It is a small town with just some 30,000 residents, located on a peninsula two and a half hours south of San Francisco, California. It has been called the greatest meeting of land, sea and sky and is recognized as an ideal vacation destination. Its world class golf courses, unique variety of shops and galleries and a spectacular assortment of parks and natural areas combine to provide a truly unrivalled place for upper-class inhabitants. Monterey, though a few of you may know, is also the Jerusalem of the virtual reality research community.
The Modelling and Simulation Institute of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey has been an internationally respected centre of teaching and research in VR since it was established. It provides a fertile setting for research that has spawned a host of scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. It is, however, the place that I would never be allowed to study for it only accepts students who are military officers from Uncle Sam or his friends. As most of you may know, that neither I have a military background nor is my country quite friendly to him. Nevertheless, it is the place where I am going in this winter. I am not going there as a mere pilgrim. I am not going to smell their advance or taste their success. I, NJ the Owl, BSc, MPhil, MCS, CITP, MBCS, MIEEE, although without a PhD, am going to present a paper there. I am going there to tell the Americans something new, something that no one on this planet has ever done before. This is the true meaning of what fideles Sancti Petri or milites Christi saw themselves as undertaking an iter.
Well. Aftermath.
“……Frederick drowned in Cilicia where most of what remained of the Germans was killed off by a bout of Black Plague, leaving only the English and the French. Philip left the alliance after they arrived Acre. Richard and his men headed down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and were once in the sight of the holy land. But Saladin poisoned the wells and destroyed the crops which made Richard decided to retreat in the following year. On his way home his ship was wrecked leading him to Austria."
---- P.M. Holt, The Near East from the Eleventh Century, 1986
