I miss sleepless nights

I miss sleepless nights.

The earliest time I can recall… It was probably summer of 2001, one or two years before my dad passed away in the summer of 2003. I remember because I just completed 5th grade. We were supposed to take a vacation to Boracay with my dad’s side. Then my dad passed away. But that’s a story for another time.

So yeah, it was either 2001 or 2002. We probably had a Windows XP. We never had those Pentium things. Instead, we had computers with AMD processors because they supposedly had the same specs but were cheaper. The smarter choice. Looking back, that's probably not true – they were probably just cheaper – but that was the story I told myself.

During summers, we never really had anything to do, aside from Kumon and the annual 3-to-5-day vacation abroad — to a country in Asia like Hong Kong or Thailand. What does one do for two whole months?

I was playing a game, either Diablo II or Warcraft III. I probably installed it from a pirated CD I bought for ₱50 in Harrison Plaza. I spent most of my childhood in that mall because my mom managed a restaurant there. I would play all night, killing monsters, collecting weapons.

How did the computer handle it? It could barely run Microsoft Word, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Media Player at the same time.

Anyway, at some point, likely some wicked time like 2:23am... I would hear footsteps going up the stairs. My mom. Looking back, why was she was she even awake at that time?

So I wouldn’t have enough time to go to the next checkpoint and save my game. The work of the last hour would be lost. I would have to turn off the computer at the voltage regulator without doing a proper shutdown, which always took at least one minute.

I didn't appreciate it then.

But back then, there was nothing to do, nothing to worry about...

Nothing, aside from my mom catching me staying up late.

Back then, staying up late meant freedom.

Now, it means guilt.