Our department is moving to a new office soon. We’ve also had several office equipment related training sessions recently. Some of our administration team members are nervous about using those advanced all-in-one printer machines. My name was brought up on our way back from training. My supervisor suggests to them that I can assist if they have any difficulty with those machines. I have been identified as a “Techie” person by my supervisor and colleagues. I do hardware and software troubleshooting in the office all the time, but this is not part of my job. I didn’t receive any education or professional training for doing this. Sometimes I wondered how I became like this too. I think that I learned to because I had no choice and my curiosity drove me.
I remembered it clearly. I was reading a computer flyer at home when I was in grade five. I wanted the computer showed on the flyer so bad, because I believed that I could do so much with it, although I didn’t even know what a computer can do. My fascination for computers came out from nowhere.
The first computer of mine was a laptop. It was a requirement when I was accepted to Kaohsiung Hospitality College. I had to have it for the registration. And Microsoft Windows 95 was a required operating system for my laptop. My mother bought it for me from someone she knew through work. He dropped it off at home for us and gave me a business card. He said that I could call if I had any questions. Laptops were considered luxury items at the time, and it cost my mother two months’ of her salary. The only thing I knew about it was I could play Minesweeper. One day, I accidentally dragged my Minesweeper window out of the screen and couldn’t get it back to normal. I phoned the guy to see if he could help me with it. He was very inpatient with my stupid question, so he told me it was just a game and it didn’t matter. The conversation ended without getting a solution. I knew from that moment that I wouldn’t be able to rely on this person, and I didn’t want to rely on anyone anymore.