Weekend Singapore Trip

Had a long weekend and took a trip to Singapore.  Singapore is close and quick to get to with just a 90 minute or so flight from Jakarta.  It was a very impressive city.  What people say about the orderliness and cleanliness holds up for the most part.

View from the taxi ride into the city (traffic free!)

I found the city to be a very English-speaking friendly place as many, many Singaporeans I came across spoke it very well.  Mandarin and other Asian languages were also very prevalent.

We took the subway a lot to get around the city.  It was very quick and convenient with trains coming often.  One thing I never liked about the DC subway was that it took forever to get anyway on it during the weekends as trains came so irregularly that it was usually just easier to drive into town.

One of the many subway stations.

Some of the crosswalks make fun laser sounds to alert the blind when it's safe to cross.

Malls were all over the place with many connected to each other that one could continually be walking in a mall not know they had already traversed through several of them.  One mall we had to visit was the Marina Bay mall.  It had a channel for people wanting to take rides and a skating rink.  It also had some great views of the Marina Bay Sands resort, the most expensive casino/resort property in the world.

The mall at Marina Bay

A view of the most expensive hotel in the world.

Entrance to the Art Museum.

The only skating rink I've seen where people wear ice skates but there is NO ice.

We also took a trip to the Singapore Chinatown.  First impression, this was the cleanest Chinatown I've ever been to.  It almost reminded me of how a museum might display a Chinatown.  Very clean, free from any vendors of knockoff Rolexs, pirated DVDs, or fake purses/perfumes.

We ate a late lunch here and had some excellent steamed chicken and visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple which supposedly holds a tooth from Buddha.

Pristine Chinatown streets.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

 In the evening, there is a light show put on by the Marina Bay Sands each night that was fun to watch.  To finish the night, we strolled the Clarke Quay area that had tons of nightlife with bars, live music, and clubs.
 

The next day, we went to the Sentosa area to go for a walk and see the sights.  The train to cross over had a huge line as there was some sort of event going on at the other side.  We decided instead to just walk around instead.

Yep, we rode this train.

 To finish off, we went to go try chili crab.  Crab cooked and topped with a spicy chili.  Yum!

Overall, it was a short, but great trip.  We saw a lot of Singapore but will definitely have to take another trip to see the rest.  There was still the aquarium, zoo, and Universal Studios to check out.  Plus, there are a number of nightlife places that would be fun to go to as well.  Next time.

First impressions of Indonesia

Made it to post and I'm now in Indonesia and finally got internet.  Jakarta is very much a very busy, crowded city.  I can't help but make comparisons to the only other SE Asia city I know, Bangkok, but am working to stop that and understand the city for itself.

It's very crowded, traffic lives up to its reputation, and the pollution is rough.  I've lived in Beijing before as well as spent time in Bangkok, but Jakarta really beats them out in these two categories.  I think what really is a game changer in the traffic and pollution categories is public transportation infrastructure.  Beijing has it's subway system and Bangkok has the sky-train: these really make a significant difference.

Housing in Jakarta is pretty nice.  I'm in government owned housing temporarily which is a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment but the living room and dining room are spacious and it's walkable within 5-10 minutes to work.  Later, I'll be moved to one of the many sky-rise apartments in this city.  In both cases, the housing is nice and a significant step up from where I was at in DC for the past year (renting a room in a basement).

The embassy community in Jakarta is very large.  Spent the first couple days getting acclimated and doing various tasks related to in-processing: HR related forms and tasks, begging IT in DC to close my account so the Jakarta Mission could open one for me, security and health briefings, and courtesy meetings with senior management within AID and the embassy.

One perspective that has changed for me is my attitude toward doing rotations.  For Junior Officers with AID, our first tour is actually classified as a training position.  Depending on the post/Mission, there are varying ways this is implemented.  Some have first tour officers work directly in their functional area throughout their entire tour to improve their skills and knowledge in that field.  Others will do a mix of work in their functional areas combined with rotations throughout the Mission in other offices.   The ADS Chapter on USAID's Foreign Service Career Officers has more in-depth information.

