Baptism of Fire
Quick
recap – the other half has been posted to Dhaka (the one in Bangladesh,
formerly part of India and Pakistan, for all those who failed their geography
exam and having a big war in 1971 becoming an indepenent country on 15th
December 1971, for those who failed their history exam) on behalf of a G8 Govt
saving the worlds poor and stuff like that, and now only responds to being
called ‘Madam’ on all levels of communication.
So, with this in mind and accepting my fate as a true Scot, I have
decided to join her and have now been given the affectionate title of ‘Trailing
Spouse’ (TS) as they are all known out here and everywhere else in the global diplomatic
community. Thankfully the male TS
community have come up with their own acronym STUD (Spouse Trailing Under
Duress) – I leave it up to you which is more appropriate depending on the
situation.
So
Madam left about 6 weeks before I was due to join her, leaving basically
everything for me to do – first role of a TS me thinks. This not only involved the sorting out of the
house for the packers to arrive and deploy their own philosophy, packing one’s
life up and placing in storage, but also trying to deal with the unintuitive
bureaucracy and lack of information, now titled the MIS (missing information
service). If they could do
qualifications in deciphering information that does exist but isn’t present or
vice versa, then I reckon I should be on my way to my second degree.
Another
way to describe it is, and he may have written the manual, Donald Rumsfeld's
view – ‘There are known knowns. These are
things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there
are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know.’ After the second degree, within a year I
could have a lecturing job in it. No
doubt this subject will be revisited time and time again.
In
addition to the hullabaloo of packing up the flat; having a wisdom tooth out so
I was ‘dentally cleared’ before joining Madam – an excellent example of MIS,
where these requirements had to be fulfilled before joining the post, but isn’t
actually written down anywhere with no paperwork to be authorised or supporting
information to be digested; there was pandering to my brother’s whims of what
was needing done in my property before he could move in, which hinged on the
balance of the stressful situation on whether he could get cable TV or not and if
it was in HD – I wish my needs were that simple; and generally walking around
in a daze muttering OMG in between popping pain killers.
Running
in parallel was trying to facilitate clients needs. Being an ‘entrepreneurial’ sort of chappie, I
had set-up my own business and was one of the few small pillars of the
community contributing to the rebuilding of the country, within reason of
course as duly advised by my accountant.
So there was this crazy situation of me sorting out the final things for
a conference whilst being ensconced in the kitchen, about the size of a
wardrobe, with the laptop perched precariously on the gas hob, mobile phone
permanently in my hand and using a redundant packing box as the seat / desk etc
whilst the packers were wrapping and packing for air freight around me into 72
boxes. That is Madam and I’s life now 72
boxes – a bit odd when it is viewed like that – more later.
The
final hours before departure was the stressful part of trying to stay within
one’s weight limit for baggage, but ensuring I had enough clothes and stuff to
live with, working on the basis that the 72 boxes may not arrive for some
weeks. This again was not as
straightforward as it should be, because all eventualities had to be considered
– business attire, formal, smart but ‘cas’, sports, lounging etc. Add to that some patisserie essentials and
the ‘office’. The thought of that first
gin and tonic on the plane never felt more appealing, knowing that the initial TS
baptism had started and paused for it only to begin full on over 5000 miles
away in temperatures of 25C+ - hellish ain’t it!