CARMIN A LITTLE BIT CLOSER BABY

Well here we go. After fourteen years in the foreign service and a spicy progression through the ranks, I finally got THE invite:  

i rsvp'ed so hard

The Career Minister exam is probably the last professional/qualifying test I'll ever take in my life (not counting The Voice auditions), and should put a cap on my epic Lame Lawyer Dorky Diplomat exam trilogy. What are the stakes? Well, if I ever hope to reach Ambassador-rank or be appointed Head of Post or achieve my dream of being called Kamahalan before retirement age, I have to pass the CarMin test -- the sooner and the less number of tries the better.     

My Chronicles of CarMin then.

Where in the World is CarMin San Diego?

I previously described the Bar exam as dense New York and the FSO exam as sprawling L.A. The CarMin exam is that leafy waterfront suburb you aspire to settle in mid-life that's filled with the familiar and the comfortable -- but also with can-i-pay-the-mortgage stress and what-school-do-we-send-the-kids-to anxiety. The whole thing is actually a six-week long battery of different tests, with the main written portion a two-day ordeal covering Diplomatic and Consular Practice, International Politics, and International Economics.  Now, you would think that all those subjects are fairly well-defined and that CarMin examinees already regularly handle and know them as part of their daily jobs...but the World's a Big Place, man! And it be changing all the time! So someone who's been a Consular Officer could still have a huge blind spot on, say, the United Nations, while a Geographic Desk Officer might have a huge blind spot on what's going on outside their region, while an Administrative Officer could just be literally blind because they're usually in windowless offices and get no natural light all day and no one really visits anyone in admin. (shoutout my office concierge homies)

Batchmates, Assemble! Virtually!

For a variety of reasons, not everyone from a particular FSO Batch will be asked or be eligible to take the CarMin exams of a given year. In my case, about half of my original FSO batchmates (including ONE MAIN IDEAL) plus a couple of FSO I's from other years got invites - a lucky thirteen of us in all. Fortunately, we were geographic assignment/substantive specialty-diverse enough to collectively cover most of the CarMin subject areas. A new viber group and shared google drive for review materials was obviously needed, but a full "we're putting together a team" montage would have also been deserved. 

there's always that one guy in every gang who doesn't know how to tech

(spoiler: it was me)  

                              

The Ultimate Mock CarMin Exam Reviewer

The shared google drive was quickly inundated with lengthy review materials and unopenable zip files (my bad), and it became clear real quick that getting through every subject would be terribly tiring and time consuming. Luckily, I could shave some time and stress off my review process by taking advantage of favorable conditions at my post and review-via-easy-listening-osmosis many local lectures and events, such as Head of State Foreign Policy Speeches...             

key foreign policy takeaway/great summer movie title: Pacific Step Up

...Dialogues with Superpowers...

key foreign policy takeaway/great summer movie title: An Unbreakable Alliance

...Regional Free Trade Agreements Talks...

key foreign policy takeaway/great summer movie title: Dispute Settlement Mechanism

... and ASEAN (again)...

key foreign policy takeaway/great summer movie title: Industrial Revolution IV - This Time it's Bio-Digital

But in keeping with the nature of this blog, my true "Mock" required reading syllabus reads:

*International Politics

*International Economics

*Diplomatic Practice

*Consular Practice

And for extra credit/study hack, listen to Francis M's visionary "Ito Ang Gusto Ko" over and over and you'll learn/memorize 90% of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals 2030.

chorus alone name-drops 7 SDGs. word.

Agoda Idea

The full schedule of the whole exam process was a doozy: over six weeks(!) at different venues scattered all over Mega Manila, we would be subjected to a grueling battery of psychological evaluations, executive training courses, written exams and panel interviews. The sheer length of the activities and their varied locations meant it would be more time efficient and restful (but also staggeringly expensive) to book oneself a room and crash somewhere nearby rather than commute or head home everyday. So unwittingly, we all became experts in Philippine tourist/non-POGO accommodations and conditions -- quite useful for the economic portion of the exams!

        hello again trip advisor search filter results, my old friend

See Ya When We See Ya

In a case of cosmic comedic timing, the weekend ONE MAIN IDEAL and I needed to leave for Manila to start the exam process was also the birthday/mandatory retirement/departure of our old Congen... 

   

...as well as the arrival in Sydney of our new one...

...which meant ONE MAIN IDEAL and I would not be around to substantially brief our new boss or show him around the city or otherwise help him settle in Sydney. Awkward!

on the other hand, travelling back to the Philippines together with the outgoing Congen meant we could mooch off her airport courtesies 

Psych!

