing in the flags. One of these had my name on it...

We were all balls of nervous energy before we kicked off.


Just because we're diplomats, don't think Lina and I won't take it to the streets!

The ceremony was a blur of emotion. Before you had time to settle in your chair they were handing out jobs. Some in our group were very excited by their posting, some not so much. But I was really having a good time high-fiving my colleagues as their names were called and past me in the aisle. I almost forgot that I, too, was going to be given a job at some point. My name wasn't called until late in the process. It was a strange moment because the announcer botched my name... my FIRST name! To his credit, he got "Bisase" right (they asked us to phonetically spell our names for them beforehand), but he called me "John" for some unknown reason. The process of handing out flags was started with the reading of the city, then country, then the job, then the name of the officer assigned there. So, for me, the moment went like this:

Announcer: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic...Consular...John...

My internal monologue: (Oh, guess this isn't me. I wonder which John they're talking about...)

Announcer: ...Bisase

Me: (Huh? Thats my name! I guess I should stand up now...)

Me going up to get my flag.


"Look, family! Our flag!"

So, I went up and got my flag in a bit of a fog. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about the D.R. as a possible landing spot. My research on it was lighter than the other posts (there were over 70 posts to look into, after all) and I had gotten my hopes up for Brazil. Ultimately, although there were 3 Brazil jobs on our list, they didn't give any of them out to our group! I know many people bid those jobs highly. So, why you would put jobs that weren't actually jobs on a bid list is a mystery to me; it just struck me as mean in the end. 

Dem 904-boyz. Brothers for almost 2 decades, I'd die for these men. Fun fact: they both lived in the D.R about 10 years ago...

It took me a couple of days to sort out my feelings about the posting. After spending the weekend looking over it, I found myself getting excited by the idea. We'll be in a nice tropical locale (this Florida boy HATES the winters here!), we'll be only a few hours from home, and I'll get to top off my Spanish which has gone from middling to poor to "who told you you could speak Spanish?!?" over the years. Those are all huge bonuses. 

We finished our celebratory weekend with a meal at Los Hermanos, the best Dominican restaurant in D.C. It lived up to the hype, we'll be back for sure. It was so authentically Dominican, there were even guys playing dominoes in the corner of the restaurant. My buddy, Bright, who lived in the D.R. for a while commented that this place was the real deal, even down to the bootleg cellphone shop attached to the restaurant. That was good enough for me.

Big Dominican family meal. 

A100 week concluded the following Friday with my swearing in ceremony. The Director General of the Foreign Service came to swear us in, we took a class photo, and that was the end of my orientation. It was a bittersweet day. That was the last time those 55 people will be gathered in the same room ever again. Within a few weeks, some of us will start shipping out to post. I won't go until June of 2016, however. I have a language course from January to June, but the English-speaking jobs (or jobs for which the officers already speak the requisite language) get their folks right away. So, we'll be doing farewell parties for them soon.

The family came to see me sworn in. 

Jack Bisase, diplomat.

This is my homie, Sarah. We'll all be working for her soon enough. So, I'm kissin' up early...

I'm excited to get to work. My work life has quickly turned into a grad student-type life again. I have job training every day, homework to do, papers to write, the whole nine... But before long I'll find myself on the visa line in Santo Domingo deciding who does and does not get to visit the United States. As always, I'll keep you all posted...hasta luego!

The Bisase fam is off to Santo Domingo, baby!

Dispatches from Hong Kong: Part 7

End of the line

Soaking in the Shousun Hill view for the last time...

Week 10 came faster than I thought it would. At the beginning of the summer it seemed like a lifetime to be away from the family, but it really didn't feel that way in the end.

On the first day of my final week my high school bandmate, Jason, showed up in Hong Kong for a few days on the way to his brother's wedding. I got to share a meal with he and his girlfriend. Never thought I'd be sharing a meal with an old Jacksonville friend in Hong Kong, but life is a funny thing...

Work slowed down quite a bit in the final weeks. All the officers who were there when I arrived were gone by the time I left, so the transition forced us to reinvent the office flow, but by my final week I was able to get some quality work again. I had the opportunity to go with our Economic Section Chief to a meeting with interns at a local NGO to talk about international careers and I was also given an opportunity to run my first program. Typically this job wouldn't fall to an interns, but as the program was being put together in June, I was the only person in the meeting who would still be at post in August when the event was scheduled to happen.

The event was with some alumni from the Woman's Foundation's TEEN Program which is a program that helps underserved youth prepare for the next stage of their lives. So, we had about twenty kids aged 16-19 come to the Consulate. The program we put together started with a presentation on the work of a US mission abroad followed by Q and A. After that Bella helped me come up with games to play with the kids to help them practice their English language skills. Her background in education was really handy here. We started with the human pretzel game and charades as ice breakers and then we split them into 4 groups where we played Two Truths and a Lie and Head's Up. The day far exceeded my most optimistic expectations. Everyone had so much fun as evidenced by the photos.