At first, I was inclined to want to stay in my functional area to really develop and show off my capabilities in that work.  However, after speaking with several senior leaders in the Mission, I was often advised to consider really taking advantage of this opportunity to work in the other functional areas and gain breadth of knowledge of how USAID Missions operate.  This would allow me to better understand development and provide insight to make me a better leader in the future.  So now, I'm planning my rotations but keeping in close contact with my home office.  While rotating to various offices, I'll continue to perform minor assistance/acquisition actions.  I think with the experiences I've had in DC and BKK so far coupled with the new rotations throughout the Mission, I'll be well-equipped as I progress through my career.  We'll see.


And now, just a few pics from some places I've passed by in the brief time I've been here.

Interesting bar name.

The statues in front of the luxury malls Grand Indonesia and Plaza Indonesia.

Fashion show within the mall.

I like to call these "snake-fruit" due to their appearance and texture.

Nice presentation for displaying bananas.

A Values Based Foreign Policy

  

This week, the USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah hosted an All-Hands with Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg to showcase various initiatives and innovations going on in the Agency and address any employee concerns or questions.

The event began with the Shah giving an opening address where he said that the U.S. is a nation of values and USAID must serve as the face of America abroad.
That USAID's core is a "values based" foreign policy.  I thought this was an interesting perspective of the role of the US's humanitarian assistance and development assistance strategy.

This got me thinking to two things: one, what are the US's values, and two, how do US values relate to the efforts of USAID?

U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's interests while improving lives in the developing world. USAID carries out U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies, creates markets and trade partners for the United States, and fosters good will abroad." (USAID - Who We Are)

Late last year, Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, wrote an opinion piece in Politico titled "Pursuing U.S. values and self-interest".  In this piece, he mentions various examples of the U.S. exercising a value based diplomacy with examples in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.  In Tunisia and Egypt, he explains how we work to support open governments that respect the rights and voices of its people as well as stability and conditions that may become economic and national security opportunities for the U.S.  And in Libya, he talks about how we provide support to local institutions and civil society groups in advocating for less corruption and free political speech. 

We don’t spend money on diplomacy and development just to feel good about ourselves. We fight hunger, stop oppression, prevent global pandemics and respond to crises abroad, because that is the most cost-effective way to enhance U.S. national security – to protect America and the American people – and to create jobs here at home. It has the additional benefit of also being the right thing to do. (Thomas Nides, Pursuing U.S. values and self-interest)

So an interesting exercise is to then try to understand what American values are and how those are conveyed in the programs that we do.  Really, foreign assistance is a very interesting strategy for implementing foreign policy.  It's not just helping others abroad, but providing real benefits to the U.S. while showcasing values of America.  Foreign assistance is such a useful instrument in foreign policy that traditional recipients of assistance are now moving to becoming donors to take advantage, as indicated by India working to setup its own foreign assistance agency.  Nides ends the piece stating that with foreign assistance, "Our national values, moral compass and self-interest are all perfectly aligned."

Besides just thoughts on the opening remarks at the All-Hands, presentations were given from various Bureaus on new alliances and initiatives they were working on.  Notably, there were several newer people to USAID that shared their experiences of being with the Agency so far and the importance of being proactive in taking on responsibilities and ownership in work, and not to be afraid to suggest new ways to do things or implement our programs.  It was a common theme to push through bureaucracy to bring about better ways of doing things as that will be the best way of bringing the Agency forward. 

One interesting question that Shah and Steinberg addressed was "when was the Agency going to stop adding additional initiatives so that the work could be actually done?"  They addressed the question saying that they don't see these as new initiatives or work, but rather see them as better or different ways of doing work and bringing a focus to specific programs versus being too spread out and diverse.

In terms of the Agency's current efforts to seek new ways of doing programs and to take every effort to ensure sustainability and capacity building, I really agree with Shah.  If we are truly influencing and changing conditions in the places we operate, it must be sustainable, and if the status-quo isn't working, let's find a different way.  And in terms of initiatives like Feed-the-Future or early child-care health, it's really just outlining the focus areas for where U.S. foreign policy is hoping to make an impact.  All programs can bring about meaningful benefits, but to really make a measurable contribution, we need to focus our efforts on specific objectives. 

