Life experience (Chapter 2)
Before going any further with searching the answer to the big question of life, let’s jump back to the years of my university studies once again.
It was the last semester. I felt confident about finishing it. I managed until now, so shouldn’t be a problem in the end. I could hear happiness knocking at the door, waiting for me to join. These days were easy and optimistic. I did not expect anything bad to come. We all have seen the light in the end of the tunnel. Meanwhile the question came up, where to go further, what job to do? What company to join?
This was the time, when I thought I will break in the web development industry and will do freelance work. Actually this time I had no idea about the term freelancing. I just wanted to build fancy pages for clients. Luckily I got my first client and I was really happy with this opportunity. Most of my college friends were doing this web business too. Every company wanted to have a website. The market started to be crowded.
After the first meeting, I got a high level of requirements from the client. I was really excited and directly jumped to write the HTML and CSS. I did not know any design process, so coding came first. In the beginning everything was cool, but then I started to have doubts. I did not like the look and the performance of the website. I spent days and nights to change the layouts, colors. I started to rush with all my school assignments and postponed my studies just to make the site perfect. My frustration was just growing and I was afraid of the client’s first demo. I remember I had one week remaining for the first version.
The brief was to have a website listing with companies, which have contract with my client and display information about their benefit programs. The requirements were a bit foggy. We spent quite a lot of time to get a better understanding of what’s the main goal.
The day of the demo came, one of my friends took me to the meeting, as he was involved in this business. He actually liked my solution and told me not to worry. When we entered into the client’s door a warm greeting welcomed us. I got more info about the future features and the plan of this company. It was then soon time for the demo.
They mentioned they want to have it like a game. So I came up with an idea of beehive. In this beehive the visitor of the website could select one of the holes and a company would pop up with the details.
The page was available online, of course I took my laptop with a local version as a backup, anyways I wanted to show the site on their machines to see the site in different resolution.
Their machine meant a white Macbook, before the Pro series. I had never seen a Macbook before.
Going back to the demo, it was awesome, they liked my idea of the beehive and suggested few improvements. At the end of our meeting I asked the guy about his Macbook as mine was already dying and I was planning to buy a new one.
Never heard anyone talking about his laptop with a passion like that. He told me how happy he was and that how many years he is using the MacBook . I thought I will have a look and I checked Apple’s homepage. I knew, this is what my site is missing. I could not put into words, but I felt that it is just easy and understandable to navigate and visually appealing.
Well, the Macbook was too expensive for me. So I did my research and I got to the following conclusion: in that year Windows Vista was the operation system for most of the laptops…. I guess this I don’t need to comment more. Second, I used Linux for two years and it was not the easiest one, was not bad, just I thought it would be cool, if the entire system is setup from out of the box and it looks appealing. After looking up some reviews and videos, I felt the system on the Mac could be the one. However it stayed just a dream as it was extra expensive and I was about just to start my career.
What happened with the website business? The job was not a success story, the client ran out of cash and disappeared from the city. After that everything turned upside down, I could not find other clients. I finished the university and I needed to make a decision. So I joined the already mentioned international corporation. My first project was outside of my country, which meant travel and additional per diems. And this is how my dream come truth, in half year I could buy a Macbook. It was in year 2011 and by the way what you read is written on that Mac.
This part of my life was a about this new discovery. I ignored the criticism about the Apple products. I appreciated the simplicity and the carefully crafted design behind each piece of the hardware and software. This was the end of reinstalling the systems and drivers, I got a lot of free time. For most of my tasks at home, the built-in apps on the Macbook were sufficient. This was the time when good design got my attention. In my country it was hard to allow these products due to their price. People thought it’s an unnecessary luxury. I was also this kind of person, looking only at the price. Later I realised, buying and using a products have so many other factors. Maybe it can help you to finish your job faster or it make you feel happy or frustrated or it allows you to work naturally like a human and not a robot. Looking back I think I started to realize the experience is what matters. In the end, our life is also an experience…
