Carnikava Latvia

The embassy running club hired a bus to take them to a race in nearby Carnikava on the Baltic Sea. We joined the running club for a day, but not for running. Instead we took a nice hike through the woods and along the beach. We had to dodge the runners here and there but it was a relaxing day in nature as the temperatures finally climbed out of the freezing zone this weekend.

World Happiness Report 2019

The annual World Happiness Report is out again and March 20th is the International Day of Happiness. The report measures six key variables supporting well-being: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption. I first saw this in the news in 2016 and have checked it out every year for Happiness Day. It's interesting to see how the rankings change for the countries I've lived in.

Museum of Decorative Arts and Design

The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design (Dekoratīvās mākslas un dizaina muzejs) is another part of our annual pass to the Latvian National Museum of Art. There's a lot of goodness with this museum card.

The top 2 floors have the permanent collection of various textile, ceramics, metal, leather, decorative wood, and glass art. It's a decent size and there's some interesting pieces. The bottom floor has the changing exhibition. It currently contains The Weather Diaries with textiles and photography from Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. It was also interesting to see on a cold dreary day in Riga.

Barely Missed Promotion

I was selected for promotion in September but I didn't meet the cut for how many people they could promote. I wrote about it in Promotion Bridesmaid. I didn't have my ranking or the overall statistics to know how close I was to the cutoff at that time. The promotion statistics have been released. It was a close one and it couldn't have been any closer.

214 people competed for promotion in my specialty and pay grade. My personal scorecard says 66 people were deemed worthy of promotion and I was 46 on that list. They were only able to promote 45 of those people or 21%.

They promoted 45 so I'm first loser at number 46!

Skills Incentive Program (SIP) and CISSP

I passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) test and I'm so glad that's done! I previously wrote a little about Skills Incentive Program (SIP) pay at the end of this post when I first started with the Foreign Service. They've tweaked the rates to an extra 10% or 15% pay for 3 years depending on the level of the certification.

CISSP is a 15% cert so that'll be awesome after I finish the paperwork, receive the certificate, submit it to the SIP panel for review (only meets every 2 months), and then HR finally processes it for Finance to add it to my pay. It'll easily be summer before I start seeing the fruits of this labor but it'll continue for 3 years. If history repeats then it'll continue for 5 extra months even though I told HR 2 months early and repeatedly begged them to stop it until they finally did. Finance gladly takes back the overpayment in sizable chunks until the HR induced debt is repaid. They always do. Regardless, it's a great benefit!

Sutas and Belcovas Museum

The Romana Sutas un Aleksandras Beļcovas muzejs (museum) is an interesting little part of the Latvian National Art Museum system. It's a part of our annual pass but it's also a short diversion if you have a little time to kill and 2 EUR.

We went to catch the missing piece of the Latvian portrait series exhibits which are ending in a week. This museum had the caricatures and cartoons portion of the larger exhibit spread over two other museums. Those portions were massive meals of art compared to the tiny taster bite of this museum. It was interesting to see but quite small.

Malta Gozo Bus Tour

The island of Gozo is a smaller island in the Maltese archipelago accessible by a vehicle and people ferry on the northside of Malta. It has its own hop-on hop-off buses to get around for a day trip if you like that option. We do and so we did it. This one felt a bit rushed at times because the next bus was 45 minutes and we were fighting a clock for getting back to the ferry for our arranged transportation. It was still a good trip with the oldest megalithic temples at Ġgantija and the former Azure Window at Dwejra Bay.