Mindwarp
While filling in my profile at linkedIn, I remembered working for the Union of International Associations. I was an allround IT-guy and I did some coding in a language named R-Basic and I replaced backup tapes by late afternoon.
I remember using the crappy old copier to copy CD-covers, the fashionably very long skirt of one of the employees, the very very weird monologue I got from one of the elder colleagues that somehow started about Christianity and ended in a speech on the acceptance of sexual abberations, the blond hair of the only other girl that spoke Flemish in the building and the weird almost Wozniakian stature of my boss with his beard and corduroy pants. And I remember me coding my very own text-based game, consisting of a <|> plane that flew through a canyon and that had to evade the walls as the canyon came rusing by faster and faster. Every line of canyon that went past was worth 1 point. I coded it so I would have something to do. I played it everyday. And then I would tweak it and play it again.
But what I somehow remember most vividly is the somewhat geeky girl that occupied the same office I was in, with whom I barely exchanged a “hello” and “good evening”. She cried when I told her I was leaving the office. That was 17 years ago. I can’t remember what she looked like. I only know she sobbed.
