Slept like a baby last night. Thank goodness. Talked to Claire this morning for a while, which was great -- it really is incredible that, 8,000 miles away, we can see each other talk in real time.
Day two of the training was fine. We got a little feedback on day 1: "informative" was the modal adjective. Then we delved into communications, branding and marking. Deeply fascinating stuff, I assure you. But it seems that our colleagues appreciated it, and that's all that counts, really. We wrapped up the training around 12:15 and then Caryn and I did a bit of work, ate lunch, and came back over for a kind of pointless but eventually interesting meeting with a couple of USAID Pakistan ag guys.
One of them spent the whole time talking to Karim about project-specific issues. The other one got bored with that -- as, frankly, did Caryn and I -- and we ended up talking with him about a bunch of other stuff. He has an exceptionally low view of Dep. Sec. of State Nides and of Raj Shah and was franker about that than any active AID employee I've ever spoken to. It was a bit hilarious, honestly, and it was cool to hear an insider's view of how the capriciousness and ignorance of the big bosses trickles down and hinders his work.
After that, did some more work, went to the pool, talked to Mom, went to the gym, ate dinner and drank some beer, talked to Dad, and now I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow is an off day, although I do have some work to do. And stuff.
Day two of the training was fine. We got a little feedback on day 1: "informative" was the modal adjective. Then we delved into communications, branding and marking. Deeply fascinating stuff, I assure you. But it seems that our colleagues appreciated it, and that's all that counts, really. We wrapped up the training around 12:15 and then Caryn and I did a bit of work, ate lunch, and came back over for a kind of pointless but eventually interesting meeting with a couple of USAID Pakistan ag guys.
One of them spent the whole time talking to Karim about project-specific issues. The other one got bored with that -- as, frankly, did Caryn and I -- and we ended up talking with him about a bunch of other stuff. He has an exceptionally low view of Dep. Sec. of State Nides and of Raj Shah and was franker about that than any active AID employee I've ever spoken to. It was a bit hilarious, honestly, and it was cool to hear an insider's view of how the capriciousness and ignorance of the big bosses trickles down and hinders his work.
After that, did some more work, went to the pool, talked to Mom, went to the gym, ate dinner and drank some beer, talked to Dad, and now I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow is an off day, although I do have some work to do. And stuff.
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