Monday, March 05, 2018

Toastmaster PI Speech : Story of love

I still remember the day when I was small boy and I saw it for the first time. It was love at first sight. It had blinking eyes and all 10 numbers. Yes it was the casio calculator watch which did addition, subtraction, multiplication and division on your wrist. I wanted it so badly. But it was very expensive and also not allowed in school. The casio calculator watch was my first love. And also my first heart break after my parents did not allow it to be a part of my life.

Good morning fellow toast masters. Today I will be telling you the story of my love.

Some time during my childhood, i realized that I understood machines better than I understand humans.

I remember my first interaction with computers during my 8th standard in my School in Baroda, Gujarat. Our lab had the latest intel 286 machines. Now these machines came without hard drives. To boot the machines, we used to insert a 5 inch floppy into their floppy drive. And on booting, we used to get a black screen with the DOS prompt. There was no windows in those days. My favourite games were paratrooper and chess. I remember that in chess, for each move I made the computer used to take 15-30 minutes to calculate its next move. And since the computer period was of 1 hour only, I never completed a game of chess in school.

I got my first computer when I joined Engineering in Computer Science branch. It was the latest 166 MHz intel pentium processor with 2 MB of RAM and 1 GB of hard drive. Almost 1000 times slower than what we have on our mobiles these days. But then those were the days when Bill Gates had said that 640 kb should be enough for any one. And, having such a machine, I was on cloud 9. So, during college days, I spent my nights playing Age of empires instead of studying. And as a result, when I passed out in 2001, I was one of the very few graduates, who were not placed during campus placements. Thanks to my seniors, I was able to join as a software engineer in a small company in Delhi. Here I was exposed to the world of online gaming. I used to spend a lot of time in office - around 10-12 hours daily. Working a lot during the first 8 hours and spending time playing online games after my manager went home. I was very happy.

But then, the greatest tragedy of my life happened - I got married in 2007. It was difficult for me to grasp that talking to my wife is more important than playing video games. One year later, i could not take it any more and got my first custom built desktop with a very expensive graphics card to play high end games. But all good times come to an end. My first kid was born in 2010 and I had to spend time feeding her, changing diapers and with multiple trips to doctor for vaccinations. I did not learn from my mistake and got my second kid in 2012. They are 7 and 4 years old now. My passion for games came alive last year when my 2nd kid started going to school. I had to rebuild my computer last year to play the latest games. Imagine falling in love again.

In addition to computer games, I love travelling. I hope to travel to all the different corners of this world some day.

To conclude, I am a very passionate computer gamer and a traveller. In addition to this, I am a father, a husband and currently a toast master.

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