Touchdown Manila, and we have to get right into it. Because the first of our three(!) psychological evaluations was scheduled to start at 6:00 a.m.(!) the day after our arrival, there would be no chance for any long reunions or reminiscing with old friends -- literally the first time I heard the voices of batchmates I hadn't seen in years was when they yelled "hoy, bili mo nga kami ice tea" at me at the 24-hour East Avenue Jollibee outside the testing center. All these personality encounters and evaluations just confirmed that some things happily never changed among the batch...at the same time, man there were still a lot of things about them I didn't know and didn't want to know!         

to be fair, batch leader HARMONIC EGG CARE was having none of my "I kinda look like Jason Bourne" reveals either

I Got to P

The bulk of our time in Manila ahead of the exam was spent attending "5Ps", a specially designed three-week long executive training course for civil servants meant to immerse us in the latest and most essential leadership, management and public service concepts -- and boy there were a lot of them. My head was filled with so many Dilbertesque catchphrases, buzzwords and initialisms, I honestly couldn't remember what 5Ps even stood for.  I know Public was one, and I think Performance was another.  What else...Power? Perseverance?    

Pits?

But it wasn't all just abstracts and think-pieces. The course was also laden with real world case studies, project presentations, and a whole lot of what must have been Michael Scott-inspired team exercises/shenanigans.          

Capped off by the "How to Wacky" module

We've Come a Long Way from Getting Our Clothes from the DFA's "Boy Barong" and "Ate Terno"

The middle of the 5Ps program coincided with the poshyal ArteFino Fair at Rockwell, and many of my batchmates were willing to brave crosstown traffic in the name of some cultural diplomacy shopping. Personally, I wasn't that keen on going, but was told by the LLDD-Hyphen-L that I had a weak fashionalista game, and ArteFino could help.   

she's not wrong 

Surprise surprise, by the time I got to the fair, the LLDD-Hyphen-L had already messaged many of her social media/enterprise friends and contacts and had hooked me up with some sweet sweet modern barongs, enough for me to catwalk through the rest of the review. 

"Who here can't dress themselves without their wife?"

Highlight of My Career

Dala ng pangangailangan, almost all of my study reading was done on screen rather than on paper. I didn't know much about tech, but I did know that printing out all of the required review material stacks would kill a small forest and take up all of my mandatory pasalubong excess baggage. Plus, Stabilo Boss was very expensive now so I could no longer afford to do my go-to law school move of  highlighting EVERYTHING on a page for fear of leaving out something important     

from the mind of a topnotcher (or serial killer, psych exam test pending)

Missing the Misses

I wouldn't say the pressure of the CarMin exams is any heavier or lighter than the Bar or the FSO exams, but it is different. You're farther along your life and career, your personal situation's probably changed, and the overall stakes are just no longer the same. Whether I passed the CarMin or not, I was already and would remain a (lame) lawyer and (dorky) diplomat...BUT if I failed, it would mean my professional progression would stall, everything spent around the review would have been wasted and, most nakakahinayang of all, all that quality time away from the fam would have been for naught. I mean, just in the six-week window I was in Manila, I missed the LLDD-Baby:                      

....nailing another RAD exam
         

...learning how to butterfly

...receiving academic achievement awards

...becoming a total boss at Mario Kart

...and representing her school and competing against older kids at the state regional spelling bee

for real, I learned how to viber video real quick and sneak-watched her rounds live during the 5Ps program

The LLDD-Hyphen-L for her part wasn't doing me and my long distance husbanding guilt any favors by regularly sending me her workout OOTDs

for real, the REAL reason I learned how to viber video real quick

We Had to Pray Just to Make It Today

Speaking of pressure, it was at once soothing and heartening to have batchmates who would brave rush hour traffic and light 13 candles at Baclaran church every Wednesday night. 

the glow is so divine

If that wasn't enough, batchmate GEYSER JOHN would go all the way to Manaoag(!) every weekend and offer mass intentions for everyone. 

Pasalubong Diplomacy, Nailed It 

It's a good idea for every CarMin exam batch to try to beef up their studies by arranging their own special briefings and lectures in addition to the prescribed review program. These could be done with senior officials, esteemed academe, and other people in town who might know what's up.

Or even with people from out of town via videocon. 'Sup Washington D.C.?  Sorry to wake you up with "paano ba mag screenshare?"

