“Oh shit, it couldn’t have happened. Not now! No, it’s just a nightmare. Come on, wake up~~~”
I remember the rush of horror for the first 10 seconds after I knocked a bowl of hot soup over my laptop keyboard. It was simply the most excruciating 10 seconds that seemed to last forever.
Some may be unable to imagine the feeling of losing a laptop over a bowl of soup. Let me tell you a bit about myself and my reliance on these notebooks of convenience.
When I left China and came to North America, it was in the Autumn season in 1993. My dad had a 386 with MS DOS and an application called QMENU. It’s funny to say because up until I started writing the previous sentence, I had completely forgotten about the name of this application. It translated a full text-based operating environment to a menu-based graphical interface. Pardon the geeky terminology but that’s the proper way of referring to technology.
Back to the story…
I had this overwhelming excitement of seeing things (of color) move in a projection monitor. Sure we had a TV back in YangZhou but by God I’ve actually taken control of the moving objects!!! Without a doubt, I had my dad load up some killer computer games. At that time, my favorite game was KEEN. But enough about my childhood encounters,
Back to the main subject …
Over the years I’ve come to realize that, like many have before me, computers save you time! But it can really consume you. As an example, I used to practice written Chinese back in the mid 90′s and now I can barely write a complete sentense without tripping over myself. It’s sad to say that it is true. Thank you NJ-STAR (a Chinese Input software)!
It wasn’t up until I got my first laptop in 2000 that I slowly became more and more attached to technology. I had my homework, my email accounts, my social networking software (ICQ at that time), my photos, my letters, my just-about-anything inside of that little box. Eventually, I sold it after three years of service. My needs had exceeded what it could provide.
My dell laptop came in just weeks later. I customized and ordered the Dell Inspiron 600m. My dad paid the bill as a Birthday Gift. Thanks DAD!