Holy cow!! Tech has been like a coiling vine around the trunk of your life, and what a life it's been. The C64 was just one of your many computer branches. :)
Hello my Korean brother! Thanks so much for sharing your story, too. I started out as an engineer (materials science) then switched to English my sophomore year after realizing I couldn't imagine doing that for another three years.
But now look at us, we're like safecrackers in movies who try to go straight but end up in front of the vault again. :)
I have visited Austria many times, on my own with my wife and also thanks to a friend who was stationed there for a few years. Vienna is such a lovely city, and I got to see one of my favorite paintings (maybe my most favorite painting, really), Gustave Klimt's The Kiss, in person at Belvedere. My aunt lives a number of hours away from Vienna so I never got to see her there, so a return trip is not out of the question!
Ah, the answer is incredibly simple: my aunt speaks fluent German! She moved to Austria as a young woman and picked up the language, and picked up a husband. :) She speaks Korean, of course, so that's how we all are able to communicate with her. Recently we were at a family gathering, and one of my extended relations is married to a German fellow (who speaks both German and English fluently), and it was utterly cool seeing my aunt and him chat away in German (and sing "99 Red Balloons (Luftballons)," the popular 80s tune by the German singer Nena, in their native German)!
Hello there -- I'm the guy who wrote the article! And I couldn't help but laugh at your comment. You are 100% correct, it could very easily go the other way. My story is that I actually graduated with a degree in English (as in literature!) and the only CS class I took was Pascal (where a friend of mine, who was also in the class, joked that we both got another language for a grade - C).
I'd never intended to be in a CS career, but the way I see it, the gravity of the C64 was simply too strong. I was pulled into its orbit whether I liked it or not, and now here I am, in IT for the last 29 years. My other love, writing, I was able to do on the side (five novels), for which I'm equally grateful.