Tag Archives: Syria

Syrian-Armenian Stories: My first hack, Arcades, Syrian Parties and Mortal Kombat

1 Reply

Couple of days ago my fiancée was watching an Armenian internet show named “Tany Layva” which roughly translates to “Live at home” that aired during COVID-19. The interesting part for me was not the show itself (frankly speaking I could not care less about Armenia’s pop culture) but the intro music triggered something in me… You can listen to it here.

Oh my god! It’s the theme song of Mortal Kombat! I think it was in the 1995 movie too, which is probably the first time I heard it.

However the trigger was not the song itself, but something that the song represents for me.

You see, until that moment I thought that the earliest hack that I remember was the PlayStation Swap Trick, which my father showed me in the year 2002. Growing up we did not have a lot of money, so we waited for the release of the PlayStation 2 in Syria, allowing us to buy the Original PlayStation at a discounted price. But games were expensive, and they are getting more expensive (that’s a topic for another day), however, the Syrian gaming community was very active in making bootleg/imported game CDs, selling them at a cheaper price. So how do you play these games?

Well, you insert an original disc (in my case, I kept using the Crash Team Racing disc), you wait for the PlayStation logo to appear, and you swap the disc with the one that you want to play.

This was my earliest memory of a “hack”, where you “bypass” a system check.

But why Mortal Kombat? Why was that important for my brain? Well, it reminded me of an event.

It was probably the year 2000 or 2001, we were at a family party. A wedding party maybe, an engagement party, or just a party overall? Not sure, but I remember two things: It was near a swimming pool and I was bored as hell.

Our family friends had a daughter, Natalie, she was roughly my age, and both of us were not just bored during that event, we were actively looking for something to do. Literally anything.

We were at the “Al Galaa Family Club Swimming Pool and Restaurant”, a place that still exists today. It was a pretty large area with multiple floors and a swimming pool, where people were dancing next to it.

At the basement we found our salvation. An Arcade. Multiple games. Oh my god, there’s even a multiplayer game.

We run to our dads, and we ask them to boot the multiplayer game. My father and Uncle Vartan connect the arcade to the socket, the game boots up. A very violent game. But we’re not Americanized are we? we don’t care about game age ratings, we care about having fun! We start playing the game. Very, very addictive. I play against my dad, my dad and uncle Vartan play against each other, and at the final round, I play against Natalie. It was indeed a Mortal Kombat.

You see, when Syrians party, they tend to stay up late, by late I mean until 6 in the morning. And just when I thought that this arcade is exactly what I need for the next 7 hours, the game asks for a coin.

I mean, sure, 10 Syrian Liras were not much back then, but for 7 hours? That would be very expensive.

And then my dad asked the question that would rewire my brain forever… “why didn’t it ask for money the first time?”

Ah yes. The free trial 🙂 First game was free, next game is not.

It’s the middle of the night, everyone’s at the pool, they are dancing and drinking, no one is watching us. What could possibly go wrong?

My dad disconnects and reconnects the game’s electricity socket, the boot menu shows up again and says “Press Start To Play”… FREE GAMES ALL NIGHT!

And just like that, we spend the next 6-7 hours, until the dawn of light, playing arcade games, from Mortal Kombat, Sonic The Hedgehog, to some random racing games that I don’t even remember their names.

And yes, Natalie did have fun as well!

I told my mom and dad this story couple of days ago, they remembered the event, but their reaction was “how can you possibly remember this? You were not even 6 years old”. Well, what can I say, how can someone forget their first hack? I mean, sure, I did, but I remembered it too, right?

I’d like to think that, where-ever Natalie is, she’s also doing hacks every once in a while, and I’d like to believe that, while I am mostly spending my days crafting emails to customers, writing code to solve problems, documenting my experience, I will, until the end of my life, be hacking on computers and teaching my children how to do hacks.

Unlocking a memory from a game music that was re-implemented by an Armenian TV show was not on my bingo card, but I’m happy that it happened.

Keep hacking y’all.

That’s all folks…

Reply via email.

