I took two (not entirely voluntary) gap years between high school and university working various laboring jobs. In August 1982 I signed up for an Economics degree at La Trobe University. During the months between enrollment and starting classes in 1983, I spent most of the money I saved in those gap years on a five month backpacking trip around South East Asia.

When I was wrapping up the backpacking trip I bought a cheap-o ticket back to Australia from Singapore. My flight out of Singapore didn't leave for a week, so during that week I got the bright idea to learn how to program a computer. Being strapped for cash I bought the cheapest computer I could find in Singapore, and that was this Casio FX-702P pocket computer. I dimly recall it cost around USD200, which was a huge amount of money for me at the time.

When I got back to Australia I camped out at my mother's house in Wangaratta until I started university. I used those months to teach myself how to program. The FX-702P has a modified BASIC dialect and has all the features of something that can be called a computer.

I leveraged what I learned from this humble pocket computer into a Computer Science degree (I switched majors four years in), and ultimately into my career.