A Day in the Life

I haven’t come up with a very good way to describe my job. I usually say I spend half my time on visits and half my time learning about the Jordanian economy by talking to Jordanian business owners (who are almost all Palestinians) and government officials who work on economic issues (who are almost all Jordanians).

I thought I’d explain my day a little in hopes that it sheds some light on what I do (or don’t do) all day. For the record, my job is WAY easier than Dan’s.

8:20 Arrive at office without Starbucks coffee because we are running late. Check email (both work and Hotmail). Write a very quick (and middling quality) draft cable about the Jordanian budget just passing the lower house of parliament for my boss who meant to write it but then got tied up with an upcoming visit (50% of her job too) and now the head of the embassy is asking why no cable was written about the budget. A cable is just a State Department way of saying a “memo” but harkens back to the good ol’ days when these memos were sent via telegraph (or something involving a cable) . They still use a very unattractive courier font and tend to get messed up if you use anything fancy like underlining or a “$” sign.

10:00 Attend a presentation of “Jordan’s National Investment Strategy” at the Four Seasons hotel. There are probably 300 people there and attendees are segregated by government officials, press, business men and the diplomatic corps. I sat in the second row of the diplomatic corps with the other non-Ambassadors. I met a nice man from the Italian equivalent of USAID. Unfortunately, my real-time translation headset wasn’t working and so I was grateful for the speakers who read from their PowerPoint but the speeches sounded like this to me “Jordanian investment ??? ??? ??? strategic plans for ??? ??? ???. Saudi Arabia ??? ???. In this World Bank Report, you can see ??? ???” Clearly I have more studying to do – or this emphasizes the difference between my class where we focus on Jordanian dialect phrases for “please fill the gas tank with unleaded” “please weigh these grapes for me” rather than the words that no doubt fill the new proposed taxation legislation that will help investors (I know the words for “taxes” and “investor” but not “proposed” or “legislation”). Thankfully, this was an event where I was there mostly to show that the Americans support Jordan’s investment strategy and my lack of useful notes is okay and I can just call the people who gave the talks and ask them to send me the strategy and someone here can help with translation.

12:30 Go to a lunch for 20 American business women who want to meet Jordanian business women. Give a few words of welcome. Eat delicious Lebanese food. Get a gift of Ghiradelli chocolate. Helpfully explain to the Americans that the literally 20 dishes on the table are the “appetizers” and that a main course of “mixed grill” and dessert is coming. The dessert is the national dessert of Jordan – Kanafa – it is not my favorite but this one is better than average because it has more of the crunchy shredded-wheat like topping and less of the creamy-cheese filling.

2:30 Lunch ends. Drive back to Embassy.

3:00 Review a report for the military that is basically “So, You Want to Learn about Jordan.” I add statistics for 2007’s GDP growth and inflation rate. Edit the aforementioned cable about the budget. Send it up to the Ambassador’s office for approval. Wait. Receive edits that are mostly additional commas. Add business cards that I received today to my big binder of business cards which are organized by industry.

6:30 Remind Dan that we have a dinner to go to and he should stop working.

7:00 Arrive at US Rice Federation dinner which is an awards ceremony for a rice recipe cooking contest. One of the Embassy’s responsibilities is to promote American products (like rice) but we won’t support one American company over another – this boils down to the Embassy believes strongly that Boeing airplanes are vastly superior to AirBus airplanes but cannot tell the difference between the excellent Dell computers and excellent IBM computers. Regret that I have eaten too much Lebanese food at lunch and not this vastly superior American rice.