Getting To My Feet, One Cappuccino At A Time

I think I've officially completed my check-in process.  I've filled out a gazillion forms and given them to people all over hell's half-acre, been signed in and signed up, been given innumerable familiarization briefs, and met dozens of people.  I even recognize a few of them in the hallways now, as I scurry by enroute yet another briefing.  My boss says that if I think I'm done, I'm mistaken - I just haven't found out about something I'm supposed to do.  He's probably right.

We have an interesting work week.  It's Sunday through Thursday.  Yep, we're on Arabic time here.  Fridays and Saturdays are our "weekend", but that only means that we can sleep in a little later and not work quite so many hours.  Workday officially starts at 0800 (that's 8 a.m. for you civilians).  Damned if I know when it "ends", since nobody leaves before 6 and it's often much later when the lights finally go out.  On "weekends", we work maybe four to six or eight hours.  That's a half-day, isn't it?

I think my body clock fell out of the airplane somewhere over Newfoundland on the trip over here, and it hasn't caught up to me yet.  Mid-afternoon is a particularly difficult time.  Put me in a meeting or briefing and I'm in a world of hurt.  Yesterday I attended a meeting in late afternoon that was chaired by the deputy director of our organization.  A high mucky-muck.  And they put me right beside him.  And I tell you, it took everything I had to keep from falling into ZZZZ-land.  I never heard a word from that meeting.  I was too busy telling myself "Do NOT fall asleep!  Do NOT bounce your forehead off the table!  Do NOT snore like a buzzsaw!"  I think I stayed awake, but sure wouldn't swear to it.

In between getting signatures on my check-in sheet, I've been trying to learn as much as possible about my new job.  And there's a lot to learn.  There are tons of projects, all with their own acronyms, plus learning all the different organization charts for all the groups associated with these projects, plus learning the names of the people filling out those organization charts, plus the names of their predecessors since all these jobs turn over every year.  There are several different ways that our projects get created, and for each way, I need to know who starts the projects, who reviews them, who approves them, where the money comes from, where it goes, how it gets disbursed, who executes the project, who reviews the execution, and who signs off on it.

And I need to do all this quickly.  I'll be making decisions next week on things that I had never even heard of last week.

Still, it looks like an exciting time.  I'm going to have to keep my nose to the grindstone for a while, but I'm confident I can do it.  Hell, the Navy spent 22 years putting me in charge of things I knew nothing about, and this really isn't any different.

When I'm not checking in or learning my new job, I've been poking around the Palace, New Embassy Compound, and the International Zone, seeing what's here.  Some of the neat things I've found:

    - We have a pretty good gym right across the street from my apartment building, and I've got a routine set up for the machines.  

    - There's a pool next door to the gym, and I've hit it a couple of times.  Since it's been many years since I've been swimming, I wear myself out in very short order.  Very short.  But I'll get my endurance up.  Maybe.  

    - In the Palace, there's a huge room that's the Green Bean Cafe.  They make a really good cappuccino there, so in mid-afternoon, you know where to find me.

    - There are a very few interesting shopping opportunities here.  I got a quick tour of the IZ a couple of days ago and some of them were pointed out to me.  I'll revisit them ... well, sometime.

All for now.  There's much more I could write.  But it seems like this place turns into "Groundhog Day with a gun" in pretty short order for most people, so I need to save some things to write about when it happens to me.