Tag: The Job
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#34: Pretzels and Beer
Continued from Blog #33: Munich Security Conference Hallway reputation. Personal brand. Leadership shadow. Regardless of the buzzwords we use to describe the way others think about us in the workplace, a bad reputation can be hard to shake. The concept isn’t exclusive to humans, either. Amsterdam banned the smoking of cannabis in public in an…
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#33: Munich Security Conference
“Rechts!” barked the man sitting in the backseat with me, craning his neck to look out the rear window. Upon hearing this, our driver firmly tugged the steering wheel with a smooth confidence that could only come from highly specialized government training. The vehicle lurched into the lane to our right and the engine revved…
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#29: APEC Leaders’ Summit
“San Francisco is a lot of things. It’s hippies, hipsters, vagrants, flagrants, artsy, fartsy, and more. You name it, and it probably lives here.” – The Bold Italic Magazine In 1989, the growing independence and importance of the Asia-Pacific region was brought to formal recognition by 12 countries intent on combining their successes, ideas, and…
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#25: Black Gun
This is a follow-up to Blog #23: Red Gun, Blue Gun In the back half of the first millennium of the Common Era, Chinese alchemists seeking immortality created a dark powdery substance which they named huǒyào. Literally translated by character interpretation as “fire medicine”, huǒyào is the modern Chinese word for gunpowder. In the first…
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#10: Vexillology
…continued from Blog #9 Upon completion of Orientation, my workgroup will spend much of the remainder of the year in what is known as follow-on training specific to our position. There remains a pass/fail component to this furthered education, much like how police officers, firefighters, and military personnel still need to pass basic training before…
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#9: Orientation
“A 55-year-old garbage man is a million times smarter than a 28-year-old with three PhD’s. Especially smarter than him, because this idiot has been thinking about three things for like 15 years.” -Comedian Louis C.K. during his Oh My God special in 2013. …continued from Blog #7 Packed into a secure government auditorium is a…
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#7: “What would you say…you do here?”
Title quote taken from the movie Office Space. Thousands of U.S. federal government employees, representing a very wide array of disciplines, are not just working but also living overseas at any given time. In over 175 countries there are U.S. citizens tasked with spreading peace and prosperity while preserving the American way of life. Many…
The Dark Passport 