As one who likes to venture into something new and what is “in”, perhaps I learned about the internet ahead of many others in my country. But compared to those from highly-developed countries, perhaps I was at the bottom of the list.

My first experience using the internet happened eight years ago. It was my best friend who introduced me to the amazing cyber world. Before that, I just heard some in school talking about email and chat. I could hardly figure out what those terms were. So, out of my curiosity and adventurous character, I discovered and learned by myself what the internet was really about. My best friend just made an email address for me and the rest of the story went my own way.

Our school offered several hours every semester for the students to use the computers with internet connection, for free. So, I utilized those free hours for discovery and learning. At first, I did not even know how to turn on the computer and how to open an internet window. Netscape Navigator was very popular at that time, Internet Explorer just being the second. (But now, according to my observation, Internet Explorer is the most widely-used.) When I opened a window, I did not know how to minimize it. And when another window was opened, I thought that the previously-opened window got closed or got lost. I did not know that there’s a taskbar at the bottom of the computer screen to manage the windows. That was how ignorant I was! Good that there were those assistants.

The discovery and learning got going. At first I learned to send email messages. Eudoramail was popular by then. And then I learned to chat with people from other parts of the globe using MIRC. I realized how the world got smaller and smaller through the net. It afforded convenience and ease in communication which people from centuries ago might not have thought about.

In such a country where I live, only a few have the opportunity to get a computer with internet connection at home. The most that one can do to gain internet access is go to the internet café and pay an hourly fee for the time spent going online Aside from using my free hours at school, I started going to internet cafes to chat, email and research. Doing research on net is better than going to the library at school where it’s time consuming to find the books which contain the topics that you’re researching about. With the internet, it’s so fast and easy. You just key in the words that pertain to your research and the internet engine will give you the results in an instant. But I did not go to the internet café mainly to research but to chat with friends whom I never came to know in person and friends who actually did not last. Too soon we became friends, too soon they were gone. But that was not all. After sometime, I got connected with my friends who used to be my schoolmates in high school but are now in the US. So, we had a great time chatting and competing in trivia inserted in the MIRC chatroom. That was how I spent my time on the net. I had fun and I preferred to chat with online friends than those who were around me physically.