The Foreign Service Journal, December 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2019 59 2020 TECH GUIDE to Foreign Service Life Daniel Morris is a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, currently on extended leave. He was previously posted to Jerusa- lem, Cairo and Kabul. He has written about interna- tional affairs for The Globe and Mail , the Baltimore Sun and other publications. These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of any U.S. govern- ment department or agency. A few years ago I was lucky to have coffee at the Foreign Service Insti- tute with a sharp-witted and kind retired FSO. As fellow students ate their lunches and shuffled through their vocabulary index cards, she recalled her time in Bamako in the early 1980s. Secu- rity for the USAID office, in an ordinary building downtown, consisted of one local guard. But making a simple interna- tional phone call was agony, she said. There were four—she held up that many fingers—physical phone lines leading out of Mali, which meant that she typically had to give the destination phone number to an operator, who would call back at some unknown point (maybe three minutes, maybe three hours) when a line was free to connect the call. Ironically, it seems that today, while embassies sometimes located on remote farmland have made interacting with the local population more difficult, staying in touch with loved ones in the United States and elsewhere has become remark- ably painless and easy. Everyone is familiar with the tools that have helped make that happen: Skype, WhatsApp, FaceTime and other free video calling services. Less well known, but perhaps as useful, are a set of additional tools that have come on the market in recent FS KNOW-HOW BY DAN I E L MORR I S years and may make various aspects of living abroad a bit easier. The following is a brief description of some of them. Mail-Forwarding Options One of the inconveniences of Foreign Service life is changing your address every few years. We’ve all been there—contacting credit cards, banks and insurance companies, not to mention letting family and friends know. It’s about as fun as opening a door in an up-armored SUV. Enter the virtual mailbox. After you sign up for a plan and choose a mailbox number on the service’s website, you will have to submit a signed notary to the U.S. Postal Service authorizing the company to handle your mail. The process took me just a few minutes at the American Citizen Services counter at the embas- sy’s consular section. Once you’ve notified everyone of your new address, when a piece of mail arrives you will receive a notification by email with an image of the front of the envelope. You then typically have three options: Scan, Forward or Trash. Selecting “Scan” will direct the service to scan the contents of the mail and send you a PDF. It usually takes a half day, or so, to receive. “Forward” will direct the service to physically send the mail to an address of your choosing (for the cost of postage and a handling fee). I usually scan first and, if necessary, have it forwarded. Checks can be deposited directly to your bank for a small fee. You can keep mail forwarding costs down by waiting until you have a batch and then forwarding them all together. I recently forwarded five pieces of mail first class for $3.55. There are a number of plans to choose from. I use virtualpost- mail.com , but whatever service you choose, do your due dili- gence by reading reviews. FlyerTalk.com forums are a good start and are popular with frequent travelers. Some folks are under- standably skittish about using a third party for sensitive banking and tax information, though it’s worth keeping in mind that any well-established service would understand the reputational and Here’s the skinny on some of the new but lesser-known communication technologies that can make living abroad easier.