Machines to Humans

My childhood entertainment was simple: Lego, mini 4-Wheel Drive cars and Pokemon. If I was not with my Legos building the Petronas Twin Tower or playing Pokemon, I would be sitting cross-legged on the floor, taking apart and improving my mini 4WD cars. 

I remembered how I carelessly tried to take apart the DC motor of the car and 'enhance' it by winding more copper wires around the magnet. After putting it back together and testing it, the results were not a faster car due to a better motor but a melted chassis and a very angry mom. (She took away my cars for a week, something I could not understand at that time)

Any sane adult that witnessed my attics would say that I would become an engineer in the future. They were right. I love machines (heightened when my father introduced the computer to me) and with a disease called 'impulsive curiousness', my engineer profile was complete.

With my own jurisdiction (and my father's subtle persuasions , I went to a Science boarding school , hoping to expand my engineer's horizon and skills. However, instead of making me love machines more, I found a new love.

When I entered boarding school, I just wish to dwell myself in machines while ignoring the society around me. But the people around me just won't leave me alone. I began to asked myself 'why am I being bullied?' and 'why my classmates want to get close to me?' I simply can't comprehend human behavior and it made me frustrated because I can't relate it with my knowledge. My curiosity mode kicked in. Like any machines, human behavior must have a way to analyze and later, control it. So, I bought my first ever 'human-related book', How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie to find out more; and, it was love at first sight.

How Carnegie analyzed and made use of principles to influence human behavior simply blew me away. Unlike machines, humans were complicated and random subjects yet he could find a way around it. It was proven when I tried applying his principles into my non-existing social life; it worked wonders. It was a spark for a vivid firework. I got so intrigued by society mechanics and interactions that I bought more and more books related to that topic, reading voraciously although it wasn't my subject in school.

My love for machines did diminish. 

But was it a loss that I gave up my love of machines for humans? 

Definitely not. In fact, I believe that my new found passion which puts me into a larger context of the world, beyond machinery and computers. All those machinery  no matter how advance they are, were creations of humans. What drove them to create those machinery  That is a questions I wish to find the answer for. In the meantime however, I shall find out why my mum was so mad until she took away my 4WD cars.