Last day at work

EDIT: I finally got a USB cable! Here are the photos from our trip to Washington:










Wow...what an amazing feeling... Today was my last day at work. I have to say it was one of the more enjoyable leavetakings I've experienced. I am generally not good at goodbyes, preferring to vanish with a simply "cya". I got pretty used to leaving places growing up as a missionary kid, so you tend to grow a thick skin. But the outpouring of appreciation from my friends at work was quite touching. I hadn't thought I'd made that much of an impression. I rarely aim to be liked so it's always something of a surprise when people end up liking me. At any rate, the kind words were appreciated and I do wish everyone there the best.

I love to work, but it is an incredible feeling to walk out of a place that has claimed so much of my attention and energy for the last 2 1/2 years and just...leave it behind. That sense of freedom is heady and addictive...it's probably one reason we've lived our lives the way we have, so that we have the option of just walking away from it all. Kerri and I have both from the beginning wanted to be free to leave at the drop of a hat. Although we did buy a house when we first married, we quickly got out of that and have been working our way to smaller and smaller living spaces ever since. We have tried to keep few possessions, small, lightweight, cheap. Easy to get rid of if necessary. This last couple of weeks has proved that it was the right choice for us, as Kerri has already expressed...we were able to get rid of almost every piece of furniture in our apartment in less than a week. Kerri will take care of the rest later. She won't exactly be "moving" out of this place...there won't be much left to move.

I finally got my itinerary today! Just after getting home it arrived. In the typically clipped, military style I have come to expect from this company, it has directed me to take a flight next Friday at 6:15am to Atlanta. From there I will be transported to the "CRC" (conus replacement center) at Fort Benning. All sorts of stuff about civilian duffle bags and such. Good thing I happen to have one. Immunizations, briefings, sharing a room w/ 3 other people, 48 hour notification prior to leaving for Kuwait...it'll be an interesting experience. They still are reserving the right to send me home if something doesn't work out, and pessimist that I am, I won't believe it til I set down in Kuwait. But it is certainly good to have more information.

Tomorrow we'll be heading up to visit my relatives in the Aberdeen/Hoquiam area of Washington. My sister Milei will be accompanying us. I hear my grandpa is not doing well, so this may be the last time we see him (though I hope not). There are lots of people we may never see again in this life. Funny...as a kid I always viewed leaving as a kind of death. People were literally dead to me after I left them. Coping mechanism or what you will, it has always affected me that way. The odd thing is, if someone is dead, but in Christ, then the certain hope is that we will see each other again someday. This is the first time (kind of) that it's actually been true of several people here in the states. When my grandfather died while we were in the Philippines a couple of years ago, it was sad, but again...it's hard to be too sad when someone is liberated from the pain and misery that they were in, and when we know we will see them again, whole and perfected.

Some Practical Advice

So, let's say you decide to move out of the country and sell absolutely everything you own. Do not put all of the items up for sale on Craig's List at the same time! You will lose your mind trying to keep up with it all.

I have used Craig's List before and sold things here and there, but never have I put up 30 posts in one day. Until now, that is. I thought I would just "get started" with selling stuff so it wasn't left until the last minute. Two days later we have no couch, no chairs, no bed, no dressers, no desk, no lamps, no bookshelf, no place to put anything except in piles on the floor. In retrospect I see that I was being a bit overzealous seeing as we aren't actually moving out of here until the end of October.

I guess the "bright" side (if you can call it that) is that I can't help but deal with all of the piles. I am going to be far ahead of schedule in that reguard.

Sunday go to meetin'

Today is Sunday and we'll be heading to our neighborhood Grace Bible Church in a few hours (thanks to my son Rowan who woke us up at 7am, believe me, we'd rather sleep in). Usually we take the streetcar up to a coffee shop, have some breakfast and coffee, then walk over to church. Afterwards we might head over to Trader Joe's or Safeway to do some shopping and then come home on the streetcar. Today however we'll be heading into Newberg after church for my aunt Yvonne's birthday, so we'll take the car and park it nearby.

Our usual weekend schedule is probably not going to recur prior to me leaving, which is unfortunate as it is very enjoyable. Saturday morning is a trip up to the Farmer's Market for as much fresh produce and meat as we need for the week. The rest of the day is usually spent riding around town on bikes, maybe a trip to the Zoo, or OMSI, or Powells, or a park, or sometimes we'll go on longer trips...such as the first time we headed off on the Springwater Corridor and ended up in Troutdale by mistake! Sunday afternoons are usually spent quietly at home.

