PRE(SUMPTIVE) DEPARTURE ORIENTATION SEMINAR Week Three

I do nothing if not exaggerate on this blog my importance to the foreign service. I predicted three weeks ago, for instance, that there'd be hell to pay the moment I went off to PDOS. In reality, my office functioned normally, officers and staff covered for me effortlessly, and Pardek's reaction upon discovering I was away at PDOS was a resounding "meh".

Fine. Roll the damn highlights. No one cares.

Week Three

Day One

Gender Sensitivity and Counseling Techniques. Well-intentioned lecture, but with enough outdated and clichéd role-playing games to fill a month's worth of Dilbert.

Day Two


Tourism Promotion. Bohol, Palawan, Davao, Siargao. So many beautiful places to see before I get posted, so many paradises the world has yet to discover.

(this corny dialogue also serves as tenuous segue for a mini post-within-post edition of "Travel Advisory...Not only in the Philippines":

• Explosion at mall (LLDDL immediately checks if VNC is ok)


• Masked gunmen shoot at police


• Attack inside government building leaves many casualties


• Terrorist suspect escapes police custody (happens at CTU all the time)


• "Chop-chop" remains found along roadside.

Good Lord. How'd I get from beach getaways to gruesome tragedies? What's happening to me?!)

Day Three

And sheee wiiiiiilllllll beeeeeee lovvvvved.......and sheeeee wiiiiiiiilllllllll be lo-huh-huh-ovvved

(I'll explain this some other time)

Day Four


Philippine Culture and Values. The speaker emphasized how kind, affectionate and compassionate Filipinos really are, and cited a study showing Pinoys – by a wide margin - say “I Love You” more than anyone in ASEAN (you can almost hear the LLDDL shouting, dapat lang, 'no!)

Day Five


Simulation Exercise, and last day of PDOS. We were given a very limited budget to work with, but still managed to put together some very nice touches, like: 1) the string quartet above (alright, alright, there were five of them, were from the Air Force, and used a Casio keyboard, but they did a killer cover of the Pinoy Big Brother theme song)...


...2) an open bar with FSO bartenders (the 2008 Welch's sparkling grape juice at the bottom left was a prized bottle from my private cellar)...


...and 3) this guy.


I played the pretend host country's foreign minister, and The Evaluators loved my toast remarks. “A toast tour-de-force”, raved Protocol. “One of the best remarks of the simulation season”, gushed the Institution. “I almost peed in my pants”, wept the guy playing the pretend media. If only I actually wrote the remarks myself.


Finally, the simulation closes, and PDOS comes to an end. Because of our bad experiences at graduation ceremonies held by the Institution, my FSO batchmates and I tense up when the names are read, assume we won't graduate, and reflexively plot our revenge. Turns out, we all passed, were awarded certificates of completion, and given the go-ahead to make ourselves available for posting.

Now, if only my office noticed.