Tantalizing Travels

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       Getting to know Aunt Marvelene was an absolute joy—an old farm gal, but never have I known a finer lady! Visiting her in Arkansas as the first stop of my jaunt around the country was one of my best decisions ever. I had only planned to visit Aunt Marvelene for a few days as I hopscotched around the country. However, a few days unfolded into a year. We swung on her porch swing for hours and hours, sipping sassafras tea in the course of becoming best friends, as she raised the curtain on my family heritage.

       Within a couple of days of my arrival, I acquired a job as a jeweler at Bell’s Jewelry in Clarksville. A few days later, I netted another position as a systems analyst and programmer at Nite Lite Company overlooking the College of the Ozarks. My stay was meant to be.

       While living at Aunt Marvelene’s that year, I taught myself from scratch all about Pick programming in the process of cleaning up an aggregate software disaster. My letter of recommendation from the owner of Nite Lite states:

     “Scott Zachary joined us at a time when our entire computer system was in a state of disarray. During this past year, not only has Scott completely mastered our systems but has reviewed and modified virtually every computer program of the company, eliminating the hundreds of operating glitches that had plagued our company before his arrival. This was accomplished in addition to developing, testing, and implementing several new systems in the areas of manufacturing, purchasing, and data communications.

     Since the first day of his employment, Scott has been eager to accept responsibility while working far beyond the normal work week in a seemingly tireless drive to single-handedly accomplish the most difficult of objectives in a shorter time frame than anyone could have reasonably expected.

     He is hard working, loyal, trustworthy, and has had a very positive impact on all of his fellow workers. Scott leaves Nite Lite with our sincere appreciation for his outstanding performance... he leaves us in a far better condition than he found us just one short year ago.”

       That slogging campaign at Nite Lite sprung my ticket to a new adventure.

       I would miss going out for root beer floats with Aunt Marvelene on Saturday evenings and then cruising Main Street along with all the teenagers, but as far back as I could remember, distant places whispered my name. My sparkle’s compass pointed overseas. I have no idea how it occurred to me to begin calling American Embassies around the world to attain the goal of living abroad again. I had never been to an American Embassy, nor had I ever contacted one previously. I had never heard of anyone doing what I was setting out to do, and I’ve never heard of anyone attempting it since.

       I called the International Operator from my office at Nite Lite in the middle of the night. I placed my first embassy call to the American Embassy in Kuwait. The Gulf War had recently ended, so I reasoned that Kuwait would need skills like mine to rebuild its decimated defenses. I’m not sure if I had ever heard of the term “Commercial Section” before, but I finagled my way through to that office. A man with a Middle Eastern accent answered the phone. I asked him if he would provide me with contact names and phone numbers for two American companies and two national companies in their country who might need a top-notch systems analyst and programmer. He graciously provided me with the names, phone numbers, and fax numbers of two contract scalpers who worked for defense contractors General Dynamics and Raytheon.

       Immediately after hanging up, I customized my resume, emphasizing my military software experience, and faxed it to those two defense contractors in Kuwait City. Allen Stark with Raytheon was extremely interested in my skill set. He informed me that he had submitted a big-ticket defense contract proposal, which was on the verge of acceptance. Allen’s company would need a small army of people like me with extensive experience in developing military systems and who could readily obtain a Top Secret clearance. He encouraged me to sit tight while he wrapped up the loose ends.

       Well, I’m not one to sit tight. I tried the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia next and again stirred up some possibilities. I tried other countries that seemed like fun, exotic places to live, such as Malaysia and Madagascar. That’s right, Madagascar! Anywhere overseas would be fine with me: Timbuktu, Katmandu, or Xanadu—It flat didn’t matter.

       I faxed my resume along with a customized cover sheet and five or six letters of recommendation to each one of the contacts that the embassy personnel gave me. The national employee in the Commercial Section of the American Embassy in Madagascar told me there were only two organizations in that entire impoverished island country that could employ a systems analyst: USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the United Nations.

       The phone connection for the fax line to Madagascar must’ve been wired through a sieve. You may be familiar with the ordinarily rapid titter-tatter sound that a fax machine emits. I listened to the first two pages of my nine-page forerunner tit-tat for ten minutes and pulled all but one of my letters of recommendation as it slowly transmitted. It turned out that each of them, USAID and the United Nations, employed one programmer in the capital city of Antananarivo, Madagascar. I called and talked to both. They loved their jobs and were enchanted with living in Madagascar. They planned to stay there as long as they possibly could.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       As an Air Force Captain stationed in Norway, I had worked as a systems analyst developing the Command and Control Information System for the Northern European Command. That entailed working closely with Hughes Information Systems. I called their headquarters in Fullerton, California, and told them that I was looking for a position anywhere overseas. They read my resume, booked me in first class on the next flight to Los Angeles, had a brand-new Grand Am waiting for me at the airport, and set me up in a four-star hotel.

       Having been recently obliterated emotionally, psychologically, and financially by a nasty divorce, I’m back on top of the world! I rolled to a stop in front of the hotel—the first hotel I ever visited in California, and you’ll never believe what song came on the radio— “Hotel California”! What are the odds? I suppose they play that song a bit more often in California. That’s alright, I didn’t believe it either. I felt like a movie star. The valet, dressed in a tuxedo, rushed to open my door. I told him to wait, closed my eyes, leaned back, and embraced the euphoria unleashed by that preternatural melody. Wow, I’m back.

