Sorry @missy and @rambo , Film critique isn't exactly my forte. So I figured I'd write about something a wee bit more interesting than a gangster movie based on another gangster movie.
I can't remember when I started my first job I just hung around my uncles store till he decided I wa useful. I guess the first time he paid me I had been "working" for the past month. It was at a computer store back home. It was owned by uncle who had just come back from the states having studied "computers" Now, you're talking about the middle east in the 87, before this guy came back the only computer I had seen was my dad's Apple II which he used for 2 tasks printing 100 lines of "I love you" for my mother on a dot matrix printer once a year (to this day, he has never bought an anniversary present the man is a genius ! All it takes is 100 "I love you's") and calculating what he called "impossible numbers" on the physics of temperature regulation in the camel vs a human being (but physiology is a story for another day ..... ).
That first job just kind of happened, I used to hang out at my uncles store because he always ordered the latest hardware and had it in stock. I learned everything I know about life from that job. The day he gave me my first paycheck I had reformatted 4 computers and from then on I had to be there every weekend, it kept me busy, taught me everything I know now about computing and all round geekery. Most of he kept me alive ,made sure I was learning English and taught me how to code first BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN. Eventually C and C++, somewhere along I picked up java for a while, it seemed very nice, I preferred my C++ though.
I made my first mistakes while there, fucked up more than once, he'd loose his shit but some how we made it work out. I learned how to chip playstations, dreamcasts, copy games, reformat hardware (I'm talking real reformatting ,like a day's worth of work), set up RAID units for back up. It was like getting a free comp sci degree while still high school. I still remember how dumb we were when we first tried to chip dreamcasts, I bricked at least 3 of them because I didn't realise it was a different chip set (US vs Austral-asia).
I also learned how to code from there and eventually got my first computer, my commodore 64, followed by an Amiga then there came Linux and now Mac for work* and linux for my desktop PC and some freelance. I used to run an x grid cluster for medical computations but sold it off when I moved to Montreal. Thinknig of getting back into research but there's nothing quiet as easy as x grid for distributed computing.
So yeah, you could say I was a product of child labour in the Middle East or you could see it the way I do in hind site. I spent my teenage years working and learning how to wake up early, get to work, tally a cash register and by the time I left for college, the old man had me save up enough for my first year of med school and the rest is history.