Prattlin’ On

OK. So you are an American and would like to work with OSCE. Your options are contracts and secondment. As far as I know, you don’t need to be “put forward” to gain a contract.

The mission is staffed by people from OSCE’s member nations. The US has a quota it likes to fill, which I think is around 15%. The idea is that each nation will be able to get people in, so that you don’t wind up with a staff that is overbalanced in clear favor of one nation. One of the reasons for the delegations doing it is the way wages work.

You get a per diem (living expense) paid by OSCE. That is the same for everyone in an area, and depends on cost of living, danger, and so forth. Your wage is paid by your country of origin. So, Americans get paid American wages, the Swiss get paid Swiss wages and so forth. They all have their own budgets and such. Poor countries might have people working who only get per diem, for example. Or the wages of people in 2 identical positions might have a very different gross, because they are from different places.

For Americans, you have to first apply for a position through the delegation at OSCE headquarters in Vienna. If they like you, they put you forward for the position. Every put forward then goes through a “normal” job selection process. The heads where the position is sort through CVs, make a short list and due interview.

The first step to get it all going is to go to the PAE React website, and get registered. If you check the site for jobs, you will see the OSCE jobs that the US is specifically interested in filling. You can also check the OSCE Employment page, and see if there is something that trips your fancy. If so, you can ask the US delegation to consider you, even though they don’t have an explicit interest.

OK. So, now you have registered, and put a job code in the right box on your online application. After the deadline, the good folks at PAE-React sort through what is what and decide if you are a top applicant. If you rank tops, they will tell the place offering the job that you are an OK person, and you ought to be considered.

Your application then has gone from PAE to the jobsite. As I have said, they peruse the applications, and make a short list. If you get short listed you get an interview. If you are number, someone contacts you to offer the position. If you accept, off you go!

To simplify: Imagine you are a want a job in the grocery industry. You cannot apply directly to the job of, say, butcher, that you want. You have to first apply to your local employment office. If the guild decides they would like someone in Ray’s, they give Ray your application and ask them to consider you. If Ray’s digs you, they call you for an interview.

Any questions?!

I am right past my half way mark for my stint in BiH. Hard to believe, eh? As of this writing, I have about 2 solid months left. In light of that, I have started a job search for myself.

Right now, I am focusing on jobs with OSCE missions. I am hoping that interning for them, and being in the region will make me more attractive. So far I have put in for Voter Services and Border Monitor in Kosovo and Georgia, respectively. I didn’t get put forward on either. Put forward? See the entry after this one titled “Secondment.” You can get an idea of what OSCE is offering at http://www.osce.org/employment

If I get a position here, I will most likely be leaving the internship early, and rolling right into it. The positions all last 6 months, so I would be in the area until November. Thankfully, Dana is VERY understanding. Did I say very?

In a week or 2, I will also try and start lining something up in Chicago for the last half of the summer. Dana and I are heading to DC the end of the summer, so I only need something short. I will try and get some work with the database STAIRS I was all punk-rock at before I left for BiH. If something really cool for DC pops up, I will try for it, of course.

I will say I am getting much better at cover letters.

So, yeah. You hear of anything pass it along. :-D (keep readin’…)

As far as I could tell, not much exciting happens in BiH for Easter. I spent mine in Sarajevo, sequestered to the flat because of inclement weather (rain!). I am sure all sorts of folks were doing all sorts of nifty things, though. Heh.

The cool thing came when I got back to Banja Luka. It is all in the way eggs are coloured and dealt with. It is pretty cool, so I suggest you play along at home, and tell me how it turned out. It doesn’t need be Easter to colour eggs!

First, save up the skins from red onions – the papery outsides. Save a bunch. The more you have, the darker the colour. When you have enough (perhaps from 1 kilo of onions) place them in water in your egg boilin’ pan. Let them soak nicely for a bit, then kick it to a boil. When the water boils, add your eggs, and hard boil as you normally would.

Tada! Eggs an awesome reddish colour!

For an added twist, before you boil: Get some cool leaves from weeds, trees, or that house hold plant you don’t like anymore. One of the eggs before me even used grass going to seed. Next, cut up some (old) nylons into nice squares. Place the leaf flat on the egg, and place that on the nylon square, so the table pins it. Face down, so to speak. Fold the egg in tightly stretched nylon, and tie it in place with string. You should now have a “bank robber” egg with a leaf smooshed tightly against it. Boil as per above. You will want to remove the nylon and leaf ASAP to avoid sticking.

