Russian Roulette

During this current process of choosing positions and locations for my next tour, someone asked, "So, where's your next two-year vacation destination?" Although not every one of the posts below would necessarily be considered a two-year vacation, it is one of the more fun bureaucratic exercises we go through. I mean, it's like hitting the reset button every couple years and stepping into a transport chamber, and whoosh! Oh, now I'm a political officer in Africa, or Zip! I'm sussing out economic issues in East Asia. Not a bad deal, all things considered.

While bidding is not as much like an auction as one would like to believe, there certainly are gems that everyone is vying for, and others that some would rather leave on the auction block indefinitely. There are a myriad of requirements and rules and guidelines to follow (hey, this is still a bureaucracy, after all). So, after filtering, sorting, crossing-off and re-adding several times, here are my most likely possibilities, in alphabetical order. Not all of these will end up on my list, but most of them will, so I welcome any and all opinions, advice, sniper shots, or heckling.

City	Country
Abidjan	Ivory Coast
Accra	Ghana
Athens	Greece
Baku	Azerbaijan
Bamako	Mali
Bangkok	Thailand
Beijing	China
Bogota	Colombia
Brussels	Belgium
Bujumbura	Burundi
Chengdu	China
Dushanbe	Tajikistan
Guangzhou	China
Hanoi	Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh	Vietnam
Kyiv	Ukraine
Luxembourg	Luxembourg
Maputo	Mozambique
Rangoon	Burma
Riga	Latvia
Sao Paulo	Brazil
Shenyang	China
St. Petersburg	Russia
Tashkent	Uzbekistan
Tbilisi	Georgia
Toronto	Canada