Chennai: 2025-2027

So spoiler alert on how this day goes is in the title, but makes for a snappy name right? Anyways - I was tired of hanging out in the apartment and decided to go on a long form adventure to a local mall. This spot came recommended from a few folks, and I had even been told that I could find whole coffee beans there! Which was very exciting news indeed. I emptied out my backpack and prepped for the journey. One of the things I removed from my backpack was my umbrella. The fore

An element of working that I bet a lot of people can relate to is that if you dont take care to really note things that happen... they just fly by and disappear. That happens to me a lot, but in particular it happened to me for these stretch of days! Anyways, gonna pull what I can from this segment and move on. I really need to up the pace of posting these because as it stands 2026 will be over before I finish writing the last few months of 2025. Finally got the equipment to

Towards the end of last week Gwen (my managers manager) let me know that because of the upcoming cyclone season she was able to swing some weight around and get some of us in the office again. I think the spin was that there was danger of flooding and thus needed to be all hands on deck. A bit of an odd claim since being very new I didnt think I would be all that useful. But I aint about to argue with the boss! Turns out she did have a pretty good reason for bringing me in, a

I didnt mention it, but earlier this week I had been invited to a birthday party. Not really an exciting birthday party, but a birthday party nonetheless! The reason that I say it isnt particularly exciting is because it is a party for my social sponsor's two year old daughter. I was looking for a reason to not hole up away in my apartment so opted to go. It was a mighty fine party. Their apartment somehow manages to dwarf my own massive apartment. Which makes sense, they ha

I have not updated this in a long time. Been caught up in work and the particular type of weariness that happens after one gets home from work 😅 Anyways, onto the events of this day! Some folks from work had organized a happy hour at a bar near the consulate. This place was pretty cool! I dont remember what held me up but I know I arrived a little late. This spot had these cool wooden structures decorating the entire bar area and they were playing some superb music! I wish

Today was meant to be when I would go into the office for my RSO briefing. This is when the Regional Security Officer tells me how to stay safe in the county. They also cover any misceleanious things that I should be aware of in the area. Ideally people get this on the first day when they arrive, but normally it just happens within the first few. Like if you arrived on a friday, it might end up waiting until monday... In my case it's been a little longer than that. At the sec

Just going to cover some of the events and stuff leading up to the 14th here. On each individual day things were pretty minor so it feels like a waste of effort to make a different post for each. Over the days I had been keeping myself entertained with some games around the house and busy planning this site out. It was around this time that I decided to make it and had to do some shopping around to find out which website creator would best fit my needs. So around this time wa

Before I get into events of the day... I have some good news! I have figured out how to actually embed the photos I want into this website WITHOUT uploading them. This is great news for the formatting here, and means that by the time anyone sees this I will have things fixed up much better than when I began. And it works for videos too, which is super cool! That means that I can share loads of stuff here without having to upload to WIX or Youtube. Youtube would have just been

Morning: I am still not allowed to work, and going to the consulate is ok... but discouraged. The folks in charge really dont want there to be anything that resembles work happening at all. I guess there are some pretty specific rules/regulations on what is allowed to happen when people are furloughed, and not following those properly get our section "dinged" somehow. But I was allowed to go in for some things, in particular today I was set to do a bit of upkeep work. Fillin

Today would have been my true first day on the job. A lot of people had recommended that I show up for "first day" on a Friday, so that things are very relaxed. Then your true first day on Monday you already have had a weekend to try and overcome jet lag and have already met some of your new coworkers. Instead of doing that, I slept in! While tending to my morning habits I got a text from Willy. Him and his friend Miles were going to check out the snake farm and they were in

I think I mentioned previously that Willy had mentioned we should link up this morning so he could show me around a little bit. If I didnt, then that happened! I'm writing this a bit later and dont feel like checking, but also if it wasnt mentioned before... Willy is one of the people who was in my orientation class, we also happened to be in the same mission group (aka homeroom). We got along well, and hung out a lot in D.C. - as luck would have it we've ended up at the same

Woke up this morning and gave myself plenty of time to prepare for work. I didn't want to arrive unprepared! I gotta say I think I did a mighty fine job presenting myself, kinda disappointed that I never took a selfie or anything. A wasted opportunity if you ask me! I decided to wear my old grey blazer with black pants and a plain black shirt, but I think that it did well to highlight my elephant tie. The one that mom and dad got for me while they were in Greece. Needless to

(the little extra) [Skip down the page if you don't care about the US stuff at all.] I'm going to start this on Sept 29, because the couple days before I started traveling and the travel itself was a little wild. Or it least it felt that way to me on account of how jam packed busy it was. The 29th began with me walking to FSI for the second to last time. I was meeting with several of my coworkers to get some exciting training on a bit of equipment that we will be working wit