I will NOT be held responsible if you use something unhealthy like hemlock or nightshade as your leaf and poison yourself!

Ok, now the fun part of eating the eggs. There is also a game of sorts that gets played with them, though I am a little sketchy on some of the rules. If you try this with someone from BiH, and they take your cracked egg and eat it, don’t whine to me. One person holds an egg in their hand, so the all but one end of the egg is covered. The egg is in your fist. Please don’t squeeze harder than you need to hold it. The challenger lightly holds their egg and taps your egg, end to end. A broken shell means you lose. Sorry.

I hope you all had a good Christian Myth Day or Now You See Him, Now You Don’t Saviour Day, depending on your beliefs, political affiliations, or parents.

PS. I lost my egg.

One of the fun things to order here translates roughly into meat plate (or platter.) It is an Atkins dream, and frightfully filling. Many places offer it for 2. You get a big platter that has a light covering of pomfrit (French fries.) On that is a scad of different meats. You might have a pork filet, a breaded veal steak, some tasty thing that is 2 meats cut in strips and twisted together, bacon, Salisbury type steaks, and little steaks. Most of that will show up on the plate. They always include onions too, which rocks. I love onions.

It may seem like a terrible amount of meat. It is. But, it is so damned good. I am preparing myself for the let down on food when I return to the States. Stuff here has so much more flavor. It is cliche, but it’s true. A couple times I have been delighted at what I was fed, only to be told with raise eyebrows that it was cheap meat, and nothing special.

I have also learned to filet my own fish. The first time was a bad scene for me, but the second I nailed it. I got the tail, skeleton and head of in one slow pull and left no bones behind. That day I was eating a version of meat plate done with fish. I think there that was 4 or 5 kinds. (Ask me another day about “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on accordion.)

Jelena’s folks always make the best soup. Each time I have eaten at their place, it is the first course. It is a broth soup, with these tiny dumplings. It hammered home that most every broth soup I have had in the states is pretty much salty water. The flavour of their homemade soup is fabulous! I wish I could describe it more. The night of the fish plate, I also had some unbelievable Hungarian soup, which is borderline stew. It tasted similar to a stew my Ma made, but much, much better. Kind of like, “Ohhh, now I get it!”

A wondrous creation that I make sure to eat when I go to Sarajevo is pita. Again, hard to describe exactly but so freakin’ good. There are 4 kinds: spinach, cheese, meat, potatoes and meat. You can make it in a pan, but if you get in out, it is in links or coiled like a sausage and about that size. It is made of dough sort of like philo dough that is layered with the filling and baked. The cheese is one that I understand you cannot get in the States. We have them for breakfast with a glass of yogurt. The place right by the Sarajevo flat has perhaps the BEST in the city. Jelena claims it is number 2.

Getting back to meat briefly, I will often have a steak when I am out. There are a variety of ways they come. It seems that instead of ordering a cut, you order a preparation style. You can get it in garlic sauce, mushroom sauce, plain, and so on. There is also no real aversion to baby meat here. I thought Chicago had meat eaters! —Make sure you are sitting down.— I have even had ham, yes HAM, here that I have liked. Yes, liked; not just tolerated.

From the store, I have also had some delightful sausages from the region that I couldn’t possibly tell you what they were. I will also get one chocolate bar a week. Would you believe they actually contain a discernible amount of cocoa? Makes Hershey’s an appalling tragedy. I have been slowly working my way through the variety of juices: blueberry, cherry, and other interesting ones like peach.

I have also had this stuff I can’t recall the name of that I plan to get a recipe for. It is essentially potatoes, cabbage, and meat optional covered with water and cooked a long ass time. Jelena showed me a way to roast potatoes, involving pouring a milk, oil and spice mixture over them first, that is stellar.

That is all the food I can think of right off the top of my head, though I know I am forgetting stuff. I just need to remember: recipes, recipes, recipes.

