Editor’s Note: We are awash with projects in the Writer’s Section at Refuge Farm. The Chairman is sensitive to the vitriol in our public lives, something previously unknown in the seven decades of his life as a citizen. An active participant in some of the history of these times, it is hard for him to put aside a certain activism. After some rebukes on commentary about a great nation confronted by current change, he instructed his Legal Section to monitor carefully what Socotra House issues under his imprimatur.
The following episode is from another year in change, and includes the impact of a month of labour in the capital of another splendid nation. It popped up in a search for accounts of living in an alphabetical list of global cities, A-to-Z.
Canberra could fit in the “C” list, or “A” for Australia, but Arlington, Amsterdam and Albuquerque could all fit. We are seeing what the Chairman is willing to release, but that requires a cross-check with Legal about statute of limitations issues. We already have the hard ones reserved- Ypsilanti, MI, and Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia.
– Vic
26 June 2007
Channel Fever
(HMAS Melbourne at Sydney)
There comes a point in a cruise when they cannot keep the ship at sea any longer, since it needs repairs or parts or something that is difficult to get while underway.
Sometimes the mission is over, or someone else has been ordered to go forward and do it for a while, and then there is the prospect of pulling into port.
I was indoctrinated into the mysteries of Channel Fever when I was on my first ship. To this day, I do not know specifically what it means. I assume it is like Buck Fever for the hunting community and related to the frantic feeling on opening day of hunting season. It would seem to have something to do with orbiting all night just out to sea, waiting for first light and the pilot boat to come out and guide the mighty ship up the navigable channel to the pleasures of the harbour.
It could as easily refer to the all-night movies they would show on the ship’s internal television station, and since we had a least two channels, it was a possible candidate.
I can feel it rising in me now, even though the television in the tourist hotel next to the bus station is resolutely turned off. Watching television during the day is the first stride down the road to damnation, like slipping just a little vodka into the orange juice at breakfast to cut the fog.
Still, I am at a break point on an all-day-in-the-room attempt to generate a draft report before I fly out of here on Saturday. It is cold and dank in Canberra- no fly swatting at the moment- and was below zero (centigrade) the last few days.
As you know, Canberra has a lot in common with DC. It is newer, so less further developed in terms of debauchery, and smaller and more rural than we are in the Capital of the Free World, but there is a bit of the prim smugness that goes along with displaying more virtue than people are supposed to have, and there is the cold rain in the middle what should be summer anywhere north of the equator.
I am finishing, or hope to finish a project that could result in a summons to come back in a few/several weeks, which fills me with some trepidation. I can’t believe that the Olde Globtrotter is feeling this way. I imagine it could be different in a better hotel- or at least one with a balcony or a window that opened- so I did not have to smoke outside, rationing my blood-nicotine to spend time with the people from the bus depot next door.
Maybe it is the fact that I enjoy a Victoria Bitters with dinner, but do not swill beer as I used to, and have pretty much eschewed sitting at tables in bars by myself, since the local custom features no stools next to the taps- you may purchase, but not linger at the bar. my drink of choice is vodka, which goes for a $28 Aus for small 700ml bottle of Smirnoff at the store, and God only knows what in the pub.
Maybe it is the climate, or the detachment from other people. The smokers are friendly enough, don’t get me wrong, salt o’ the earth, but there has been, so far, zero support from the organization that asked me to come down, and zero on the part of my parent organization that sent me.
The exemplars are the fact that they have not provided a billing code for this project (if I had known it was an issue I would have addressed it a month or two ago, should have known) which has me on the report list back in some town in America for not filing my last two time cards. They are sounding a bit cross with me and mentioned the offense might pop up in my Mid-year Review.
Big Blue is filled with wonderful people, and is still a strange beast, deeply entrenched in its ways.
Which got me to thinking as I faced the enormity of leaving Arlington for a month, knowing this was going to be screwed up. I swung by and talked to Jay Cohen. He asked if I would come back and work for him at DHS. I told him I would certainly consider it. He can only offer a GS-15 Step 10, but that is about what my base pay is here, and the potential $12-30K bonus package does not arrive for another five or six months. It is also career, not appointment, so there are a couple factors to consider there.
Having just gone through the disintegration of a major American icon at Lucent (and man, were they generous- there are still two paydays to come from them which dwarf the Big Blue bonus compensation!) I find myself flinching at the prospect of what is going to happen in the contract community when the war is declared over, and the supplementals end, and we all go back to living on what is actually in the budget.
I don’t think they can do without us any more, but they are certainly going to try, and the gravy train is going to take a significant hit.
I think it is going to be pretty fierce in the companies that are not making their numbers, and life is not going to be pleasant. Since I only anticipate working a few more years, or till the time I can start drawing from the 401K or turn it into an annuity, or whatever, it seems that some stability might be in order. I thought that “working from home” might be the magic potion, but instead, I found myself some days poking away at the computer still in my bunny slippers in the afternoon, or working on company e-mails at eleven at night. There was no separation between work and home, since they were the same place.
In fact, I can’t even tell what is work anymore, except it is like that Supreme Court Justice said about pornography. He could tell it when he saw it.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com