ISCDFW.com June Newsletter

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“Jack Burlin of
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Customizable foam inserts can be modified to hold any
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The American School Gets a Color TV
A Rackmount Ranger Adventure

The American School of Doha, Qatar was
established in 1988 by then Ambassador Joseph Ghougassian. There is an entire
Wikipedia article about it available at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_of_Doha

At the time, not very many people visited Doha,
and the country of Qatar was relatively unknown. Today, Qatar hosts a variety
of US military installations and thousands of US military personnel. Where it
once had only a single international hotel of consequence, it now has quite a
few, and there are plans to build five or six new ones.

When I worked for General Dynamics, I was
involved in the effort to sell F-16 aircraft to the Qatar Air Force. This meant
I had the opportunity to visit Doha two or three times. My last visit was in
July 1988. At this time, Ambassador Ghougassian was aggressively promoting the
establishment of the school, and was looking for donations to help get the
school going.

The purpose of this particular visit was to hold
some briefings for the Ambassador so he could understand the status of our
effort in Qatar. We had a very nice meeting with the Ambassador on July 2, and
were invited to the Ambassador’s residence for the Independence Day celebration
he had scheduled for the 4th of July. Things were looking promising as we
checked into the Sheraton Hotel.

Adjacent to the hotel was the Doha Convention
Center. As a guest at the hotel, we had access to the trade show that was going
on at the time. This was a large car show, with models from all the major
manufacturers on display. There were cars from Germany, Japan, and the US being
shown, but it was the Honda display that caught my eye. They were having a
contest, and the grand prize was a 32″ color TV.

The contest was fairly simple. They had a
rudimentary video game set up which pitted two opponents against each other in
real time. The game was a race car game, and although not on the same level as
Pong, was quite archaic as compared with what is currently available. They were
taking sign-ups for competition between players. You could race against an
opponent, and if you won you would move on to the next round. Not having
anything else to do that was not work related, I signed up for the contest.

The next day a tragic event occurred. The US
guided missile cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian
Gulf. The Vincennes mistook the airliner for an F-14 that appeared to be
attacking. All 290 passengers and crew were killed. Due to this international
incident, our meetings at the Embassy and at the Qatar Air Force were
cancelled. Also, the Ambassador cancelled the Fourth of July celebration. We
were left with nothing to do and no way to leave for a few days. Having nothing
but time on my hands, I resolved to win the Honda contest and the TV. So I went
down to the Honda display and tried to learn about the race car video game.

The game turned out to be very straight forward.
You used a hand controller to drive your car around an oval track. The person
who finished three laps first was the winner. However, they had the setting for
tire wear at a very high level, so most players blew a tire before finishing a
single lap. If you could complete one lap you could pull into the pit area and
change your tires.

The competition was very interesting. Players
would gun their cars as soon as they got a green flag, and they would usually
blow a tire and be out of the contest within about 15 seconds. The strategy
became one of outlasting your opponent rather than trying to beat him to the
finish line.
The people entered into the contest were mostly children between 10 and 16.
There were some visiting businessmen like myself, and a few of the local men.
Mostly though it was the expatriate kids.

By simply driving very slowly and being careful
not to blow a tire, I successfully worked my way up through the rounds until I
made the finals. My competitor in the final match turned out to be an 11 year
old Pakistani boy. When we got the green flag we both started our cars forward,
verrrry sloooowly. I was carefully monitoring the condition of my tires, and
was not concerned that he was slightly ahead of me. We both made it through the
first lap (which was something no one had done to this point). We both pulled
into the pit area and changed tires. Being a little slower probably helped,
although I was trying to get into the lead. Whether the game settings changed
on the second lap or not, I will never know for sure, but it did seem like the
tires started to wear out much more quickly. Just as I feared I was going to
blow a tire, my opponent’s tire blew first. Three seconds later my own tire
blew, but I had won!

It was a satisfying victory. That 11 year old
Pakistani boy never knew what hit him! However, I had not considered the
dilemma of trying to bring a 32″ color TV that weighed about 150 pounds back
from Qatar. If I was successful in getting it home, I was not sure it would
work. I think it was SECAM, not NTSC, and it was probably 230VAC as well. The
best alternative seemed to be leaving it behind.

It did not take too long to conceive the idea of
donating the TV to the Ambassador. I did this in the name of General Dynamics.
So about a month later Stanley Pace, our CEO, got a nice letter from the US
Ambassador in Qatar, thanking him for the generous donation to his pet project,
the American School of Doha.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the newsletter this month.

Jack Burlin

ISC, Information Support Concepts, Inc. offers an Extensive Selection of Quality
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