As a child, computer fascinates me. Not only how that big metal box can produce heat and color, but a lot of thing that I can make with them: Alibaba and Thieves Story from the 1001 Arabian Nights, or abstract painting with MS Paint. My journey with computer took me way back to early 2001 – 2002, where we still had 5 Mb floppy disk full of small programs, big box monitors and Intel Pentium 4 processors (I like their blue and orange cardbox, as well as other Intel cardbox), I still remember my old and faithful Hewlett-Packard printer, still working for almost 5 years later, without any failures that later I found out memeable. At that time, I still remember my first game I ever played, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation that started my obsession with Ancient Egyptians civilization. Funny thing was, I never able to get past the Race For The Iris level. I already scared with the picture of Ancient Cambodian statue assets that adorned Angkor Wat Temple level. Still fun though, shooting Von Croy unintentionally or experiencing controls around the game, how I can move Lara with arrow buttons or shoot with my mouse. Years later, I learnt that that Tomb Raider edition control is one of difficult game control, so I gave kudos for myself for experiencing that game early.

I was not much a nerdy kid with gadgets and computers, I never touch Nintendo, but played some Playstation 1 game like Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets, or Spyro the Age of the Dragons back then. I more prefer reading books. I was fortunate to receive general computer education in my elementary school, where I learned to use WordArt for decorating text in Microsoft Word and even some basic Excel functions like SUM, I still remember me and my friends playing a version of Sims game that time until we were late and left by school’s bus and have to walk some kilometres to reach the school, where teachers scolded us.

I mostly used my parents’ laptop to play, watch videos, play Bulldozer game, mostly on Windows XP. It was that time I started to understand that our activities left a trail in computer, and I spent my time exploring that in Windows XP File History, and busy deleting files containing my personal rantings on how strict my parents’ was. It also that time I eventually learn about internet, with that memorable dial-up voice. It was 2005 or 2006 in Indonesia, we still use that ol’ reliable Nokia, and counting character to avoid expensive charges, and looking for interesting websites listed in our tech magazine. Around that time too, I encountered the infamous Brontok virus. I remember I was scolded by my father because he thought that I was the one who caused the virus, but in the truth it was his 10 megabytes USB Flash Drive from his office that infected the computer. In this part of my life, throughout my elementary school, I learn about Windows 95 and Windows XP. That green meadow is part of my daily life once.

Source: Wikipedia: Bliss

Linux is surprisingly not really new to me. I heard Linux only by name since my first year in middle and high school (yes, contrary to most Indonesian, I enrolled to traditional-yet-modern Islamic Boarding School or known as pesantren which comprises 6 years training, both in Islamic sciences and general sciences). My boarding school already utilized Ubuntu Linux, but still using Windows XP and later Windows 7 for administrative and financial business. But in my 3rd or 4th year, I used my first Ubuntu Linux, for learning fast typing in Libre Office.

When I graduated in 2009, the world already changed much, because in my boarding school access to technology is really limited in amount and limited in time (I had only 45 minutes access in afternoon time and 1 hour at night before mandatory bed time). And that pattern really had both bad and good influence on me. The good news is: I don’t much expect myself to become really sophisticated in computer, unlike my friends who schooled in general middle school or high school, who constantly trying to follow the trends. I was like “Why do I need to sprint and follow them, the tech will always develop and it will get more expensive, but the older and the more reliable will show up and I will just use that”. The bad thing is, wherever restrictions happened, there will be much possibility of addiction, because most of the tech world is new, and well, who does not like new easy thing? You can play games with friends, connect with more people, getting more information, having better entertainment quality, etc. I started playing lots and lots of game. My days in college were entertained by Assassins Creed series and Dragon Age, whenever studying seems much a pain.

A pain? Why? Well, learning is enduring hours, days, weeks and months of stupidity and the feeling that of "I will never understand this", and keep struggling.

It was in my college period I started (I repeat: started) to learn exploring tech in proper manner, and later in my masters' studies, learning more about my study pattern. I took easy way and enrolled to my boarding school’s new university and took Informatics Engineering major (easy, it took no exam, because, well, they still need student and it still under the same organization). And to be honest, it was kind of a roller coaster experience. The university is new, the curriculum still in development and I was the bunny rabbit for its development, we scramble everywhere to learn about Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, Calculus and Java OOP. My 6 years training in previous boarding school prepared me to become teacher in religious studies. Even when the courses and the opportunities were there, we were directed more to learn about Islamic sciences instead, and it humongous and ridiculously huge materials. Imagine Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry can be smush into one Oxford Dictionary sized book, the amount of books you need to learn for Islamic Studies will compete even with Encyclopedia Americana or Britannica. OMG.

See those books? WIth colored binding? We had a 1 month long exam period, oral and written each day referencing and MEMORIZING those books. Source.

As I said, even when it was a roller coaster one, but it was also a good one. The environment of learning in my campus is somewhat “facilitating” to learn without the fear of inferiority complex toward the more genius students, which I will constantly found if I enrolled to state or other universities (there will be this one student, that outsmart everyone and make everyone down, even unintentionally, much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory). Everyone in the classroom is new, and confused with what the lecturer said: what is Nginx? What is XAMPP? What is set? And we ended up learning together.

TBH I became that Sheldon Cooper many times, but fortunately I had people that much similar like Leonard, Howard, Raj and Penny around. LOL.

I still remember crying when my Java Hello World program broke because of that “;”. I remember sitting in library, reading that of encapsulation or polymorphism, and wondering what do they mean. I remember pulling all nighter to learn derivatives, but ended up failing the exam because I still cannot understand what they mean.

But that process was what mould me to what I am now. I still err, that for sure but I understand that making mistakes, errors and failures are way to learn and not the result of your learning. I was grow up in an environment where if you make failure, that means the result of you education is negative and you somewhat dumb or wired wrongly and need to be disciplined. I punished myself a lot for not understanding things (you know the Asian standard don’t you?), hating myself because of that and ended up depressed (which I had till today).

Now I accept my failures, that running and compiling a program successfully in the first attempt is a fortune, and if you got error that means another chance to learn, to understand the underlying process. Its useful to learn, and fun, because you got the chance to understand, and not just getting the good textbook result. It also good, that if you get the same error in the future, you might probably already guessed where the problem lies, and sometimes, you just guess right!

World can be harsh, really, really harsh. People said everyone can be everything, or there is a chance that you will become next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, but in reality, privileges and societal condition differentiates us. People said that there always a time for you to learn, that if you made mistake, you can start over. In reality, there will be things that need to be paid for that, either money, time or even mental health or family. Sometimes you cannot fail, sometimes you really need things to work. That can be scary, but as I learned in my boarding school, I rely on the heavenly powers that will help me get past that process, however harrowing it might be. I also found friends, some online (through Minecraft) and offline (some already fading away, carried away by work, or their spouses and plans)

The beauty of learning is, we do it everyday. Even when we buy new appliances, learn new software, install new games, learning how to win a game, we learn everyday. Learning is a chance to be better, various works that done to improve your behavior, and whatever we learn postively, we improved.

That what I am now, my overthink is much, and my power is small and I am tired, really, really tired. Depressed. But when I learn, when I open this Manjaro Linux notebook, or my Windows 10 desktop, there is this fire that sparked in myself and make me believe in myself that I can do it. I will not push yourself to feel that too, find your own way, and just, keep learning.