On Friday night (13 Jan), Grace Fu put up a Facebook posting revealing that she used to play computer games when she was still studying in school.
She was trying to explain to people that how she had obtained good grades in her studies. “I bucked up and played less computer games,” she said.
Some people have asked if she was lying about playing computer games since she was born in 1964 and is 53 years old this year. Would personal computers be around when she was still studying in school 40 years ago? It turns out that personal computers were indeed available in the marketplace when Ms Fu was in her teens.
In those days, the personal computer which took the market by storm was the Apple II: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II
It was launched in 1977 when Ms Fu was 13 years old and by the early 80s, it had become the ubiquitous personal computer in the marketplace. Popular computer games on Apple II then include Lode Runner, Choplifter, Castle Wolfenstein, Ultima, Donkey Kong, Frogger, etc.
According to Wikipedia, when Apple II was first introduced, its price was US$1,298 (equivalent to US$5,130 or S$7328 in today’s dollar value). Indeed, Ms Fu must be very lucky among the first to own a S$7000+ computer in those days. She is lucky to have a father working as a senior civil servant who was paid well by the govt.
P.S. Ms Fu’s father, James Fu, was the Press Secretary to LKY in those days. His jobs sometimes would entail helping LKY’s political party to pressurize SPH editors to publish stuff that made opposition parties look bad.
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Republished from the Facebook page ‘We want Grace Fu to resign‘.