My computer died. Dead. Really truly goners. It was working fine. I pushed the button to check my e-mail and also set it to retrieve any new podcasts on itunes (sadly NPR addicted, yep, that's me) satisfied it was doing its thing I went off to cook dinner. Came back a little while later hoping it was done so I could sync my pod and listen to the newest Splendid Table while cooking only to find that the rotten thing was frozen. Tapped a few buttons hoping what ever the problem was it would fix itself, Hey! Stop laughing! It usually works. Instead I got the dreaded grey screen with the blinking question mark. Not good. I left it hoping Dave could fix it. He came home fiddled with it a while and pronounced it dead. Initially he hoped to be able to retrieve some of the data, but even that didn't work. What ever happened it fried itself good. Yesterday we went to the local computer parts store and picked up a new hard drive, so now it is working again, sort of. It looks like my computer but sure doesn't act like my computer. All of my settings, bookmarks, files, downloads, and everything else that made it mine are gone. Dave said it will take a few days to finish loading all the programs but then it will good to go. In fact he says it will be better since the old hard drive was only 60 gig and the new one is 500 gig. That's quite the upgrade so I guess there is a silver lining. Now if only I could remember everyone's e-mail address.
On to other matters. Lots of you have been asking where we are going after Germany. (quick note- my husband is member of the foreign service so we move every few years to a new country) All I have been able to tell my friends is "I don't know yet." We do know when we will be moving but not where. This week we received our bid list so now I have new answer, "We will be going to one of the places on the list."
The bid list is basically a list of maybes. We receive the list, have some time to research the different places, submit out bids - requests to go to a particular place, then wait and wait and wait. Of course there are a whole bunch of other people out there all over the world doing exactly the same thing and chances are good if you want to go to a particular place someone else will too so we actually submit a list of places we would be willing to go to, then hope we get the one we really really want. For example on our last bid list we really wanted to go to The Hague in the Netherlands but we are now living in Frankfurt Germany so obviously that didn't work out. Frankfurt was our 2nd choice so can't really complain, we are living in Europe after all. Some times you get what you want, and sometimes you don't. It is really more complicated than this, there are all kinds of things to consider, and the bigger your family the more complicated it gets. I will skip the details for now. If you want to know more just e-mail (it's working now) and I will get back to you.
With no further ado here is our bid list. It is really long this time. Some of the places have more than one position available but I will skip over that part and only list each place not each position.
THE BID LIST
Abu Dhabi
Abuja
Addis Abada
AIT Taipei
Algiers
Amman
Ashgabat
Asmara
Asuncion
Athens
Bangkok
Bangui
Banjul
Beijing
Beirut
Belgrade
Berlin
Bissau
Brasilia
Brazzaville
Bridgetown
Bucharest
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Bujumbura
Cairo
Canberra
Caracas
Chengdu
Ciudad Juarez
Conakry
Cotonou
Damascus
Dar-Es-Salaam
Dhahran
Doha
Dubai
Frankfurt
Freetown
Georgetown
Guangzhou
Guayaquil
Hanoi
Harare
Ho Chi Minh
Hong Kong
Hyderabad
Istanbul
Jakarta
Jeddah
Jerusalem
Kathmandu
Khartoum
Kuwait
Kyiv
La Paz
Lagos
Libreville
Lilongwe
London
Luanda
Madrid
Manila
Maputo
Mbabane
Mexico City
Moscow
Muscat
Naples
New Delhi
Olso
Ottawa
Paris
Phnom Penh
Prague
Pretoria
Rabat
Rangoon
Reykjavik
Riga
Rio De Janeiro
Riyadh
Rome
San Salvador
Sana'a
Santiago
Sao Paulo
Seoul
Shenyang
Sofia
Tallinn
Tashkent
Tegucigalpa
Tel Aviv
Tokyo
Toronto
Ulaanbaatar
Valletta
Vienna
Vientiane
Vilnius
Warsaw
Yaounde
Yerevan
In case you are wondering when we receive the bid list it only lists the city NOT the country. I have been trying to do research via my ipod touch (not fun) so I haven't had a chance to look up all of the posts yet or I would have listed the countries. Did you know where all of these cities are? Not me! I have my atlas right next to as I do research. It also lists some stuff about the position that is only of interest, or even intelligible, to the employee. If you are FS yourself my husband is an IMS, that's computer geek to the rest of us. (Sorry Babe! LOL!) Thank goodness or my computer may have been gone for good!
So where would you want to go if you had to make this choice? Remember there are as many people staring at this list as there are positions. Someone WILL go to each and every one of these places but only ONE lucky person is going to Paris, the rest of us are going some where else. Oh the possibilities!
9 comments:
I will hold my guess until the list is shorter by the removal places that you can't go ie Kuwait.
wow. too much to process. i am with danny. so sorry about your computer. that pretty much sucks. and happened to me a few years back. it sucked. got me this nice laptop, though (which quickly became everyone but mine!!!!) xoxoxo,
m.
Chickens. This is my top yhree:
Kathmandu (yes, it is because the name has "kat" in it!), LaPaz, Ottawa.
Teri - LA PAZ??? You do know that is in BOLIVIA right!?! Well at least you have an opinion.
That is more than I can say for Danny and girlfriend Monica. Couldn't you two have at least picked some city you have heard of like I don't know Paris or Tokyo or Rio De Janeiro? Please. I didn't ask where you thought Dave and I would like to go, I asked where YOU would go if you could.
My choices would be: Rome, Naples, Paris, Madrid, Prague, Athens, and Vienna. I should say that I don't have any reason for picking these other than I have always wanted to visit these places. I have been to Rome (twice) and I loved it there. I was in Paris for less than 24 hours and did not get enough time to enjoy it. I can see you have a lot of work to do with researching. Thank goodness you have a working computer - you will need it! I look forward to your updates. When will you be moving?
That's more like it. Those are all cool choices. We won't be moving until late next June or early July. It just takes a while to coordinate all these post changes world wide. Rather glad I don't have that job.
Well there are a lot of places NOT to go. But, on the bright side, there are tons of what seem like good choices. Because I so hate moving, though, I would go for Berlin. That would at least be the same country.
Looks like we will be trying mostly for Africa or Asia. Lots of complicated reasons. Perhaps will do a post on that later.
Okay, looked at your original list and saw our first 2 posts on there...
Muscat - a DIAMOND in the rough... GREAT family post... and AMAZING housing!
Tel Aviv - if you can get over living in a place where the people are more gruff than New Yorkers then it's also a FABULOUS post - extremely family friendly with good housing.
Glad I didn't see Chennai on there...
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