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| MY ANNIVERSARY WITH COMPUTERS |
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| BY ERNESTO C. TURLA |
NAMED "BEST OF CYBER PINOYS" FOR MAY 9, 2000
AND AWARDED WITH ONE "SIGAY" BY TANIKALANG GINTO
 My anniversary with the computer, as well as with the
internet, is just around the corner - on May 31st to be
exact. I remember it, because it was my wife's birthday
then, two years ago. Before that, my only encounter with
the computer was whenever I passed by the desks of my
children in their bedrooms. All I knew then sometime before
that was using my old electric Smith-Corona typewriter,
which for me, was already an improvement over using for a
long period of time in the Philippines, dating back to when
I was still a college student in 1953, the Remington, Royal
and Underwood typewriters which were so heavy, it was then
a boon during the later years to acquire a newly introduced
portable Olivetti which I later brought with us here to the
U.S. on May 27, 1968 and which has since been replaced by
the electric typewriter which for sometime now has joined
the portable one to gather dust in the attic. What I had
been using immediately prior to my using a computer was a
Brothers word processor. I got it about five years ago when
I started to realize that I was getting behind in technological
knowledge and I needed to update myself with the modern trends
in life. The opportunity knocked on my door when my youngest
daughter, Kathy, was getting rid of it , having just got her
older sister's old computer after the latter had bought
a better one - a laptop. That word processor was, to my
judgement then, a very wondrous machine and I enjoyed
using it! With it, I could type anything, and could always
go backwards to delete whatever error I would
commit, and did not have to use "wite out" for correction.
I could make copies of what I had typed with
just the push of a button, and the machine would just click
and click as it types by itself to print what I prepared.
It was as if an invisible person was doing the typing. I was
quite satisfied with just the use of a word processor, for it
fulfilled most of my needs. For one thing, I have always been
slow when it comes to joining the "in" crowd. I go by the
saying, "Be not the first by whom the new is tried, nor yet
be the last to cast the old aside." So, for instance, in the
field of music, I still content myself with my old phonograph
records which my children, what with their laser discs, do
not care for at all. They refer to my room as "the archive"
due to my large collection of records dating back to the
forties (most of them are from the fifties and the sixties.
78 rpm records, 331/2 rpm long playing albums, 45 rpm
records, and 8-track tapes, along, of course, with a record
player that can play all those. The disc, I have not gotten 
around to learn how to use it yet, or maybe, it just doesn't
interest me at all! I still prefer the handy audio tapes
where I can always copy a song I hear on the radio, or do
tape-to-tape recording. In fact, although I have all sorts
of records that number over a thousand, I've got all the
songs that are in them on tape for convenience. Yes, I'm
really old-fashioned. It takes me a long time to switch.
I only switched from beta to vhs when it became quite difficult
to rent a video with a beta format. Today, the movies I saved
on beta tapes years ago have been transfered to vhs tapes.
Now going back to the computer, well, like I say,
although there was a computer in our house, I did not even
touch it, much less examine it. During the early 80's, my
eldest child, Mike (he's presently an English instructor at
St. Mary's Barney College in Seville, Spain), had a computer
that used "fortran" and "cobol", in its application
and now that thing is a relic in the garage coated with
much "alicabuc" (our Kapampangan term for "dust")! That item
passed me by in life without my having gotten hold of it -
which i don't regret as I was busy with something else. Yes,
I was very ignorant on computers and felt being left out and
unable to catch up with kids young enough to be my grandkids.
My illiteracy on computers was tantamount to a downfall in
life, a setback for one who wanted to undertake further
explorations in life and detested getting stagnated or rusted.
It was an embarrassing situation I had to overcome!
I would not even compare this with what geniuses like
Einstein and Isaac Newton also missed or were ignorant about,
for unlike them, I was alive and had the opportunity. With
such an inadequacy, I felt terribly insecure. Until two
years ago, that is! And what happened then would change my
life forever, as I started to develop more confidence in
myself which I'd say was a breakthrough in life - a milestone
so to speak.
My first encounter with the computer was when my daughter
Pam, who had come back home with her husband, Jonathon, from
Honduras after a 2-year stint there as Peace Corps volunteers,
came down from their home in Olympia for a visit. She and
her husband had just landed on jobs as coordinators of parks
and recreation in that city and she came over to get the
stuff they had stored in our garage for safekeeping. She took
me along to the library where she was going to get her e-mail
in a computer there. (My other children had their computers
with them then, as they were using them for college work.)
