Blah Blah Blogs: #MyInternetStory #PhNet20

For the celebration of the 20th year of Philippine internet, one would wonder and be nostalgic about what was the "first times" involving the use of computers, components and of course the internet itself. Being a 90's kid, the era was the time of the emergence of computers in the Philippines as well as the birth of the IT industry which has eventually branched into many different forms and has been embraced by many Filipinos.

If I would recall, my first experience with computers was way back in my elementary days, particularly in grade one and two which I was with ICPS (now ICCS) in Cubao which had a specific computer room but only grade 4 students would have that privilege to have a computer subject which I think was mainly used for games, like the Family Computer (Nintendo Entertainment System) and nothing else. Computers are required to be in air conditioned room to prevent overheating and dust to form inside them. There was even rumors that it would prevent computers from getting a "virus".

Touching a computer (which I presume was a macintosh) were the student's dream even if we don't know what we can do with it. We have only seen them do typing jobs and games on them. It was the dawn of the windows 95 which I saw the potential of the use of the computer and how badly I want to have one. The screen now is colored, there are more functions now and you can do more things than just typing and printing.

My childhood dream back then was to have my own complete set of encyclopedia at home. Since I love to explore new things and read at lot even at my young age. But I also saw functions done in the computer which can do that which made my fascination for computers grow exponentially. 

After transferring to schools in my elementary life, it was in private schools I had the chance to tinker with the computers and see what other things I can do with them. As much I would like to hoard them, we were only given a small time to explore them.

The internet was introduced to me when my family needed to set up an email account to communicate with my Lolo who is living in California and my aunt who is processing her papers going to Louisiana. Well my lolo was assisted by people there but would still send snail mail which would take months. While my aunt was chatting with her future husband with MiRC which I don't know how to operate even until now.

The internet back then was yahoo.com, my first email account was bombarded with spam mail and even porn links. It was really frustrating since there are just a handful of ligitimate emails that I would read. Plus the fact that computer rental back then was 50 pesos per hour. It was indeed a precious and a luxury to access.

In high school,  my love for computers and the internet grew when we had computer subject (once a week) for basics and HTML. I began to explore the use of word and excell as well as discovering new games which one can do on them. I still haven't got my own computer but my dream of encyclopedia volumes was replaced by a dream to have my on PC.

In high school we were given a specialization to focus since we were in a vocational high school, I quickly decided to go with computer studies. And from there, I got more exposed to more computers and eventually more affordable and sometime free internet.

My first blog (fokkerplace.blogspot.com now changed to fpjjr.blogspot.com) was formed in 2003 after reading about the new journal website which was newly launched. And when friendster and multiply was lunched, I also had a lot of blog entries there which Blah Blah Blogs came into conception. I have been involved in graphic design, writing, editing, encoding, programming, scheduling, processing, measuring and many possibilities one can do with the computer and the internet. And even until now, there are still a lot of things that I need to learn and catch up. Times are indeed changing fast, and one should just not run, but to blast oneself to grasp everything this technology is capable of.

Now 2014, is the 20th year of the first connection of the Philippines to the world to the world wide web (do we even use this term?) and I have been exposed to the internet everyday, looking at phones and monitors and created thousands of works and still writing and interacting with computers and will be part of what I am. It did changed my life, good and bad, and it is still evolving as we speak. Who knows what will happen next, what can we expect soon and this may serve as a throwback for another anniversary of internet probably for the 30, 40, 50 years and so forth.

So what is your story?
#PHNet20