(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Rules
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

questions from shy_kat

1. What was the happiest moment of your life?
It would be terribly romantic to say the time Chris and I got engaged or the day we got married, but the first I was hanign onto a cliff face for dear life and the second was such a welter of confusion, worry, and anticlimax (we both got to the hotel after the reception and were totally paralyzed by the sudden realization we didn't knwo what to do--it was the middle of the afternoon and having sex seemed oddly in approprite.)

Probably the first night Chris and I slept together (even with the exploding toilet) or the first night Liz and I slept together. Each had had such a lead-up and was the culmination of so much love and desire and excitement... :-) They are two of the loveliest women in the world, and I love them both so much, even if we're not together any more.

2. What's the most difficult thing you've accomplished?
Persuading Chris to marry me? ;-) No, because I didn't really persuade her to do anything she didn't want to do.

Accepting that the dream job I wanted for years was never going to happen? No, because, 15 years later, it may actually be available if I still want it after all this time (whether it turns out to be a dream or not is a different matter).

Getting onto the Foreign Service Register. I had to do that all by myself, starting with taking and passing the written exam, taking and passing the oral exam, and then getting through all of the hurdles of getting a clearance just out of college and getting the medical certification (which was in some ways the hardest part). Yep. And then, after I accomplished all that? They never offered me a post, because it was the Reagan years and American didn't want a Foreign Service.

3. If you could visit any one time and place, what would it be?
There are so many! And one can always fall into the trap of thinking one would learn about specific events; but, of course, if one were in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, one might see nothing at all of the shooting of President Kennedy, or nothing more than all the other witnessess saw. Be present at the signing of some great document or the entry of some famous person itno some famous place, well, there it is, it's happened, you saw it, now it's time to go home.

And stories always show that one can't *change* the past when one goes back. So trying to save Charles I (was he even worth it, really, the pig-headed git?) or persuade the Council at Derby that if theey just pushed further south into England the Hanoverians would flee (would Britain really have been better under Catholic Polish kings than GErman Protestant ones?

So I'll go with a vantage point overlooking any of the pivotal battles of the English Civil Wars, the American Revolution, or the Napoleonic Wars. I've spent so much time studying these, I'd really like to see one actually unfolding where I could see it and find out if it's anything like all the guesses that historians have made over the years.

4. What drew you to redactrice (way back when...)?
She was part of the circle of friends I hung out with in college, and she was always cheerful and friendly (as she remains to this day). She was also very pretty (as she also remains :-) She was kind to me. :-)

5. What percentage of the games that you own have you actually played?
Overall, probably less than half. Of the historical boardgames, 10-15% I've probably played many, many times; probably about another 15-20% I've played once or set up multiple times but either not played or played only part of them. Of the CCGs I've only played L5R and the ACW one more than once; you and I played Dune and 7th Sea and LBS once each, IIRC; the others (Mythos, Buffy, LOTR, B5, Holy Grail, ??) I've not played yet. Of the "German" games I've probably played a much hihger percentage than any other group, because so many more people are interested in playing them

If I had untold wealth, among the many things I'd do with be share it with several of my friends so there would be other people who only worked when they wanted to, so I would have people to game with :-)

Comments

[winterbadger]

I discovered later that part of the test is actually testing your reactions to tests. If one received a question in the viva voce section that you couldn't answer (I got one "describe significant American contributions to art an literature, by era") you could say so and ask for a different question. But they didn't tell you that unless you asked.

I also recall one part of my first oral exam in which I was asked how I would deal with a situation in which a young American joined a religious cult in the country where I was stationed and his or her parents came to the embassy and demanded we get their kid out. I went through all the options I could think of, and the examiner thought of a way around all of them. It was quite the role playing game.

I was very frustrated when I didn't get a posting, because I had participated in a State Department training exercise my senior year in college. They had a "wargame" (a diplomatic crisis game, really) that they were planning to introuce in their trianing curriculum, and they came to my college (and, I assume, many others) to try it out on a group of foreign affairs majors first. I had the role of DCM in the relevant US Embassy, did a good job of it (not just my opinion, the organizer from State said so and urged several of us to take the exams), helping us work through the options and "win" the scenario. I think that was when I decided that I would really enjoy actually being an FSO, rather than pretending to be an FSO while working for someone else.