       The hotel room was exquisite, featuring an oversized Jacuzzi bath centered and elevated between two queen-size beds. The sign on the room’s dinette read: “Forgot something? We’ll get it for you!” I called down to room service and told them I had forgotten my bubble bath. They brought me a whole bottle, of which I dumped half into the Jacuzzi. That was a mistake! I had to continually clear the bubbles out of my way so I could watch the wide-screen television.

       For the next two and a half days, I felt like a baton in a relay race, passed from one interviewer to another. Each day began with a different vice president interviewing me over breakfast in the ritzy hotel restaurant. That teed off back-to-back interviews with groups representing many different software teams in this building that housed 45,000 employees. It reminded me all too much of the Pentagon, which I hadn’t liked whatsoever.

       While being escorted from interview to interview, I noticed dozens of people walking out of the building, each of them carrying a box of what appeared to be their personal belongings. One of my interviewers told me that I should feel special since Hughes was releasing ten percent of their workforce—4,500 technical people; but yet, they were shelling out big bucks to hire me!

       On the third day, after having a lunch interview with half a dozen software engineers, I was escorted to the office of the Vice President of Defense Systems Technology. I walked into his plush office suite, and he vigorously shook my hand. “Welcome aboard, Scott!”

       “Where am I going?”

       “Right here—you’re going to be working in this building.”

       “No, I’m not.”

       “What do you mean?”

       “I told them from the beginning that I was looking for a position overseas.”

       “We rarely send people overseas nowadays. It costs too much to support them outside the country.”

       “Thanks for your hospitality, your first-class airline ticket, your fancy hotel, and the brand-new Grand Am, but you wasted your time and money, sir. I’m going overseas.”

       “Don’t you even want to know how much we’ll pay you?”

       “It’s not relevant.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       I coaxed business contacts from American Embassy clerks in several other countries, followed by the tiny oil-rich kingdom of Brunei, which occupies a sliver of an Indonesian island. How did I come up with Brunei? Well, I told Aunt Marvelene that I was going to try Indonesia next. She said she had no idea where that was; neither did she know where many of the countries were that had popped up on her phone bill. That prompted me to run down to the store and buy her a world globe. When I pointed out Indonesia, she noticed the word “Brunei” and asked me if that was a country or a city. I didn’t know, but that night, I called the American Embassy in the Royal Kingdom of Brunei and ventured to get a job there.

       All of the American Embassies had been extremely helpful until I called the one in Indonesia. Sahib snarled, “What do you think this is, a personnel agency?!”

       Up until this point, I had strived to make my conversations bullet-like because I had already run out of money. I placed all of my phone calls and faxes from my office phone through an international operator and billed them to Aunt Marvelene’s phone. This month’s phone bill was going to be an all-or-nothing effort. I knew that Aunt Marvelene would not be receptive to the thousand-dollar phone bill that I had set as my goal, yet I also knew that I was going to have to take a different tack with this man.

       “What’s the weather like there in Jakarta, Sahib?” I began to chat casually. After several minutes, he still didn’t seem to warm up much until I happened to mention that I was calling from Arkansas in the United States.

       “Arkansas! I was there in Little Rock two weeks ago giving a seminar on how to do business with Indonesians! In fact, I have a letter of appreciation signed by your Governor Clinton.”

       God evidently smiles on bumbling adventurers, because at that moment, Clinton was skyrocketing in the presidential polls.

       “I have some news for you, my friend: It’s looking as though the next President of the United States will have signed your letter! Bill Clinton has taken a commanding lead over his opponents in the race for the Democratic contender for President.”

       That warmed him up! We chatted for some time about his experiences here in Arkansas.

       “How many national and U.S. contacts did you need?” offered Sahib.

       “A bunch.”

       One of the many prospects that Sahib gave me was Franklin with Prime Systems. I can’t remember if Franklin was his first or last name, regardless, I faxed him my nine-page paper representative. I called the next night, and Franklin excitedly told me that he had the perfect project for me to head up; however, he would have to first get approval from the Board of Directors. He asked me to call him early the following Monday. This prospect sounded promising—I might soon be living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Cool!

       I called Franklin as promised. He informed me that the Board said they were not quite ready for the project he had in mind. “I’m sorry, Scott. They turned me down; however, I do have a contact for you in Johannesburg, South Africa, who assisted us on some mining projects. It’s an industrial engineering firm, and your experience is right down their alley.” Franklin gave me the name, fax, and phone number for the Director of Maintenance Services International—Sterling Herstad.

       South Africa would be my last crack at an overseas job because Aunt Marvelene called me at work that day and tersely declared, “I got the phone bill, Scott.”

       “Did I break a thousand dollars?” I hesitantly asked.

       “Almost—it’s nine hundred and eighty-eight dollars,” she expounded in an unusually grave tone.

       “I’ll pay you for it, Aunt Marvelene, don’t worry.”

       “You better, or God will make you pay for it.”

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