Delivering opening remarks....

During Q and A the kids asked me about the significance of the flag...

Two Truths and a Lie...

Much laughter on this day...

Playing Head's Up. The kids had to, in English, describe the movie I'm holding up and the girl I'm standing behind has to guess what it is. 

My favorite picture of the day. A kid born in mainland China picks up the American flag for the photo so he can literally wrap himself in it. Diplomacy doesn't get better than that.

 At the end of my 9th week our colleagues threw a joint going-away party for Tau and I since we were leaving 4 days apart. I thought it fitting, the summer started with us sharing a birthday celebration, as you may recall...

Kristin bidding us farewell...

I got to supervise Tau for once...

"Thank you all, so much."

In my final weekly staff meeting  our Information Officer/Spokeswoman Kristin surprised me with a certificate of appreciation for my work this summer. It was very unexpected and I was humbled to receive it. I think this Foreign Service business is going to suit me just fine...

"I'd like to thank the academy..."

The most memorable thing about this summer will be the friendships I made. It all started with Tau on the first day who was a great friend and mentor. The time I spent with Sylar and Elizabeth will always be precious as they showed me their country in a way no American could have. I made many friendships with other colleagues that I've talked about in prior posts, these relationships will last for a long time.

(Random interjection) This was easily the strangest thing I saw in Hong Kong. This show sold pictures with inspirational quotes, you'll note that above Aung San Suu Kyi, and in-between Mandela and Bruce Lee is a nugget of wisdom from one Adolph Hitler. It reads "I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few." O....K....

Even until the end, I was still collecting friends. Below is a picture of Katie and I, she is a friend of Bella's who came to visit. We hit it off immediately, I wish we had more time to hang out but I'm grateful that our paths crossed, at least for a time.

My summer would not have been the same without Alex as a part of it. My FSO mentor served with him in Doha and told me to make sure to meet him once we found out I was coming to HKG. Fortunately for me, he was my neighbor. When his wife and kids left for a few weeks on vacation, we got to be married bachelor buddies for a month. We share a passion for music that bonded us instantly. We even found time to make a little band we titled The Foggy Bottom Boys (a few of you will get that joke, I hope).  We never got the courage to gig out, but we shot a few videos. The one below was one of the better ones. I hope to serve long enough to get to work for Alex in the future, that would be one amazing tour. Cheers, brother.

Dem Foggy Bottom Boyz

Those of you who've been reading the blog all summer will remember that I was the photographer for the Dragon Boat event at the end of June. Well, it was at that event that I first met Elaine. She ended up being the subject of more photos than anyone else that day because, as you'll soon see, she's one of the more photogenic people I've met. But to my shame, I never took the opportunity to hang out with her...until my last weekend. We ran into each other at an event during my last week and we talked about our common love of movies. She mentioned that she hasn't found anyone who likes to go to movies and that was all it took, date set! We went to go see Inside Out (Yes, it was great. No, I didn't cry; but it was close...) and we had a great time. Afterwards she took me to have Korean food for the first time in my life. I truly regret not getting more time in with her, but maybe fate will provide more opportunities in the future.

There was a giant Gundam robot in Times Square outside of the theater. 

 The last day in the office came and I didn't expect it to be very memorable, but I ended up being able to rack up some new experiences before I punched out for the last time. Our new IO, Kristen, and a couple other folks took me out to lunch at a great local place where they serve awesome roast goose. Do yourself a favor, get to Hong Kong one day and have the goose, it'll change your life! They gave me great Foreign Service life tips and even treated for ice cream after. Then it was time to say goodbye to everyone. The great thing about FSO goodbyes, however, is that there is a good chance you'll cross paths again. So, they're more like see-you-laters

Kristin and I in front of her Board of Wonder. 

Goose!

What a wonderful bird...

 So, my final weekend was fun and busy. Saturday the Foggy Bottom Boys had one last jam before going out with Elaine that night. Then Sunday I did some last minute shopping before I met my buddies for my last supper in Hong Kong. Sharing hot pot with Elizabeth and Sylar was the perfect way to go out.

Many people asked me during my last week "How was your time here in Hong Kong?" As I reflected on my answer to that question, I had to say I felt fulfilled. I did everything I came to do. I got to do lots of work that was important and took many different forms. I also got to learn a lot from colleagues who've been in the business for a long time, and I also got to make lots of new friends. At the end of my time there I felt like you do after a good meal where you ate enough but didn't overeat. I was anxious to get home to my family, however. Being apart from them for 10 weeks reinforced for me how much I love them and need them in my life. I was very excited to board the plane home on Monday...

Thanks to all of you who kept up with the Dispatches from Hong Kong. While this is the end of the series, the Duval Diplomat rages on. My Foreign Service career begins September 8th; no one knows what that future holds but I look forward to sharing the twists and turns with you all.

My parting note for the consulate folks...