There she made me learn how to use the mouse and how to surf,
and I was impressed by the way a computer worked. I was able
to learn a little of the "basics", quickly got the hang of
it and almost got addicted on that first day. But my real big
break with the computer was when my daughter, Kathy, returned
home with her own computer a couple of weeks later, it being
the summer vacation. My other daughter, Eileen (she graduated
from the University of Puget Sound also came back home the
following week. Together, and mostly Eileen, they started
teaching me the basics, and before long, I felt like being
a pro! As time passed by, Eileen would show me on how to do
this and that, and in some instances, she would lose her
patience when I kept forgetting what I had just learned
previously and at times, there is stuff she had to tell me
five or ten times before I could memorize it! One of the
earliest things I learned was how to write and read
e-mail, and that was just what I did mostly, and of course,
surfing too which to me was the most interesting in that I
was able to look up "Kapampangan" or Pampanga in my research
work, as well as my last name "TURLA" which, to my surprise,
I learned to be Italian! When I took a four-month sick
leave from my work at the Post Office, I spent most of my
time at the computer and most of what I did was to copy the
dictionary I had done in longhand. As the days passed by,
I tried to depend less and less on Eileen, though from
time to time in her spare time when she's off from work at
First World where she later got promoted to national product
manager, she introduced something new to me. 
Typing the dictionary on the computer entailed a lot of
perseverence. Everytime I encountered some problem Eileen
was there to help me. Very often I had to put the work aside
and wait for her to come home for some trouble-shooting work.
I did not want to take upon myself something I was not sure
of. I had learned my lesson when early on, I tried to do things
myself, and I wound up deleting ten pages of completed work!
That gave me a lot of woe and since then, I preferred to just
waiting for her rather than risk another accident! I was always
worried about my work getting inadvertently erased and was
always careful. Eileen was really of great help in the making
of the dictionary. In fact, she even helped me do all the "m"
words which were the most numerous, doing the work secretly
in her laptop and presenting the finished product as a
Christmas present. All throughout this time meanwhile, I
learned how to build a homepage by just following instructions
which were varied from one server to another. I studied hard
on how to build a webpage, after I finished Part I of the
dictionary and I wanted to get it published in the internet.
A friend of mine tried to help me get it published through a
pal of his who was a webmaster and I forwarded to him as
attachments every letter-file or page I had completed. He was
going to upload it in a website he was creating for me and
for sometime I thought that I was lucky! At the same time,
however, I tried to do it by myself too, as I tried to upload
the dictionary myself despite my lack of knowledge and skill
in what they call html. Finally, after a series of "trial
and error", I was able to upload all of it in a website I
created all by myself and with no help at all from anyone,
including my daughters who had no experience in this either.
The webmaster who I thought had been helping me all along,
declared the task difficult and too time-consuming, and gave
up with not even a single file done! I felt like having been
taken for a ride! But anyway, I was joyful with my success
in getting Part I of the dictionary in the internet through
the courtesy of Internettrash. In fact I was able to upload
it a second time and with as much success in another website
via another server, Angelfire. For me, a grandfather and already
a sexagenarian who first got to use a computer 2 years ago, that
was a real breakthrough! That was in April 1999 - which was
just eleven months after I first got hold of a computer. At that
time I was also almost finished with PartII, and when I finished
it six months later, Pam started helping me look for a printer.
Eileen did most of the formatting and was the one who prepared
the master copy. My wife and I finally got the book published
by Lazerquick right on my birthday and we had a book launching
two days later during the retirement party (with lechon and
all the trimmings)thrown for me at the Centerpointe Club House
by the Aguman Capampangan of the Northwest of which I was one
of the advisers. The books sold like hot cakes and I had to
order more reprints three months later. Because during my
post-proofreading I discovered some typographical errors,
I corrected them first and even added some more words
plus some pictures in unused spaces before Eileen made another
master copy for the updated version. 
