It’s a stressful time for a significant proportion of my Foreign Service colleagues, and to lighten the mood, here’s record of a great moment in the history of diplomatic correspondence:

Best read along with the awesome valedictory despatch story, which has already made the diploblog rounds.

We spent five days total in Nepal, stretching Columbus Day weekend on either end to put together a mini-vacation. The trip was good, but it felt as if we didn’t give Nepal enough time. Time restrictions meant we didn’t get out of the Kathmandu Valley, which was the biggest bummer. It’s difficult to do justice to a country so rich in culture — and so very different from where we call home — in five days

Not that the Valley wasn’t itself amazing. We saw more temples than I’ve seen during all my time in India, representing Hinduism, Buddhism, and everything in between; got to smell clean, fresh mountain air; and combined predictable outings like a day’s hike to a hilltop with things a bit more inexplicable — specifically, going to a performance that was part of the annual Kathmandu Jazz Festival (aka “Jazzmandu”). I’m not even that big of a jazz fan, but the chance to watch live jazz under starlight in Nepal was just one of those things we couldn’t pass up. Our last day was spent on a mountain flight, circling the Himalayas to get a look at Mt. Everest. I can now confirm that Everest is indeed very, very large.

A few photographic highlights: faces, temples, mountains, and prayer flags from The Roof of the World.  For all my pictures from Nepal, click here.

Prayer flags!  Momos!  Stupas!  Backpackers!  Iconoclastic headwear!  A fifteen minute time difference!

We’re in Nepal and in case you were wondering: absolutely, postively, totally nothing like India.

Our trip to Australia was decidedly marine themed. When we weren’t in the water, we were near the water, or enjoying the bounties of the sea. In Sydney, this meant visiting the aforementioned fish market (where we dined next to a pelican), walking with crabs on the beach, and taking in the lights of the city at night:

After Sydney we went north to Port Douglas. Our apartment was thirty seconds from a gorgeous beach, a few minutes cruise from crocodile infested waters, thirty minutes from a major fishing town, and an hour from a stretch of Devonian-era mangrove forests and deserted waterfront alcoves:

But that was all prologue to the undisputed highlight of our trip, snorkeling by — in? around? — the Great Barrier Reef. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am absolutely not a good swimmer. I hold my own, but swimming’s never been a big thing for me. It’s a bit of a sore subject. Those few hours in the clear waters of southern Pacific, surrounded by the technicolor life of the Reef, make me want to change that.

There was a full moon the first night we were in Port Douglas. It’s reflected light shimmered on the face of the waters, brighter than any moon I’d ever seen before. My mistake, going to bed that night, was to think that was going to be the most beautiful thing I’d see all trip, when it was really the first of many.

A long flight back from Australia, a day moving “offices” (even “cubicle” would be an overstatement), a flight to Delhi, a conference, a flight back, and two job interviews.

That was tiring.

But the timing gods have been munificent.  It’s that awesome time in India when every other day seems to be a holiday, and so we’re getting things done.  Miraculously, I’ve uploaded all of my pictures (click), though the task of naming, captioning, geotagging, and all that good stuff remains.  Oh yeah, and the ever popular “vacation wrap up” blog post, which my tens of readers are no doubt anticipating with baited breath.  Sorry!  Not this post.  All that uploading has made me hungry, and we have little in the name of food at home.  Time to go rectify that.  To put you all in the same boat, here’s a photo of some awesome and exotic flavored ice creams we ate on the Daintree Coast — chocolate sapote, wattleseed, jackfruit, and the rare and mysterious apricot.

Despite the fact we’re leaving  (*sob*) tomorrow….

Sydney is a beautiful, small city.  Somehow before coming here I pictured it as New York-like, an antipodean metropolis full of hustle and bustle, with endless options for things to do.  The reality is substantially different.  We’ve walked the whole of central Sydney over the last few days easily, as the major sights are all well enclosed in a single area, with a few notable outliers like Bondi Beach.  Not that this is a criticism.  I don’t know if I’d have enjoyed another megacity, especially when trying to relax from the crush of Bombay.  The small-town charm of Sydney is alluring.  We’ve been talking about this in our own, inimitable Foreign Service way — something my FS colleagues have all indubitably done.  “Could we live here?’ she asks.

We had dinner with a good friend last night who is doing just that.  He expressed some frustration with the very things I’ve found so charming.  “You see the same people all the time,” he said.  Maybe living here wouldn’t be so great.

Then again: yesterday for lunch I had a dozen raw oysters, a half pound of sashimi-grade fish that was sliced right in front of me, and a seaweed salad.  We bought the lunch fresh from the fish market, where we saw an endless variety of impossibly fresh seafood and had our pick of what to eat.  We ate sitting on a bench, next to a cove of clean(ish) blue water.  We had walked there, a 20-minute stroll where we passed a beautiful harbor and some charmingly run-down residences.  It was almost summer-warm in the sun, almost autumn-cold in the shade.  Cars stopped for us at crosswalks and I don’t recall ever hearing a horn.  While eating, my wife commented: “You do realize nothing in your lunch was really cooked, right?”

