In December 1995, I finally purchased my first PC—a Highscreen Windows 95 machine featuring a graphical user interface with icons and clickable navigation. To actually master the software, I took a few private lessons with an instructor offering Word typing classes. My main goal at the time was simple: sending faxes directly from my computer. While that sounds hilarious today, in the mid-1990s, 99.9 percent of all business and institutional communication in Germany relied on fax machines. Even now, in September 2026, an estimated 30 percent of companies still periodically use fax. Email was emerging, but virtually no one actually had an email address.
I leveraged this PC-fax setup for a life-changing endeavor. My girlfriend at the time, Een Lee from Taipei, suffered from severe nearsightedness of around ten diopters. We discovered a revolutionary laser eye surgery offered at Professor Fyodorov's clinic in Moscow. I managed the entire consultation, preparation, and scheduling for the surgery—a five-figure Deutsche Mark investment for both eyes—entirely via digital PC-fax.
I could receive faxes directly on my monitor and read incoming responses from Moscow in real time. It was an incredible experience to realize how an individual computer could dissolve global barriers and bureaucratic friction almost instantly.
