Azerbaijan’s Consul in Los Angeles
Needs to Learn How to Use a Laptop
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
[extracts]
A funny thing happened to the Consul General of Azerbaijan on his way to make an audio-visual presentation at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council last week.
Consul General Nasimi Aghayev stepped up to the podium, turned on
his fancy laptop, and proudly urged the audience to watch scenes of
Azerbaijan on a large screen on the wall. To his horror, nothing but a
frozen partial image appeared on the overhanging screen. The Consul’s
aides and the World Affairs Council’s president rushed to the stage and
began pushing all sorts of buttons on the laptop, as the guests waited
impatiently. Mr. Aghayev not only was unable to showcase his native
land, he could not even present his speech, because the text was locked
up in his uncooperative laptop!
In desperation, the Azeri diplomat began speaking off the cuff,
after pulling a piece of paper from his pocket on which he had scribbled
some notes. This was the inauspicious start of an evening that was
intended to show off Azerbaijan’s impressive advances and dazzle the
audience with high-tech gadgets.
[...]
The incident with the Consul General’s laptop is symptomatic of a much larger problem for Azerbaijan. The country’s leaders have spent billions of dollars to acquire a massive amount of advanced military hardware. But, if they don’t know which button to push, the sophisticated weaponry will be as useless as Mr. Aghayev’s laptop!
Rather than labeling the Armenian Diaspora as Azerbaijan’s "main
enemy," Pres. Aliyev should be more worried about his diplomats who
cannot use a laptop! Incompetent officials are more of a liability for
Azerbaijan than the Armenian "enemy"!
