The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

34 OCTOBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Corners, which are cultural programming platforms o ering educational advising services, English-language teaching and exchange program alumni activities, the balance has shifted. IROs now seemmore closely aligned with the cultural side of the house. One day, I’m sitting at a table in Ashgabat with 20 American Center regulars. ey borrow books, search the Internet, ask ref- erence questions. One young student tells me he used the IRC to learn enough English to get into the Future Leaders high school exchange program (known as FLEX). Another studied here to pass her GRE exams. One author tells us about the book he wrote using resources he found in the Resource Center. e roomwe’re in not only has Wi-Fi; it has Turkmenistan’s fastest and cleanest Internet con- nection. Somebody mentions, cautiously, news sources here that can’t be accessed anyplace else in the country. And it’s all free. When asked what we might do to improve services, they have only one suggestion: keep it open seven days a week instead of the current six. Another day, I’m on a panel of judges at the side of the stage in the Kulob American Corner. A Tajik kid—14 years old, with huge ears and a voice so strong and pure and surprising we immedi- ately nickname himMichael, after the King of Pop—is singing Sinatra in the rst round of Tajikistan’s American Song Competi- tion. Making these moments possible is what we do. We were somewhere around Balkanabat, on the edge of the desert, when the realization began to take hold: Best. Job. Ever. WilliamMiddleton has been an Information Resource O cer since 1993, at which time the specialty belonged to the U.S. Infor- mation Agency and IROs were called Regional Library O cers. Currently serving in New Delhi, his previous postings include Lagos, Buenos Aires, Dakar, Vienna, Almaty and Washington, D.C. King for a Day By W. Paul Margulies Jr. Diplomatic Security I’m not sure what Saul Wahl, the so-called King of Poland for a day, did with his time, but my time at the helm (two days) was well-spent. A double absence of the ambassador and the deputy chief of mission in Valletta, Malta, in December 2013, gave me new perspective—coping with a security detail from the princi- pal’s point of view as opposed to the DS vantage point. In September, we had inaugurated a new protective detail for the ambassador. TeamValletta adapted to the addition of a detail sourced by host-nation and locally employed sta , schedule changes and the normal day-to-day operations that a ect a chief of mission and her detail. e ambassador and I had many con- versations at the start of operations to cover the basics. We still touch base to make sure her protection needs are as balanced as possible with her need for privacy. On the rare occasion that she leaves Malta, the detail protects the chargé d’a aires, in most cases the deputy chief of mission. He, too, is familiar with the requirements of having a protective detail in place and is good-natured about having them around. My stint as chargé was a real eye-opener. Over the past 12-plus years with Diplomatic Security, I have worked on a protection AFSA/Jeff Lau