Maybe I could live here.

Crossing fingers: parasite count is now low-to-none.  I gave the doctor another liter of blood today, and they’re running it through whatever graviton, microscope, macroscope, or other bizarre instrument to determine how many bugs are left in my system.  Malaria sucks, and the treatment sucks almost as much.  And I was sick so long that now feeling well feels… weird.  Like I’m not supposed to be healthy. 

That is soon to be fixed.  The wife and I are hurtling towards vacation at full throttle.  I started packing Monday night for a flight Thursday evening.  Three days early?  Previously unheard of.  The timing is bad (what with the whole bidding thing) but we’re nonplussed.  I’ve spent — brace yourself — 447 of the last 451 days of my life in India.  The fact that I’m counting is pretty indicative of how I’ve been feeling.   This is a great place to visit, and not a bad place to live.  But I’m western and spoiled, and I need some time away.

We’ve got a new member in our family and it’s rather unwelcome: a cheeky little bastard called Plasmodium vivax.  It’s apparently been living in me for a while. 

Of the parasites to get, I should be happy I got this one.  There have to be way worse around our stomping grounds, what with the open sewers, burning trash, and random street animals.  That doesn’t make having Viv around any better.   She tends to show up every other day, and dude, she’s a total buzzkill.  No one has any fun when Viv’s around.

Luckily, there’s a solution to all the fun: science!  Among the things local doctors happen to know about are tropical diseases.  I’m on some sort of cocktail of drugs that may or may not have once mixed well with gin, and am told these should drive Viv away from me in  a couple days.

And in the meantime, as anyone with an exotic illness should consider doing, I am enjoying some street cred.

The wife and I returned from Delhi on July 2, and were thrown directly into the wonderful world of Overseas Mission Fourth of July Parties.  See, back in America the Fourth is about chillin’ and grillin’.  When you’re working for the Department, overseas?  It’s work.  The Fourth of July is the day the office (Embassy, Consulate, whathaveyou) invites out important contacts to wine and dine them, with an inevitable red, white, and blue tinged theme.  The wife took care of decor for Consulate Mumbai’s party this year, while I served as MC.  And there were burgers — real burgers!  Sadly, no hotdogs.  Maybe next year.

Fate and U.S. policy priorities meant that there was no rest after the 4th.  The entire consulate immediately started working on the next big thing, a visit from the Secretary of State. Hence the rollercoaster.

Many of the more frequent destinations for a Secretary’s visit have well established procedures in place.  Mumbai is not a frequent destination — the last time a sitting Secretary came to Mumbai was in 2000, and that trip was reportedly for about five hours en route to somewhere else — so we weren’t so lucky.   We’re also an extremely “young” post, at least amongst the American officers and specialists, with about 90% of us on our first or second tours.  (The big boss is magnanimous about this, calling us a “next generation Foreign Service post.” In my more snarky moments, I prefer “inexperienced.”)  The lack of institutional knowledge was huge.  We faced a number of other challenges, ranging from the city’s geography and infrastructure, to the minutaie of the local airport’s operations, to the late-coming but still drenching clouds of monsoon.  And since almost every single movement of a Secretary of State needs to be planned for in excruciating detail, we had a hell of a task ahead of us.

Thankfully, we pulled it off, though the runup was extremely stressful and more than a bit chaotic.  Circumstances and plans were fluid until the last possible moment, as were our roles.    I think the final count for the number of role changes the wife had stands at 6, and I didn’t receive final instructions on what the office needed me to do until around three hours before the Secretary landed.  It was no rest the entire weekend of her trip, but word from HQ is that everything went extremely well.

And after that?  How about another trip?  I was “control officer” for our Consul General on a trip to Aurangabad.  The CG met with student groups and local business leaders, and the meetings were rather interesting.  One theme that emerged: local literary types are fascinated by African-American literature, and do a substantial amount of comparative work between it and the writings of Marathi dalits.  We had no idea about this fascination, but I took every opportunity to reach back and talk about literature with some very erudite people.

Now: we’re bidding.  And planning a vacation.  There’s a list of jobs and places that we’re staring at every day, and emails we’re sending to friends around the world for advice, for insight, for contacts.  The entire exercise of trying to figure out where to go next is harrowing and frustrating.  Actually, that’s too kind.  Let’s be honest: no matter how good or how connected you are, bidding sucks.  Show me an officer who says they enjoy bidding, and I’ll show you a liar.

That’s that from my end of the world.  Long blog hiatus, I know.  If it were because we were busy having fun, I’d feel a little better — but really, I don’t think the stress of late is of the “fun” sort.  R&R, however, is 27 days away.