While mingling with the peeps at Fedora 11 launch party in Saito College PJ, I was kinda overwhelmed & also humbled by the growing interest in the open source community & also GTUG Kuala Lumpur. There were students that I talked to who were genuinely want to contribute, but just don’t know how. That has been always the problem. I can say not only in Malaysia, but also every other parts of the world. Genuine, proactive and positive people, who do want to take that chance & give something back from what they’ve learned & acquired using open source software. Honestly people, I can say on behalf of all FOSS dudes in Malaysia that I’ve met, they are just deeply in love with open source software. How? Why? Only they can personally explain to you, because not one I’ve met has told me the same story about their 1st encounter.

Typically enough, while talking to these kids, I do what I do best: encourage & motivate them. I’m a loser by any standard, but I can’t stand just by being a bystander and look at other people losing in a game where they can win. In my words, that’s the way I fight. In other words, I just like to do stuff & help people be better than what they could be. Strange, but true. If I could think of an answer to the question why, I would say I have seen both sides of the world in this make believe reality we live in. One half of my early life, I was fortunate to experienced what they called the “high society lifestyle”. As a brat, I grew up hating high society because I didn’t like what was happening. I learned what “backstabbing” really is in a very early childhood. I really hate high society. Because it was turning angels into demons. Including myself. A leo & a monkey, what do you expect what do you get? A very naughty, swinging king. Heh.

The other half of my life, I was fortunate to experienced what they called “crashed, desperate, normal society lifestyle”. When the economy crashed in the early & late 90s, everything crashed. Once was thought as friends, ended up being sleeping enemies who has been fucking your ass every night, literally. Once was thought could be as friends, ended up being judges that didn’t go to law school. They put you down, they say not very nice things, they did a lot of damage more than anyone could handle. Love and determination proved to be the reasons why everyone is still together & managed to dig out from what they like to call “the rut” or “the gut”. Something like that. And true enough, it took a lot of years, somewhat alone in an island, to discover a new kind of life. And I don’t regret the decision to pack up and leave at that time. And true enough, a new decision is waiting for it’s time to come.

And because of these 2 different experiences, I accidently lived a life I never thought could happen to someone like me. It’s all accidental. Remember Pak Pandir? Pak Pandir suka berangan. Ingat? It was something like that. I must say, without the determination & passion about technology, I would never thought to be a web designer, or web developer, or even as an evangelist. I taught myself everything. From HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Perl and a lot more. I wasn’t able to finish college and I went to 2 of them. I wasn’t the pay attention in class type of kid. And honestly, I was worried being under qualified academically, but confident that I am qualified in years of experience doing stuff. One place to another, I never dreamed and I still don’t dream that much of good to come by my way. But it still does and I thank God for that. Serious. I don’t want to be rich, I just want to be wealthy. Go figure what that really means to me. That’s the thing, that’s the drive. I just want to do stuff so that I can be wealthy. Again, go figure what it really means to me.

My personal advice is: just love what you are doing. Don’t give a fuck to those people who puts you down. Sometimes you do need what they called “a lesson”, but a friend will give you “a lesson” when you really, really need one. Just be in love with things that makes you = you. And hopefully, with effort, good intentions and determination, you become better than me. I’d like to see that.