So, who am I?

How do people know what their passions are? For me, it seemed to come from other people. I went about my days and my life doing what I thought to be normal things.  However, as time went on, it seemed that some of these habits had became my defining features. Let's talk about two of the most prominent: French and Technology.

 French Speaker? Me? I guess so...

I hated French class!!!

Like all Canadian students, I studied French in school. I studied it and I hated every minute of it. For me, it did not seem to have any purpose. Growing up, there were no local French communities in the Kootenay region of BC that I was aware of. Outside of those 55 minutes a week, I never used French. My only other interaction with French was in the grocery store on cereal boxes and soup cans. I just turned them to the English side and everything was good! Finally, when French became an option in Grade 9, I seized the opportunity and dropped it like a lead balloon.

Then came a trip to France with my grandmother. This was my first REAL experience in another language and boy did I feel helpless. I decided to tour around on my own for a while and I planed to meet my grandmother in front of Opera House at later time. I walked around and avoided talking to anyone unless I heard English first. I just took pictures and read the brochures (the English ones). When it was time to head to he Opera House, I had to take a taxi. I found myself trapped in a car with a person that I couldn't  communicate with! My French couldn't even get a single useful word out of my mouth. After a few minutes or so of trying to even say "Opera" and almost in a panic, the wonderfully patient taxi driver tried his best to understand my gibberish and finally took a chance and drove me to the Opera House. This trip solidified the importance of other languages to me. I began studying Spanish in university and later spent a year living in Chinese, practicing Mandarin. I am not fluent in either of these languages, but I could get by.

Then I started studying French in Quebec. I took multiple summer courses in French and felt that if I met that taxi driver again, I would certainly be able to explain l'Palais Garnier to him. However, from what other people told me, I had a knack for languages. I would not have identified myself this way. I felt that I stumbled through the grammar and often confused the languages, but to others, I was someone who was multilingual. This even led to me teaching French Immersion in a public school in Prince George. Imagine that! The student who hated French and dropped it in high school is now a French Immersion teacher!


Tech Genius? Not even close!
 

Image from lgb06 on Flickr

I'm an early adopter, for sure. When I was a child, I enjoyed testing the extent of my computer knowledge. I used to play around in DOS on our old 16-Colour PC. My favourite command (because I knew how to use it) was "dir". I loved listing folder directories in all the different ways: dir/w, dir/n, dir/x, or when I wasn't too sure, dir/?. Did I need to always list the directories like that? No, but it sure made me feel like I knew what I was doing. It also let me feel like I was keeping up with Jamie.

Jamie was one of my best friends and he was a computer genius. No matter what new thing I learned on the computer, Jamie was always one or two steps ahead of me. In my group of friends, I was not the computer guy. I was the affable side-kick who tried, but failed, to keep up.

As we grew up, we each followed our own path and went our separate ways (Jamie is in network administration now, still light years ahead of me on the IT front). However, since that time, an amazing thing has happened. In my new groups of friends, I have become the "go to" person for technology. Amazing! In my childhood competition for technical knowledge, I may not have surpassed Jamie, but I had gained a lot of knowledge that has now made me the tech genius in other people's eyes. If only they had met Jamie..



So, that's how I became that French-speaking tech guy to others. I still don't see myself as a French speaker. I'm just getting by with the language. I don't really see myself as an IT guy since I can hardly write JavaScript with any real success. But, to other people, these are my passions and I guess they have become that for me as well.