KahelAMP!

Today (it’s yesterday actually, it’s 8 past 12 on my review of this piece) commemorated the 16th anniversary of the first ever Internet connection of Philippines. My memories turned in to the moment when I first experienced it and felt exhilarated by it… and the lessons of those experiences.

The year was 1995. Since my fourth grade, I already understood that despite what one hear, read or see on the media, technological advances are still slow to reach provincial areas. There was a time, when I thought if it would be better if I grew some place else? Finally, the first computer shop opened in our town. I thought it would be a lot of fun, snicker-net and all. Unfortunately, they didn’t liked kids hanging out there.

No use for that, I was left wondering if there existed even one BBS in our little town. On a grander stage, there’s this Internet I kept encountering on reading the latest computer literature (which was also hard to come by). There’s nothing left to do but imagine.

Summer vacation then was almost arriving. If I remember correctly, my father was on vacation early because of school recognitions and graduations. One afternoon for wanting to explore the much mysterious Internet…

I’m on DOS/Windows 3.11 on a brand new 486DX4-100Mhz (16Mb of RAM). I popped in a Compuserve CD. I’m beginning to feel I skipped school for nothing. Finally, after two hours of tweaking I finally got it working. Oh, the sweet melody of a modem dialing up. I got frequent disconnects, but I did one 30-minute continuous surfing just browsing what can be found on the other side of “the computer”.

• If I grew up somewhere else, ‘understand and improvise’ would not be much in my person

• With specs like that at time, I should have felt like a hotshot… but

• I really don’t got anyone to compare with (the computers at the shop had 386 and paperwhite VGAs) which says much about my father’s tendency not to be thrift on his kids

• It was a humility lesson in disguised, as my mom put it, “Don’t boast just be thankful…” Yup, Windows 95 came around after a few months

• My father never scolded me for skipping school, but he does when I fail a exam

• (this is bad actually, but) I learned skipping school without failing… subjects as a compromise…

• He always encouraged me, even if it means I frequently disassembled the computer and burned some chips and fuses (I’m sure he felt sometimes a bit stung because he, which I realized only later, must have spent some real fortune at those times)

• Yes, I was scolded for that afternoon but from my mother. It never occurred to me that overseas calls were different from long distance calls. (Peace mom…)

From what I’ve seen at that point until now, I believe that the Internet was meant bring us closer as one human society. I also would like to believe that it’s doing that job quite well and inch by inch succeeding to a degree of perfection. Yet, it won’t be if we forget or ignore simplest unit of our society… Clue? No, it’s not an IT term.

I’ve read somewhere that what is written on the Internet will surely survive longer than its author. I hope this one will. I hope my child’s children will one day stumble on this. This is my piece for my Dad: thank you for everything you’ve done, do and doing for us.

Happy birthday Dad. We love you “dakal dakal”