My interest in technology was piqued during the waning years of my primary education. Hailing from a lower middle-class family, techno-gadgets were not the priority back in those days. However, my uncle's family was much better off and he owned a computer.
A computer. To be precise, it was an Amstrad 8086 PC-XT compatible. Wow. I was immediately enthralled. It could make beepy sounds and display 16 color graphics. Yes, of course the games were fun, but there was more to it. It so happened my uncle owned a mini-library of BASIC programming books.
And BASIC was... well, pretty basic. Without any formal guidance, I did self learning, from those book of course. I actually learned the concept of variables were before I was thought Algebra. I suppose from these early experiences, algorithmic programming became second nature to me.
Before long, I become interested in the innards of computers and decided to find books about Computer Architecture to digest. Mind you, the Internet was in its infancy and printed books were the only option. Physical access to the hardware was even harder to come by. Who in their right mind would let a kid mess around with hardware.
The chance to handle hardware came when I entered the Computer Club in my secondary school. The computer lab was fabulous, at least I thought it was. They had nearly 30 computers and as a member of the club you had privileged access. Clubs in my secondary school were purely student affairs, and if something broke, we fixed it ourselves. Lovely.
Note that I still did not own a computer at that moment in time. I lobbied hard, and finally got my parents to buy me one. A spanking new Acer Pentium 133 Mhz system. For the record, within 24 hours of the system being delivered, I crashed the system. Apparently I tweaked something I should not have. I believe it had something to do with me messing with the File Allocation Table, oops.
Skipping the boring details, lets just say I became so at home with computers that I decided after completing my secondary education, that decided to pursue a undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering, no surprise there. Apparently, I made it through a difficult 4 years of engineering while spending some time in Australia.
Finally, as of today, I'm an engineer working in Intel's Penang Design Center. Perhaps some might say that I've come a full circle in my geek-ness, but I believe my journey has barely begun...
