The retirement age in the West is 65. In my time it was 55. When the government opened the retirement age to 45 there were plenty of applications. People get bored working in the repressive institutions. The we heard that many went back to work after retirement either because they need money or find retiring is very boring. Some would focus on religious activities, preparing themselves for the next world.
I
find myself occupied with working on computer. Using a laptop I created
several softwares for my own use. A few were commercial but tailor made
for a few schools. Because I am a ham radio operator I created a
logbook program as shown above. It is a talking log with various
utilities. The logbook display web page, run a morse code software which I
developed to practise listening, antenna calculation, recording audio and
show satellite position.
One of the commercial programs is the biometric attendance system. This software also talks, giving comment as the output is displayed after a finger is scanned. I kept the database in MySql server. There are other soft wares too.
Those activities demand a lot of time and energy. Time flies. Years passed too quickly. My life is not boring at all.
WHERE DO I LEARN COMPUTING ?
I
am self-taught in many things. This including languages like Hokien and
Thais. Though not well verse in Hokien, Mandarin and Thais, it is enough
to make one survives when thrown among the population.
I learned BASIC programming from a Radio Shack in a supermarket at Bloomington Indiana. Each day I made a point to visit the shop, read the booklet and follow step by step using the PC on display. Later I bought a Texas Instrument and began to write codes as I saw in my mind. After graduation I have 8 extra week before my scholarship expired. I took these extra weeks to attend a computer literacy course.
That was all. I do not have any training. While I was developing software for my own school's use, the education department sent me for a dbase training. You can imagine how boring I was when at that time I already developed sof wares like the SPM/MCE examination, staffs and student's database. That is the reason why in the current school's web page you can find data of students from 1986-2000.
But computer technology and other developments was too fast. Old programming languages began to die. New languages were born and expansions continue. Unless you keep on following the development otherwise you will be out of date too.
Computing helps me to pass my time.
The
latest program I am working on is a simple database for the State Youth
and Sports Department. Shown on the left is the menu item of club's and
organization's profiles.
Thanks God for not making me idle. I take my own sweet time to add codes to it. Whenever I want to watch National Geographic and Animal Planet I would just go and enjoy myself.
I don't have any pressure. I don't have any boss to kowtow. I don't have to please anybody. The beauty of retirement is that the time is yours. You control yourself and do whatever you want whenever you like. You are free.
For working people, especially the younger ones, I would like to advise them not to be spendthrift. Always save some for the rainy days. Even a small amount would be meaningful.
My small car, the Kancil 660, had served me for 13 years. It does not siphon my money both on petrol nor maintenance. It took me all over the country. For a retiree it is a good car.
I really enjoy my retirement.