However 3 weeks before leaving requires some changes to the usual, so we'll probably be heading further afield on weekends. A trip to my Bates clan in Aberdeen/Hoquiam WA will be in order at some point, as will several trips to Newberg.

Oh yeah, so church...we started going to Grace Bible near the end of last year, so I guess almost a year ago now. We had decided to leave our former church (Imago Dei) after all of our involvement avenues dried up at the same time. We realized that we had never really looked around downtown Portland for a nearby church when we arrived and felt that we should give them a chance. Portland is notorious for being one of the most "un-churched" cities in the US, but there are several large gorgeous church buildings downtown, some of them used by churches, some of them not. We started going to various churches and evaluating them to see if we were compatible in terms of theology and culture.

Eventually we stumbled across Grace Bible which happens to have one of these great old buildings. They are a small, conservative, orthodox (little o), evangelical congregation, non-denominational, but pretty much your basic church. Hymns, little old ladies, the whole bit. Of course, they are located downtown next to several low income housing blocks, which means the cross section of people is pretty interesting, which is the way we like it. The pastor told us that on any given Sunday about 25% of the congregation are in active recovery for various addictions. All this combined made us feel that this was a good place for us to be. The months went by w/ sporadic attendance on our part, partially as we hadn't fully committed and the usual other reasons. At any rate, then this opportunity came up and we'll be heading off soon, so while we have enjoyed the church greatly it looks like it won't be a place we'll have put down any roots, which is a pity.

Well enough for today...sorry if this stuff is boring and normal, but that's our life at the moment. I figure if I just keep writing no matter what then I'll remember to keep this thing updated. If I wait for interesting things to happen, I won't be in the habit of writing and I won't bother.

Here is a slideshow of our morning walk to church, and later visit to Newberg for Yvonne's birthday party.

Where we are

We took a new friend for a bike ride today and brought along the camera to take some pictures of where we currently are, lovely Portland Oregon. This is the view from our porch, looking out over the Willamette River.

Here is a test of Picasa's slideshow embedding feature:



If that doesn't work, use this link to view the slideshow on Picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jesse.cadd/PortlandBikeRide

How this all happened

We've always wanted to live overseas. I'm a missionary kid and grew up in the Philippines, coming back to the states in 1993 to go to college. By the time I was done with it I knew I would be heading back out, as a missionary myself I thought, but first I had to pay down my school debt, which is what I set myself to for the next couple of years. Just as I finished that, I met my future wife Kerri and ended up marrying her a year or so later. One of our many compatibilities was our outlook on the world and desire to live overseas. However she too had school debt so once again we set to working on paying that down, figuring we didn't want to start out on such an ephemeral existence while owing any man.

Unfortunately, we got started in the wrong direction right off the bat, buying a house, settling into a small town, having a baby earlier than we intended, starting a career in Microsoft training...all of this had the effect of saddling us with numerous difficult to cast off ties that we've been slowly untangling over the past 7 years.

First we sold the house, moved several times each time taking the opportunity to cast off more possessions with the aim of living as mobile as possible. Eventually we ended up downtown Portland in an apartment, I had managed to switch jobs to be able to do what I had been teaching with a company also downtown. We love it in Portland and are very glad we made the move. We always say that if we have to live somewhere in the U.S., Portland is where we'd like to be. I cannot rhapsodize enough about it, nor do I have time today.

Along the way we had shifted our priorities regarding overseas living, realizing that typical missionary work was probably not going to work out for us. This opened up the possibility of getting work overseas, which also made the issue of the school debt (now surprisingly harder to pay down w/ the usual family expenses, and increase in cost of living in Portland) less critical to us. However, there were some other family obligations that developed and became the primary thing keeping us here. Recently, this issue was resolved in such a way that we felt free again to pursue the idea of moving abroad. This in combination with some marked instability with my company led to a new push to be out of the country by July, 2008, the end of our current lease. So we started looking...

Kerri is an avid Craigslister and she began trawling for possibilities sending them my way to veto or try out. One of them was an unassuming post located in "the middle east" doing basically what I'm doing now (AD and Exchange). I figured it couldn't hurt to apply, so I sent my resume in, not thinking I'd hear anything back.

A few days later I got a call from a first level recruiter who asked me some basic questions, and who then told me I might hear back from the next level of recruiters sometime in the next 3 or so weeks. She did tell me that the positions open now were in Baghdad and Afghanistan, to which I responded letting her know that I was only interested in positions that would allow my family to come along. She said she'd look and see if there were some available.

