Sitnam: No command of a foreign language is required to pass the test but as most people who speak more than one foreign language have spent time out of the country and have a demonstrated interest in foreign affairs, more people who speak several languages tend to pass the test. It’s a viscious circle. There’s about 10k serving FSOs worldwide, so while it’s small compared to the military it’s still a large organization. Long-term training in DC is rare and usualy means you’re learning a superhard language --Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese.
50 hour workdays? Pfft. Maybe after the tsunami or on the run-up to a big event or visit. Here, I work 8-5, have almost no entertaining responsibilities, and can leave the job at the office. In Colombo, I worked about the same but did 3-4 cocktail parties at night and on the weekends. The compensation is roughly competitive with private sector employers and people with a B.A. degree and a few years work experience can expect to make 40-65k upon joining. Plus they pay for your housing and utilities, trips to and from the post, and if you’re in a designated R&R post, you and your family gets either a RT ticket to the R&R point or you can cost construct and go anywhere you want.
Elendil’s Heir: Fujimori, or "El Chino"as he’s still known here, is under house arrest in Chile after trying to return to Peru last year so he could run in the Presidential elections. Silly man thought the INTERPOL warrants wouldn’t catch up to him. While his politics were abhorrent, he did manage to capture the head of the Shining Path and bring an end to decades of terrorism. Now his methods left something to be desired, like mass arrests and torture. Personally, I dislike him because his solution to Lima’s transportation woes was to import thousands of two-stroke taxis and bus-vans, making traffic hellish.
Sunspace: Diplomatic licence plates (often called CD plates from the initials from Corps Diplomatique) signify that the owner of the car and usually the passengers have diplomatic imminuty from prosecution. It’s like there’s a little chunk of an embassy driving around. In theory, you could drive on the sidewalk and park on the lawn if you wanted and the cops wouldn’t be able to do anything. In practice, most of us obey enough of the relevant laws to avoid danger and drivre defensively for the rest.
Cyberhwk: In Colombo, in the space of 2 weeks, we went through a Tiger suicide bomber exploding herself in a police station 20 yards away from the Embassy and an anthrax scare. It was tense for a while then calmed down. Every post has evacuation plans in place, some do evacuation drills, but the majority of posts are never evacuated. If we were to evacuate tomorrow, we’d have to evacuate every official American and all the resident Amcits as well. See Beirut last year for how well this worked.