I met with the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia a few weeks ago to discuss Indonesia and he mentioned how the Mission will soon be working to setup its strategy for the country.  He said to consider a way to think about the objectives in terms of leaving a legacy and what impact the U.S. would want to be able to take credit for and where we could make the most difference.  I think that's how we might really need to approach all of high-level strategic planning, when feasible.

Junior Officer Training

With my DC based assignment coming soon to a close, I'd like to reflect back and explain the training for new FSOs while in Washington.

New FSOs coming in can typically expect a timeline such as:

1. Orientation (5 weeks)
• USAID brings in new Officers in classes.  Classes are composed of a mixture of Officers of various functions (backstops) that the Agency is needing at that point in time.   
• During these 5 weeks, new employees complete administrative paperwork for in-processing and benefits; obtain mandatory briefing on various USAID policies; are introduced to USAID programs, operations, and structure; are briefed on career development and leadership; and are given the opportunity to network and bond with classmates.
• At the end of these 5 weeks, a ceremony is held to "graduate" from orientation.  This is a family and friend event and typically features the Administrator as the keynote speaker.  Before, they used to present overseas assignments at this time, but due to a backlog in the assignment process, that is no longer done.
2. Move to functional office (1 week)
• After the 5 week orientation, Officers spend a week in their home Office of their backstop.  During the time in DC, each new FSO will have a supervisor whom they will report to and work under to obtain on-the-job training (OJT) and familiarity with operations of DC.
3. Consolidated Training (1 week)
• A week away in their home office, the class is brought back together again to receive additional mandatory training.  This includes working across cultures, training on the Automated Directives System (ADS - internal policy and regulations of USAID), and others.
4. Functional Training (~10-16 weeks)

• Each backstop has a plethora courses and training that are specific to them.  Plus, there are additional mandatory trainings on things like Programming Foreign Affairs, Environmental Compliance, etc. that all Officers must take.
5. Language Training (~24 weeks)
• Depending on if you have language ability that can be tested at the required level at the Foreign Service Institute to make tenure and if you are going to language designated position for your assignment, then most Officers spend some time here.  
• I found language training to be a pretty enjoyable experience.  It's great meeting people from all different Agencies and language learning, if one is so inclined, can be fun.
6. OJT/Rotations (It depends but perhaps about 2-4 months)
• Between functional training and before/after language training, then new Officers work in their home offices practicing their trade.  Some people have a mixed experience here depending on their supervisor and the work going on at the time.  It's difficult for the supervisors because if an Officer schedules training so they are gone every other week, then they really can't provide substantial responsibility to be completed and then some DC based personnel view incoming FSOs as too transient to give responsibility.
• Generally, I think it was important plan out trainings to be well spaced apart to give adequate time to integrate to the team and demonstrate capability.  Additionally, this is also the opportunity for Officers to rotate to whichever Bureaus they feel would be beneficial to their experience.  So one could work as an assistant to the desk officer of your assignment country, spend a month learning how to award contracts or grants, or work with one of the bureaus on new program design.
7. Temporary Duty Assignments (TDY)
• In additional to all this, there are also various opportunities for new Officers to take details to different Missions for assignments.  These range from assisting Missions in developing their new long-term strategies, evaluating cooperating countries' financial systems, or reviewing portfolios and compliance of Missions.  Mainly, these assignments must be unique opportunities that could not be obtained in Washington or your onward assignment.  That and budget, of course.  But these opportunities tend to arise more often than one thinks.

The average time most people spend in Washington is probably about a year if they need language training.  But there are some cases where individuals move to their overseas assignment almost immediately.  For me, it will be about a year and a half, but the last few months are mainly just working in Washington until I can replace the person in my onward position.

I feel fortunate that I had a pretty good team to work with in Washington and anticipate being fairly capable when I move on, though I still tend to learn something new every day!  There are also many different people to meet around the home office and you never know when that network could help in the future.