Once upon a time, before Blogger, before Napster, even before Yahoo! Messenger, I had a homepage. Yeah, it was called homepage back then, websites were rarely used. I guess because they were mainly one- or two-pager kinda thing. And with Notepad and Vi as the primary editing tools, who could expect otherwise?

It had disappeared -- forever, I thought -- long before Geocities became part of Yahoo!. The ancient URL -- http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/1519 -- speaks for itself. All right, to start with, allow me to tell some grandma story here.

The year was early 1997. Netscape had just released Communicator 4, then the internet browser -- IE 5 was not even close. It was the first chat-friendly browser, for it allowed streaming without using the infant Java applets -- to date I still don't know how they did that. Chatting had once been popular among us Fasilkom guys, never mind it was done on the text-based Lynx. (Yes, boys and girls, hard as it is to take in, browsing was once a picture-less experience.) Until they started implementing register-first-to-use-the-lab policy to cope with the ever increasing number of newly admitted students.

You know what, on second thought I'm not gonna bore you to death with my you-kids-are-way-luckier rants. Fast forward to my second chat-addiction era, the '97.

I chatted almost every night. I said almost as back then they switched off the microwave device (and with it, the link to Salemba) over weekends and whenever it was raining. And I said night because during the day I had classes to attend. So when did I sleep? Good question. I don't know.

So I created this Night Creature's Homepage based on what little I knew about web designing. Somehow I always knew my first website would be black in color. It was not bad, really. People I chatted with said it looked very professional -- with frames and stuff. Once, I even conducted an online training for 2-3 chat buddies on how to create framed homepages. Really, websites have gone a long way since. So be thankful, kids. Oops, I did it again. Sorry.

At that time Geocities had a few "cities" only. Heartland was one of them. Later, they added many more cities. Then the URLs became, e.g. .../SouthBeach/Port/1294 -- that was another good ol' homepage, BTW. Then after Yahoo! bought Geocities, they scrapped the themed-cities idea altogether and the URLs became simply, e.g. geocities.com/mhs1294.

I have made lots of new friends through that homepage. One of them, my sweet sis, is having her birthday today. She was the one inspiring me to search for my old homepage on the net. Happy birthday, Chix! Damn, my kid sis is getting married, what has the world become? I still remember when you called me all the way from Mumbai just to complain about that Indian BF of yours *grins*.

Also having their birthdays: Mr. Hiro Whardana, Mr. Ruli Manurung, and Mr. Nyoman Sukerta. The last one none other than my great, ever dependable dad. Happy, happy birthday, you guys!

Hmm, and how can I forget my Super Mousy. Happy birthday to you, too, Ms. Ally Recile! Maligayang bati sa iyong kaarawan.

All right, I'd better stop here, else I'd end up jotting down everyone from now till the New Year. Looks like, in addition to the many Leos, Geminians, and Sagittarians, I'm surrounded by many copacetic Scorpios as well.

Before I'm out, many thanxes to the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine, without whom my historical homepage would've gone for good.

Current music: Concrete Blonde - Happy Birthday
Current mood: happy