Based on previous experience, I didn't expect to hear back again, and it was 1 week later that I got a phone call while out on my bike riding to a park nearby to where we live. We reconvened at the park and I was asked some slightly more in depth questions on Exchange database recovery tools. It slowly dawned on me that I was basically being offered a position...though I had virtually no information on who or where... These were the answers to some basic questions at that time:

1) Who: ITT Systems, a contractor to the military
2) Where: Kuwait, on a military base
3) When: Not sure at all, the process is apparently byzantine

An offer letter would be forthcoming in a the next few days...

We were stunned...it seemed so fast. We talked a bit about it...Kuwait was never on our list of "want to live" places, there was the safety issue (not a problem it turns out), added to which was a recent restructure of our budget and priorities all aimed at leaving in a year, not right now. We decided to try and keep our excitement down and think carefully about it before immediately going nuts.

The next day, the offer arrived. We had 5 days to accept, which of course was no guarantee of getting the job...it was contingent upon numerous things such as a full medical exam, dental exam, visa application being approved, and security clearance obtained. We decided to take the weekend to think and pray about it, and seek advice from family members and friends. I wasn't going to notify my boss at work until we had decided for sure, but he was leaving on vacation the next week and I felt it would be more appropriate to tell him we were seriously looking at a new opportunity before he left.

That weekend we talked to a lot of people, prayed a lot, thought a lot, and eventually decided that it was the opportunity in front of us and there was no reason not to go. We new the hours would be tough (60 hour weeks, 12 hours x 5 days), that I'd have to be there for 3 months before Kerri and Rowan could come over, and that we might hate it there. But...it was also a contract job renewed yearly and if things were really awful we could decide not to renew, or ask for a different assignment. The company, ITT Systems, is a very large international contract company so it would seem a good place to start work for if it could lead to assignments in other countries. In any case, it was as good a place to start as any.

We accepted the offer and thus began 3 weeks of filling out papers, making appointments, and general discovery of this process.

After acceptance, we had to schedule a medical exam using their intermediary. I got this done in the next week, along with the dental exam and form. We spent a good 4 or so nights filling out the initial paperwork which is mammoth. Luckily they prefer it if you scan in documents and send them via email which simplified things massively as we have a pretty good scanner/printer combo.

Then came the security clearance online form...which required information on living and work history going back 7 years. Also information on family and their citizenship status. This was the worst, my brother and sisters all having been born outside of the country but citizens, they required proof of citizenship status, either certificate of citizenship or naturalization certificate. Well we couldn't find either for my brother and one sister, even after frantic calling and searching through records. Doesn't help that my brother is in the UK, my sister is autistic, and my mother is in South Korea...coordinating communication was exceptionally difficult and the periods of waiting in between were excruciating. I finally got through to my contact at ITT Systems and they told me that a passport number was sufficient (despite it not being an option on the form itself). Luckily we had that information and were able to submit the form.

The visa was going to take the longest potentially, as the month of Ramadan began on 9/12 and we were told that things slow down a lot in the Kuwaiti government during the fasting and festivities. They said that if it didn't get done in the big push just prior, then it wouldn't be til mid October that we found out if it would work out. By this time we had resigned ourselves to the fact that it really might not work out after all.

At work, I had let my boss's boss know we were pursuing this, but had not yet officially resigned, as that is not recommended until it is final. Of course, it would have been within his right to terminate me immediately as a security risk, but luckily he decided against that. We figured that if he did, we weren't going to let that stop us from dealing with our employers with integrity. I refuse to play the political games that always seem to be going on.

After submitting the clearance form, there was nothing left to do but wait...which was hard...but a couple of days ago we finally got the call letting us know everything had come through and that they were ready to schedule my departure date. I'll be heading in 3 weeks to a "CRC" which is a location in the US where presumably they have some basic training and briefing for 1 week prior to flying me directly to Kuwait.

And so began our preparations in earnest...we need to sell everything, get all finances in order, and Kerri and Rowan will be moving to Newberg to stay with family for the next 3 months. I've given my two weeks notice officially to work which will leave one week for final prep.

We are profoundly excited...

Kuwait FTW!

Well, we have finally done it...we are going to be leaving the US and heading overseas to Kuwait to work for a contractor to the military (ITT Systems). Well, I will be working for them at any rate...my wife and son (Kerri and Rowan) will be coming over in about 3 months time. This blog is mainly a central point we can refer friends and family to for news and pictures, but also we hope that it will serve as a reference for anyone else who might go through a similar experience. We find ourselves scouring the net for other people's experiences and so we hope to add ours to the general pool.

In my next post I hope to add some details of the application process, as it was pretty unique.

-JC