While the dictionary was my biggest computer project,
the numerous websites I made in the course of time can not be
downplayed. Trying one free server after another, I finally
settled on five user-friendly ones, namely, infospace,
maxpages, internettrash, angelfire and fortune city. The
others were just too confusing to follow or had unsightly
banners. Herewith are the websites I've made since I learned
to use the computer exactly two years ago this month (May, 2000).
Did I hear you whisper, "Happy anniversary"? Well, thank you,
most gracious, and I certainly hope you would enjoy your visits
in each and everyone of them. (Note: For a more relaxed feeling,
just make sure you raise the volume of your set so could listen
to their wonderful and ecstatic musical accompaniments.) 
KAPAMPANGAN CULTURAL HERITAGE SOCIETY - no music
http://community.oregonlive.com/cc/pampangan
PORTRAIT OF A WEBSITE AS KAPAMPANGAN
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen1
LIBRARY OF KAPAMPANGAN POETRY
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen2
AN ESSAY ON INDEPENDENCE
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen3
THE CRY FOR INDEPENDENCE
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen4
DEFEATING THE SPANISH ARMY
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen5
KAPAMPANGAN, MIPACDE CA! - a patriotic song
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen6
THE K-FILES (The Kapampangan Files)
http://home.infospace.com/cabalen7
ERNIE C. TURLA HOMEPAGE
http://home.infospace.com/erniet1
CLASSIC KAPAMPANGAN DICTIONARY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet3
KAPAMPANGAN CULTURAL HERITAGE SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet4
RIZAL'S ULTIMO ADIOS - IN KAPAMPANGAN
http://maxpages.com/rizal
DENG SUSU NANG LUNINGNING - a folktale
http://home.infospace.com/erniet16
PHILIPPINE NATIONAL ANTHEM (in Kapampangan)
http://home.infospace.com/erniet17
A POEM: MY NATIVE PAMPANGA
http://home.infospace.com/erniet18
PRAYER FOR THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED (in Kapampangan)
http://home.infospace.com/erniet19
THE LITANY (of the rosary)- IN KAPAMPANGAN
http://home.infospace.com/erniet20
THE DECK OF CARDS - a narration in Kapampangan
http://home.infospace.com/erniet22
A "GOZO" IN KAPAMPANGAN (for All Saints Day carolling)
http://home.infospace.com/erniet21
KAPAMPANGAN FOLKSONGS ALBUM (Part I)
http://maxpages.com/kapampangan 
KAPAMPANGAN FOLKSONGS ALBUM (Part II)
http://maxpages.com/kapampangan/KAPAMPANGAN_FOLKSONGS_ll
KAPAMPANGAN FOLKSONGS ALBUM (Part III)
http://maxpages.com/kapampangan/KAPAMPANGAN_FOLKSONGS_III
ERNIE TURLA'S CORNER - A CHILD'S WORLD
http://members.fortunecity.com/erntune/index.html
AGUMAN CAPAMPANGAN OF THE NORTHWEST
http://members.fortunecity.com/erntune/WonderfulOnesSociety.html
REGISTER OF KAPAMPANGAN CLUBS WORLDWIDE 
http://maxpages.com/Kclub
The Dictionary (uploaded in INTERNETTRASH)
http://internettrash.com/users/erniet
The Dictionary (uploaded in ANGELFIRE)
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/turla/images
CLASSIC KAPAMPANGAN DICTIONARY
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/turla/index.html
CLASSIC KAPAMPANGAN DICTIONARY (in Australian directory)
http://www.aaa.com.au/matilda/topics/show.cgi?772
poetry: ING IBPA QUENG PENGANAC by Delfin T. Quiboloy
http://maxpages.com/library
PUGUE CANG GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO (on her birthday)
http://maxpages.com/library/gloria
Library Of Kapampangan Poetry p.3
http://maxpages.com/library/watas
THE UNFINISHED LETTER
http://maxpages.com/cabalen
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE WONDERFUL ONES
http://maxpages.com/cabalen/wonderfulones 
KAPAMPANGAN: A LANGUAGE OR A DIALECT?