This is a look at how I came to be pierced and what it means to me. It is by no means inclusive of all my feeling and ideas. I welcome any questions you might have after you read it. (keep readin’…)

Many of you know of my love for coffee, even if my consumption has tapered off in recent years. I am slowly (?) moving into snobbishness about coffee. It is my heroine, my weakness, the dark breweding mistress to whom I always return. It is my balm, my muse, my solace. I use it to wake, to celebrate to relax, to move along… So here we have it, my big look at the coffee situation here in BiH. (keep readin’…)

Wow. The weather is GREAT! Nice breezes, 60s to 70sF!

The crazy thing is, its like someone just turned a knob. Cold one day, nice the next. From what locals tell me, this is typical. There usually isnt much of a transition.

I like the winter, but must say it has felt really good and been quite a boost to get some warm sun.

Ahh…

This is one of those entries that should and could probably be much longer than it will be. Kind of fades before the telling, if you will.

After my visit with the Head of Mission, we left promptly for the sea. It got darker as we drove, being late afternoon when we left. It seems I have a knack for entering new places under the cover of night. The trip itself was pretty uneventful, but I did get an appreciative honk as I peed by the road side. It is a pretty well traveled road, and thanks to threats of landmines, you exactly go wander off by a bush. Well you could, by I will chance the apreciative (I hope!) honks.

The road itself comes to wind along a river I believe is called Neretva (I will hear shortly if not.) The river has several remarkable things. It has a manmade lake of remarkable size. It has the hydro-power plant I am told supplies most of the country with it’s power. It is also my understanding that power is an export here, though the damming of rivers is such now that it threatens the natural habitats. I don’t know how related it is, but many of the trees on the bank have caught trash. Bags and plastic drape like cobwebs for kilometer after kilometer of bank. There have been actions aimed at other rivers to clean them, so this one will be to, I imagine.

Perhaps the most remarkable attribute is the color. The entire river is an opaque, milky green. It almost looks like a flowing gem. I won’t forget my camera again! Truly, it is incredible to see. I would have never thought a river could be both green and healthy at the same time. Best guess in the car is algae. Extra points to the first to tell me.

There was also a couple landscape changes. I was startled by a sudden flatness. I hadn’t realized how accustomed to the hills and mountains I had become until we entered a large, flat valley. The mountains still ringed us, and it it didnt have the same valley feel of Vegas. There you can feel the flow to the point. Here, it was like the mountains sprang up to shroud a piece of flatness. I am told the summer gets brutal there.

We also passed some amazing cliffs, and walls. They were covered with a few trees and some scrabble, looking both hard and wonderful at the same time. They were as fascinating to me as they were harsh and there was some general disagreement in the car on their beauty. Some prefer mountains with more green, lol.

It was dark when we arrived at the sea and took the ferry over.

HoM is one of the many tody abbreviations floating about OSCE. It means Head of Mission. I recieved an email one day from his assistant, detailing that there was to be a meeting. I remarked how spiffy to my supervisor, not looking at who it was sent to. Virtually everything I get is because he asked people to put me on their distribution lists. (keep readin’…)

Well, I am here just past a month now. I am settling in, I suppose, though I still have a long way to go. My language it still extremely limited, so social interactions tend to frighten me. :-)

I will admit that I first thought the differences were not so great. I liken it to being in a dream. Everything pretty much works the way it should, but there are differences that are subtle, but let you know things are what you are used. If it were a dream, it would be mostly visual clues that hint at incontinuity. The toilets and doors are slightly different. The roads are narrower, most often. There are a ton of minimal observations you could make on what is different. I amuse myself still when I see a sign for people crossing.

There are 2 types of the sign. Warnings are triangles pointed up. These are white with bands of red and orange on the outside, and shadow people strutting within them. It is kind of a fractal: each difference shows another difference- the shadow people look different. They are a little taller and skinnier, I think. Their stride more confident. Heh, but I digress.

The second version of this sign is what amuses me. (Photos someday.) On the left side of the triangle, the bands of color are broken out, all jagged. It gives the impression that the shadow people were caged, and something blew a hole in the wall, which they are escaping. Free from the sign at last! Unite brothers! The photo will amuse you when it comes. My guess is that it shows an area where people are inclined to pop out at random, rather than a controlled environment. Don’t ask me what that means. (keep readin’…)