When i was in primary school and junior high school, my hobby or my expertise (as a kid) was electronic. I like experimenting and helping my uncle repairing electronic appliances . In junior high school i was unofficial teacher assistant in electronics and having opportunities to plan on following scientific competition (altough not actually sent).

When i was entering high school, i was fascinated with chemistry because of my interest in electronics. this new interest then made me self-studying the high school chemistry learning materials (all year materials). later on this gave me some nice fruits by being runner-ups for competition in chemistry for high-schoolers in jakarta.

In high school also, my direction is diverted. As i found that i do not having a partner in studying electronics, financial limitation to buy electronic components, and the task to explore digital electronics from extra-curricular organization (teksound) i started to learn about the computer. Well, the gate really brings me there. meanwhile, i met a friend whose rumoured as a hacker. The truth is i never know since i haven’t actually seen him do hacking. But as a geek (term i know not long ago), he was a good friend to discuss with.

Then i learn about programming. Little by little, step by step, i learn programming by reading a book from the library and opened books at the bookstore (not having enough money to buy books).  sometimes, i do a little experiments as proof of concept of what i have learned by using the computer at the school’s lab (obviously i do not have a computer box at home).

Then came an offer from one of the high school senior who had many experiences in programming competition (one of the former national olympiads perhaps) to participate in programming competition in Bandung, the same college. I was actually an assistant, i do not code at the competition. All that i had was only the logics of problem solving and some experience of coding. So i was just act as code-logic verifier. altough we was became the finalist, we did not get the winning position (i assumed that we was the last among the five finalist).

Then i came back to school with no winning flag. But i had something as a prize. A competition experience.

After some times, i had an offer from one of the teacher at school. A programming competition invitation from other school (Yes, i had another chance).  But the competition is among the team of three so i need two other team member. the other thing i had to do is to practice, mixing the competition experience and the knowledge from the books. finally, i was told that there were two other student in the acceleration class that would like to participate in that contest. so now the team is complete, we did practice together and signed for the contest.

the rest is history (personal and school). we won several contest and donating trophies to our school. my career stops when i enter the last year since there was an opportunity to join olympiad team but restricted to sophomores and first year. the other was still recorded as second year (since they was in acceleration class) so they had their chance until the academic calendar conflicting with the competition schedule. for the sake of nostalgic preservation, our team’s name was PIP (a shorthand for Peb, Iang, and Prima a.k.a. mbon).

And here i am, graduated in Indonesia on the informatics track. while iang was in jakarta also on computer science but now in netherland for continuin education. Mbon was having his undergraduate at singapore.

The last but the most important thing in this post was the reason i went to informatics. to be honest, before i had an idea about this post i was thinking about..

in informatics, i was free and encouraged to use divide and conquer without political obligation and having belief about evolution without worrying to be adressed as darwinism.

if you already reach this sentence then you must be really read this thoroughly or just skipping. i should thank you for that. hehe..