My Relationship with Technology: The Beginning

It all started with an internship at PHINMA in the early 90s, back when Windows 3.0 was just taking off in the Philippines.

I wasn't really required to take a summer internship at any company since taking Interdisciplinary Studies didn't really force you to unlike the Management courses in Ateneo. Thankfully the Management Engineering Department, with whom at that time I still had some affiliation with, assisted me in landing an internship at the MIS Department at PHINMA.

My computer background was very much limited to the vagaries of DOS and Wordstar at that time (Ctrl B anyone?) and the MIS Department at PHINMA I assumed was at a loss as to what to assign to me given that (1) I was not enrolled in or taking courses involving Computer Science and (2) I was not really required to take the internship as an IS student. So what did I end up doing?

Documentation.

That's right. I was introduced to MS Word 6.0 (on DOS) and was tasked to do documentation on the systems the MIS Department did for the various cement plants for PHINMA. I even vaguely remember the opportunity to go along with the team for a tour of the plant in Antipolo and understand what the systems looked like in place at the site. Impressive aye?

So for a measly P200 per day allowance, I was driving from Antipolo to Makati to my daily chores of creating an idiot's guide to these systems. It was through the course of this summer that I realize that I had a knack for computers. Not very in depth mind you, but enought to hold my own in any geekfest out there.

To be continued ...