How I got fired from my first tech job

My daily routine is usually the same, wake up, go to work, do a lot of meetings, chat, email, code, sleep and repeat. Which means that I don’t have new things to talk about. However, since I decided to blog regularly, here’s a blast story from the past 🙂

I grew up in Syria and it’s a cultural thing that we work from a very early age. I got my first job when I was 11 years old. During the summer I worked as a stonesetter, my salary was 200 Syrian Liras per week, back in the day that would be 4 US Dollars.

I loved that craft, looking deeply into the pins and understanding where the gems and diamonds would go, how to close the pins properly so it would sit there for years.

However, I also had a love for computers, I got interested when I was introduced to Unix, I wanted to use Aircrack-ng to hack the neighbor’s WiFi Access-Point so I get free internet access. Inet access was not only expensive, but you had to wait 6 to 12 months to get one. I got Slitaz Linux up and running, it included Aircrack-ng in it and cracked the network, I still remember the password, it was 11111222223 with WEP algorithm. Hrach, if you are reading this, I’m sorry that I never told you about it, but thanks to you I got into computers 🙂

When I was 14 I had to deliver gold to a partner workshop, on the way, right at the beginning of Sulaymaniyah Street I noticed a large computer shop. Very beautiful, a lot of computers, laptops, hell, there was a gaming PC with 3 screens (That was the first time I saw a desktop with 3 screens!). After I delivered the gold, on my way back, I entered the shop, I got introduced to the owner. Turns out they were an official representative of companies like Dell, HP, Asus, etc.

I talked with the owner about some of my projects, that I was installing Linux machines in school and that I was trying to make a map with all access points in Aleppo with their passwords.

After 20-30 minutes of chit-chat, he offered me a job. I was supposed to 1) Format computers (as we used to say), that is installing a fresh OS and setting up software 2) Help the other employee to deploy networks at schools 3) Help customers buy new computers when they arrive.

I worked there for 3 months, I was getting paid 250 Syrian Liras per week, that is 5 USD back in the day, plus some bonuses every time I would sell a device or fix networking issues at the schools.

One day customers arrived (a man with his wife), they were having problems with a laptop that they owned, I fixed the issue on the spot and asked nothing in return. They asked if I could come and fix a similar issue on their desktop at home, I told them I would but I cannot right now as the owner is not here. I wanted to give them a business card to call us later but we were out of those, so I gave them my cellphone number.

An hour or so later the owner came back, I told him about what happened and went back to my room to fix an HP laptop that had a melted keyboard and I started blaming AMD for that 🙂

The couple called, I told my boss, he told me “Okay, go to their place and fix it, don’t charge them anything”. So that’s what I did.

I came back to the office an hour later, the owner was sitting in front of his desk and told me to sit in front of him. Then he said, “Are you trying to steal my clients?”.

I got confused, I had no idea what is he talking about, “Sorry, what do you mean? I didn’t understand what are you implying”. He answered, “You gave them your cellphone number, so they start calling you and pay you instead of us. You’re fired”.

I didn’t know what to respond, I didn’t have those intentions, I was just doing my job.

I took my backpack and I left. I was crying the entire time, walking back home, listening to Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds’ OST.

To make things worse, when I arrived at home my mother told me “Why are you so much into computers? It’s not that it even pays well, you know you have to study and graduate Pre-Secondary Education this year”, little did she know, that as of right now, I will not be paid at all while “doing computers”.

Years have passed and I moved to Armenia during the Syrian war. While working as a waiter for a year, I found an “Armenian Linux” and the company responsible for it, Turns out they were a huge software development company. I wrote a patch for the “splash screen”, I gave them the patch, on a USB drive.

The CEO of the company said “What are you doing next Monday?”, “I have to go to university” I replied, as I was an undergrad learning English and Communications. “Well, after the university you’re coming here, you’re hired”.

Oops, flashbacks, what am I supposed to do now?

I looked left and right, there were all these desktops running Linux, the engineers on the top floor were working on robotics, so I said “Deal!”.

I learned that day, that no matter how bad of an experience you get, the next time will probably be different. Unless it’s Windows, that thing always fails.

That’s all folks.

Reply via email.