Its Friday evening in the Voan embassy in Miolee, the office is dark and near empty. Save for a young blue staring tiredly at a computer screen.
He edits and rereads a draft email while glancing back and forth at a spreadsheet.
…and we should also see if we can consolidate the references to "Category C-F, fruits, perishable, non-refrigerated," so that it matches the language used in the Anitami trade agreement from last year. As I said, the Mioleeans are keen to preserve interoperability of standards.
Other than those changes I think we are near a draft that I can share with them for informal agreement before political sign off. We’ll need legal-yellow clearance as well, but should be fine if we stick to boilerplate. Let me know if you have any issues, otherwise have a good 3-moon-festival and I’ll look at the updated draft next week.
Best wishes
Agricultural Trade Deputy-Ambassador Avo
It always felt weird to sign off with that title, the etymology was literally “2nd Blue", or colloquially "does the stuff that needs to be done by a Blue, but isn't worth the ambassador’s time." In a normal embassy it would be considered a prestigious role used to gain experience before higher office, and so subject to great competition and patronage politics.
But oddly enough nobody with political ambitions wanted to be polluted by the association with Reds (however ex they might be). His Grandmother had probably leaned on the committee, excited to finally find a use for the family red-lover that kept him out of the way, but still doing something respectable.
He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his wrists. “Negative self-talk is rarely a productive approach to solving your problems” he mentally imagined an overly cheerful orange voice saying.
I’ll cross reference those tariff figures again, in case the team in Capitol-Province weren’t actually being stupid, then leave.
