My first foray into this new-fangled world of blogs.
But not my first brush with PCs. No, computers and I go back a long way. I still remember the IBM PC XT clone my Dad bought me back in ‘86, used. It had a green monitor, no hard drive, 5.25 inch floppies. It came with some games, Wordstar (wordprocessor), Norton utilities, etc. all running on MS-DOS of course.
Needles to say, I spent countless hours on it, just fiddling around, running one program after another. “Caterpillar” was a favorite, so was “Frogger”, and “Buck Rogers” too. By the way, I never got to see what happens when you avoid all the obstacles while flying in that Buck Rogers airship. I have a sneaking suspicion that the game never gets to that point.
It was also used for more useful things, of course, such as mail-merging letters for Dad. This was done in Wordstar and we printed the letters on noisy Epson dot matrix printer. Dad was impressed because before PCs, he had to use a typewriter and type every one of his 50+ letters / mission report.
So, I thank my Dad for opening the world of information to me. Thank you for buying the PC, the encyclopedias, the National Geographic magazines, the books. Thank you for setting me up for life-long learning.
Now, about the title of this blog – Indios Bravos.
Indios. In the Philippines’ Spanish Colonial times it was a derogatory description for the natives. However, the illuminati (the likes of Juan Luna, Jose Rizal, and other young Filipinos who had gone to Europe to be educated and ending up being enlightened) appended another word, bravos, to turn it all around. Indios bravos. Excellent natives. Now, that’s a better description.
