Jottings from My Diary

I’m giving myself a pat on the back!  I’ve actually kept a diary going since 1984!  That was when I found myself cooped up in a factory south of Jakarta, Indonesia.  I bought the little diary and recorded my thoughts just to keep from going off the edge.  I also bought a ‘Kapok’ guitar from a friend and kept singing the same old song about country roads because without my songbook, I could only remember that one by heart.  (My tribute to John Denver)   The despair was sometimes intolerable, being separated from my wife and 2-year old daughter, the drudgery of a dead-end job, the hot, itchy fiber-glass and chemical-filled factory atmosphere and the frequent scolding from the boss.  It was enough to drive a sane man to his knees.  After I came home I found myself starting my career from the bottom.  Often, I had to tell myself, since I’m at the bottom I had no place to go but up.  I proceeded to do just that.

 

In spite of the daily struggle to make ends meet, I managed to write something in the book.  At the same time my financial condition started to pick up again.  I had our family owned old ‘Olivetti’ type-writer but I couldn’t do much with it.  Every time I made a mistake it was a tedious job correcting it.  I often thought how nice it would be if someone invented a writing device we could write and make corrections just by moving the text around or erasing it and filling up with the corrected text.  I hadn’t realized it then, I was actually thinking about a personal computer, which came into existence several years later.  So, in 1992 I bought my first PC and started my own education in its usage.  In 1994 I continued my diary in Microsoft Word.  So I like to dream. I often think most of my dreams actually come true. 

 

I’m still counting my blessings.