http://maxpages.com/cabalen/language
ADVICE TO ORGANIZATIONS (in Kapampangan)
http://maxpages.com/cabalen/organization
KAPAMPANGAN CULTURAL HERITAGE SOCIETY (KCHS)
http://maxpages.com/kchs
AGUMAN CAPAMPANGAN OF THE NORTHWEST
http://maxpages.com/aguman
THE TURLAS OF THE WORLD (a research)
http://maxpages.com/turla
CLASSIC KAPAMPANGAN DICTIONARY
http://maxpages.com/turla/classic
STABAT MATER (in Kapampangan)- for Good Friday
http://maxpages.com/lent
STABAT MATER (infospace version)
http://home.infospace.com/erniet40
A PRIMER ON ANIMALS - IN KAPAMPANGAN
http://maxpages.com/fauna
MY ANNIVERSARY WITH COMPUTERS (this website itself)
(Note: This is Tanikalang Ginto's Site Discovery of the Day
-May 9, 2000)
http://maxpages.com/anniversary
KAPAMPANGAN IN 10 EASY LESSONS (comes in 10 separate pages)
http://maxpages.com/lesson
HAPPY HALLOWEEN NIGHT
http://maxpages.com/haunt
THE NUMERALS - IN KAPAMPANGAN
http://maxpages.com/numerals
A WEB ON ENGLISH GRAMMAR
http://maxpages.com/grammar
WELCOME (One of my earliest ones, no music)
http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/Erniet2/Kapampangan.htm
(my very first homepage) - no music
http://hometown.aol.com/EITURLA/index.html
(poetry page)- no music
http://hometown.aol.com/eiturla/myhomepage/writing.html
(Aguman) - no music
http://hometown.aol.com/eiturla/myhomepage/club.html
(poetry) - no music
http://hometown.aol.com/eiturla/myhomepage/collection.html
(Some Kapampangan Poetry) - no music
http://hometown.aol.com/eiturla/myhomepage/index.html
TURLOVE FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM - about my granddaughter, Hannah
http://www.geotrend.com/family/turlove/turlove_family.htm
This prolific webmaster caters to voracious readers. Are you
one of them? Then, read this one that is serialized. It
will bring back old memories. It will make you laugh; it will
make you cry; it can make you stop and ponder over something
you missed in life or have taken for granted when the
opportunity presented itself. Yes, it's very evocative!
Replete with nostalgia! (Note: You must refer to the
sites themselves for their proper sequence.)
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY (part I)
Tanikalang Ginto's Discovery of the Day (forgot the date)
http://home.infospace.com/erniet5
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet6
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet7
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet8
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet9
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet10
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet11
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet12
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet13
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet14
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet15
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY -
http://home.infospace.com/erniet23
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY -
http://home.infospace.com/erniet24
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet25
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet26
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet27
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet28
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet29
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet30
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet31
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet32
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet33
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet34
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet35
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet36
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet37
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet38
THE WONDERFUL ONES SOCIETY
http://home.infospace.com/erniet39
You can search for all of these webpages in search engines
where they are listed such as in Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo,
Infonet, Hotbot, Webcrawler, Northern Lights, Magellan, and
Excite. AOL has listed the Classic Kapampangan Dictionary in
its open directory.
Many of them are listed in Filipino directories such as
Tanikalang Ginto, Nayon, Barrio Directory, Edsa - Philippines,
Real Pinoy, Yehey, Pinoy Nation, RPLink, Filipino Directory
Online, Philippines.Com, All Filipino Com, Philippines Page,
Philippines:Country Guide (Chan Robles Law Library), Pinoy
Websites Com, Certified Pinoy Sites, Philippine Linguistics,
Philippines Online, Web Ph Network, Philinks, Philippines Net,
etc. Many, esp. the dictionary, are listed in A Web Of Online
Dictionaries, AAA Matilda Topics (in Australia), The
Linguist List, and Dictionaries At Internet Press. My
published poems are also in the internet at Poetry.com -
the website of the National Library of Poetry. I also
have some contributions in Armando Regala's Who's Who
Among Kapampangans, and I have a webpage that is linked to
Andro Camiling's Kapampangan Page. And, oh yes, there are also
some websites that I've lost in cyberspace and which are now
adrift and got out of my control and which I have not been
able to retrieve! If by chance during this millennium, you
encounter one of them "on the beach", would you open
my bottle, read the message, and give it to one of my
descendants "on the third rock from the sun"? Better still,
if by then, you can travel back in time on a time machine,
you can probably just hand it to me, and who knows, I might
come along with you to the future! - E.T. 
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