Post Drafts
In a month or so, I'm graduating from this university. I've mopped up thesis requirements, and am now done fixing up the last of my curriculum's requirements. Along the University Avenue shall bloom the sunflowers, as we graduates, zombified by thesis and other requirements, pick the flowers and crush the xylem sap out of them in our palms with great joy; in our eyes the exhilirating look of "I've finally graduated. Yey." And as I look back on the four years that I have been here, I have been thinking. Really thinking about what the hell just happened for those four years of my life. Thinking about the unsure future, the experiences, the friends, former friends, downgraded friends, the academic requirements, the lovers and crushes, and missed opportunities and all that. And then I realized something about my life, the whole existence of myself within this university. Avery important realization involving me and the university...
I'm OLD. Relative to the university population that is; I'm old.
Yes, old. Imagine that, all my thinking about four years of university life, of UP life, and that is my conclusion: I'm old.
So, just how old are we talking about here?
Well, for starters, I have seen the old Registrar's Building, where the new Institute of Biology building now stands. The old Registrar's building back in my day was already an empty shell of its former importance; its hulk used to store various old university equipment and appliances. As I walk, row after row of CRT monitors, pipings, CPUs, and a broken Chinese copy of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, I came upon a guy. He was guarding the whole of this pile of seemingly worthless junk, junk which may be instead given to me so that I could have a computer of my own out of the spare parts. Or perhaps some nice furniture to spruce up my dorm room. Or perhaps a bling-bling from an internal combustion engine; the possibilities are endless! So I politely asked if I could have a computer set from the stuff they had left here, seeing that no one else seems to have used these equipment for years nor use it again.
"No."
Well, that's sad. But it's probably okay; the CPU's there don't even look like they could run DotA, and thus would be of little use to me back then. Maybe some other parts instead: a free CRT monitor would be nice, or a keyboard perhaps. A squarish mouse with a blue-green trackball would be cool to have I think. Then I looked at the guy.
"No. Policy kasi eh...."
Ah, policy. If I ever wanted one of those, I would have to go to some office on the other side of the University perhaps, fill up some forms, go to some other tip of the university to pay the processing fees, go somewhere else to get my ID countersigned, and so on and so forth. All that just for a Windows 2.0-compatible computer that would double my electricity fee, and likely would not run Skyrim anyway. What a waste, but still....FREE computer?
The guard was adamant. Not wanting to waste my time with the system, I slinked away, searching for other places to have a laptop. Well, eventually I inherited a laptop, but it is such a great, great waste of potential, of all of those computers stacked up doing no processing when millions of people are still computer-illiterate, like my grandmother. And that is just plain wrong. The future is highly silicon-based, and eventually quantum-based; information is a very important resource which could be easily encoded, synthesized, and conducted by the computers, and it is such a waste to have machines just rotting doing absolutely nothing, when back in my childhood it was my one big dream to have a computer. Just because they are greatly obsolete, doesn't mean they are totally useless.
Mobilize these old machines; somebody could still use them. In the same way, the older members of our workforce could be mobilized in such a similar way [if they still want to do so, of course]; their experience makes for massive untapped potential for our country. And match them up with the tools they are used to, be it a Mac, Commodore, IBM device, or analytical machine. Imagine what leaps and bounds of advancement we could achieve if even the older people of our community, with the older machines currently left unused by this university, is actively engaged in human progress? Or even, imagine how happy I would have been had I gotten a computer, no matter how old, back then?
Truly, now, it is such a waste to see those machines, in need of a little love and repair, languishing in some other place just because none of us bothered to oil them, or replace some chains, or update some chips; with our wastefulness of the resources of this world God assigned us to be stewards of, it's no wonder all this is already sitting Somewhere Down the Road... to Perdition. Ahahahaha.
I'm OLD. Relative to the university population that is; I'm old.
Yes, old. Imagine that, all my thinking about four years of university life, of UP life, and that is my conclusion: I'm old.
So, just how old are we talking about here?
Well, for starters, I have seen the old Registrar's Building, where the new Institute of Biology building now stands. The old Registrar's building back in my day was already an empty shell of its former importance; its hulk used to store various old university equipment and appliances. As I walk, row after row of CRT monitors, pipings, CPUs, and a broken Chinese copy of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, I came upon a guy. He was guarding the whole of this pile of seemingly worthless junk, junk which may be instead given to me so that I could have a computer of my own out of the spare parts. Or perhaps some nice furniture to spruce up my dorm room. Or perhaps a bling-bling from an internal combustion engine; the possibilities are endless! So I politely asked if I could have a computer set from the stuff they had left here, seeing that no one else seems to have used these equipment for years nor use it again.
"No."
Well, that's sad. But it's probably okay; the CPU's there don't even look like they could run DotA, and thus would be of little use to me back then. Maybe some other parts instead: a free CRT monitor would be nice, or a keyboard perhaps. A squarish mouse with a blue-green trackball would be cool to have I think. Then I looked at the guy.
"No. Policy kasi eh...."
Ah, policy. If I ever wanted one of those, I would have to go to some office on the other side of the University perhaps, fill up some forms, go to some other tip of the university to pay the processing fees, go somewhere else to get my ID countersigned, and so on and so forth. All that just for a Windows 2.0-compatible computer that would double my electricity fee, and likely would not run Skyrim anyway. What a waste, but still....FREE computer?
The guard was adamant. Not wanting to waste my time with the system, I slinked away, searching for other places to have a laptop. Well, eventually I inherited a laptop, but it is such a great, great waste of potential, of all of those computers stacked up doing no processing when millions of people are still computer-illiterate, like my grandmother. And that is just plain wrong. The future is highly silicon-based, and eventually quantum-based; information is a very important resource which could be easily encoded, synthesized, and conducted by the computers, and it is such a waste to have machines just rotting doing absolutely nothing, when back in my childhood it was my one big dream to have a computer. Just because they are greatly obsolete, doesn't mean they are totally useless.
Mobilize these old machines; somebody could still use them. In the same way, the older members of our workforce could be mobilized in such a similar way [if they still want to do so, of course]; their experience makes for massive untapped potential for our country. And match them up with the tools they are used to, be it a Mac, Commodore, IBM device, or analytical machine. Imagine what leaps and bounds of advancement we could achieve if even the older people of our community, with the older machines currently left unused by this university, is actively engaged in human progress? Or even, imagine how happy I would have been had I gotten a computer, no matter how old, back then?
Truly, now, it is such a waste to see those machines, in need of a little love and repair, languishing in some other place just because none of us bothered to oil them, or replace some chains, or update some chips; with our wastefulness of the resources of this world God assigned us to be stewards of, it's no wonder all this is already sitting Somewhere Down the Road... to Perdition. Ahahahaha.