It's also a good idea for the batch to arrange some token gift bags for the lecturers' troubles. In our case, we thought it'd be cute to fill the bags with the best known chocolatey goodies of our respective countries of assignment, like chocolate bars from Belgium or chocolate covered dates from Bahrain

or chocolate covered excess baggage from Down Under

Yeah, the goodie bag served as a great equalizer. Whether the special lecturer was a preeminent authority on international law, or an assistant secretary or head of a department office, or even a home-based geographic desk officer batchmate, the chocolates uniformly conveyed how grateful the batch was for the guests' time and efforts, and the guests themselves all seemed to appreciate the bags with equal fervor.         

except the Usec for Memo who was all "ba't mas maliit yung bag ko?" 

Tonight...with Dick and CarMin

So after a month-plus long buildup of 5P training, psych tests and special briefings, exam day finally arrives. 

yet the batch seems disturbingly undisturbed about everything

 

Officially, its more dauntingly called the "Two-day Technical Knowledge and Writing Skills" portion of the examinations, but not to be too anti-climactic about it, it was all just a hazy blur to me. The most distinctly memorable thing about the written exam was that it wasn't even written -- not in long-hand, anyway. No, CarMin examinees are each stationed at their own long table and individually assigned sleek laptops where they must encode their answers, save them on special drives, and then print out hard copies -- all while facing two big-ass monitors up front with countdown clock displays visually screaming the time ticking away. For non-techies and non-touch typists like me used to passing tests in Pilot signpen, the CarMin computer set-up could have been daunting and nerve-racking, but I've seen Gattaca and that scene in Swordfish enough times to know how smart, suave, beautiful people can coolly handle the situation.
                      

So yeah, the written exam seemed over real quick.

Good Panelling

After the written exam, there's one Final Boss Fight...well, bosses actually. CarMin candidates would be grilled by a panel made up of current and former Foreign Secretaries, Ambassadors, Special Envoys and other Senior Government Officials. The sheer weight and cred of the panel, plus the fact that the interviewees are themselves no longer newbies, could make for some pretty interesting and potentially fraught exchanges. And remember those policy blind spots you might have developed over the course of your career? You can never ever play that card. You're expected and ought to be able to confidently and convincingly speak at length on EVERYTHING. So yeah, the CarMin candidates still be stressed even after the written exam ahead of the panel interview.                           

Fortunately, JOIN EVASION ‘COS NASA AJAR was one of the first interviewees to arrive and cut the tension with his irrational exuberance

and sartorial choices

End In View

The panel interviews ran really long -- we were more than an hour behind schedule after just the second interviewee -- which was a good thing! Long interviews (presumably) mean the panel found you engaging enough to keep on, short ones might mean they mentally buzzed you out. But everyone was still exhausted towards the end, and there was still one final FINAL activity to get through the following day. We had to travel to Tagaytay and take part in a seminar on (*checks notes*) "Enhancing People Management Skills through Increased Self-Responsibility". Unwieldy title perhaps, but the seminar was actually smoothly structured towards getting everyone to de-stress after the exams. It helped that the venue had gorgeous, relaxing views and every turn.

            

although i guess it was still too soon for the batch to be totally chill

But seriously, the seminar was a perfect way to decompress after all that we had been been through.  The moderators had this young, hip teacher-who-talks-to-class-while-straddling-a-turned-around-chair kinda vibe, an in-house band played Buwan at every meal, and there was even a meditation session that was so hypnotically relaxing the whole batch feel asleep agape -- as in tulo laway level. So s'all good, seminar. After six hard weeks of tests, interviews and evaluations, everyone had a last chance to work on their wellness, reflect on themselves, and truly understand who they were and what they were made of.

but really, the Department could have saved a lot of time and money by just judging every personality on how they "wacky"  

Epilogue

No one knows exactly when the exam results will come out -- best guess is some time before Christmas. So the batch leaves Manila like its a final Tribal Council on Survivor: vote tally still hanging, everyone has to get on with their lives, and there's still a long Probst jet-ski ride back home to look forward to.

I head back to Sydney the day after the end of the seminar, my excess baggage now made up of choc-nut and choco-butternut munchkins. Upon touchdown, I immediately turn on my phone, anticipating the loving welcome message and workout OOTD pic the LLDD-Hyphen-L has in store for me. 

The first texts that appear were fit alright.  

Yep, she signed me up for a gym while I was away. To work off the chocolate covered stress-wait eating.  

The results can't come soon enough.