With Myanmar on the cusp of their first elections since the 2021 Military Coup, I thought it would be a good opportunity to provide a brief recent history on Myanmar. While I assume most people reading this blog have some sense of where Myanmar is, whenever I am back home and tell people where I
I realize recently a lot of my posts have been more ethereal and less about my day to day life. A few readers asked me how I have been doing, where I am going next, and how are things in Myanmar, so I thought I would share. I have been posted to Myanmar for about
I always get asked by friends or family on all sides of the political spectrum how I could work for the government under X or Y President. In my three and a half years in the Foreign Service, I’ve learned that one of the most misunderstood parts of government work is neutrality. People often assume
Just an hour northeast of Yangon, the city of Bago (once called Pegu) is easy to overlook. At first glance, it’s a busy provincial town. But spend a day here and you quickly realize Bago is one of Myanmar’s most fascinating places — a city that has seen golden ages of empire, devastating wars, and,
I’ve been in the Foreign Service for three and a half years — just long enough to have settled into the rhythm of this strange, rewarding career, but not long enough to have lived through a government shutdown. Until now. Before this week, shutdowns were something I’d only read about in the news or heard
I don’t have much to touch on this week other than to comment that over the last year or so, this blog has been flooded with thousands of spam comments, mostly of Russian origin, posting nonsense adds or propaganda. I have to approve every single comment, so none of them make it to the comment
Being a government employee comes with plenty of stereotypes—job security, decent benefits, stable pay. But if you’ve ever actually worked for the federal government, you know that “stability” is a fragile illusion (this year more than ever). Nothing makes that clearer than a government shutdown, which always seems to be looming over our heads. On
Last month, I got to return to the U.S. for Home Leave, a congressionally mandated form of leave diplomats get at the end of assignments, or after serving a year in many danger posts. It’s meant to allow diplomats to kiss the soil of the motherland and reacclimate to their own country after being away
Let’s circle back to something I wrote about a few year ago that everyone does but no one really likes to talk about: using the bathroom. Specifically, what happens after. For most Americans, that means reaching for the trusty roll of toilet paper. But here’s the thing—why are we still doing this when there’s a
Last month the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) ceased to exist as part of the restructuring of the U.S. Government, and the remnants were folded into the Department of State. For those that don’t know, USAID makes up a large presence at overseas embassies, particularly in the developing world, so their departure has
