Technology immigrant

I was just reading a book where the author mentioned 'speaking in telegram language'. I laughed. Suddenly I realise I am that old enough to understand that, and to have been through the transformation from our old pen and paper days into our current modern world. MasyaAllah!

I have been through snail mails (I had a pen pal when I was a young girl) , typewriters with carbon papers (after A levels I did a short stint as a receptionist cum secretary), telex! This was actually like hard copy e-mails. Basically you send messages electronically to an assigned country code + 5 digit address. But you're charged by number of characters, and the messages received are immediately printed letter by letter on 5 copy carboned and colorful papers. So when we send out telexes, we try to shorten the message and the words as much as we can (much like how ppl are texting now). I remember being good at it. It was fun actually.

Then came the black with green text computers, and Lotus1-2-3 spreadsheets.

Then slowly personal computers made an appearance. But only certain important people had it. When my current company started using emails, I still remember how excited my boss was. "Ok ok.. you send to me already is it? I check. Yes I got it! " Fast forward 15 years, now we're swarmed with emails.

I feel like I'm forever the immigrant of new technologies.

p.s. When I was about 9 or 10, I remember bapak bringing home a machine with green texts. He told me we can write commands and ask the machine to do stuff. I didn't realise then it was a very simple computer. My father, always picking up new technologies. Even today, sometimes he will be the one excited over some new computer or phone application, asking me to try it. :D My bapak.