The Gun Counter

Any thoughts, good or bad, about doing a few years in Brussels?

I'm in the middle of hopefully negotiating something where I already am, but at least putting in for this seems like a possibility.

Obviously, Denis is the man to answer this. How old are you? I've heard something about easily available WWI full autos...

The only Belgians I'm remotely acquainted with are friends of my FiL. Met one of them.

They, apparently to a man, want to get the hell out.

That may just be because they have defined pensions and want a low tax venue to enjoy them.

Good points: Home to FN

Bad points: Still the through lane for the Schlieffen Plan

43. Nothing holding me down to any one particular area except a small house I could likely have rented out by the end of the week if I wanted.

I wasn't too hot on Brussels being the Home of the EU and all that, but it is what is available.

We're back to pre-hiring freeze levels of vacancies, but my division is still acting like the freeze is fully on and aren't moving anything around. This is causing some issues for me where a promotion I've been working towards for the last 3 years is concerned. This is pretty normal for my division in the best of times, though. Get a whatever grade employee to perform the work of the next grade or two up, in addition to the work of the grade you're paying them to do, but only pay them for the lowest grade possible.

There have been times I was doing 3 total jobs, including my own, with the other two as "other duties as assigned" and both higher grade work than what I was at the time.

It seems that the person responsible for pushing personnel actions through is sitting on them at the moment.

The funny part is the guy that's administratively running our projects out here has applied to recently-vacated position here, but for a different division. I feel relatively confident he'll get an offer. Then I'll be asked to backfill him here at an estimated 30-35% lower pay than he currently receives.

I think I'm going to give this goat rope about another 3 months to work itself out, then I'm putting in for an overseas tour to somewhere. Playing the long game and waiting for a good fit in Japan seems really attractive to me.

Am travelling at the moment. will be glad to fill you in on anything you n eed when i get back next week. Can it wait that long.? Short version: belgium probably has the least restrictive firearms laws in the eu other than regarding concealed carry. I like it here.

Appreciate it. We got a phone call this morning and it looks like those personnel actions may see some movement sooner than anticipated. We'll have to see.