Dream Job

When I was a kid, I wanted to become a doctor. I had a friend whose dad had just died, so I decided that I wanted to help people out. I wanted to slow down the process of death and let people spend more time with their loved ones.

I dropped the idea when I realized that I couldn’t stand the sight of blood and guts, and that the thought of dissecting even something as small as a frog would send me into panic.

When I was in high school, I played around with the idea of being a recording artist (haha!), of being a journalist, and of being an accountant. What made me even consider accountancy is beyond me. Maybe it was because my cousin took up accounting and, apart from that, I didn’t know any other university course names.

I dropped the recording artist thing (hey, some people dream of being actors and actresses – who could blame me for wanting to be a singer?) before I could even tell anyone about it. As for journalism… I almost wrote Mass Communications down as my second course choice in the UPD campus. And I did list Communication Arts as my second UPLB course of choice. But then I received a letter from UP stating that I passed the UPCAT and my UPG allowed me to take the course that I listed down first – Computer Science.

I went through my first two years of college struggling with my purpose as a computer science student. The question that kept popping into my head was, “Why on earth am I taking up this course??? Why-oh-why, oh-why???”

It was during my junior year that that question was answered. I was watching Ma’am Liz teaching the 124 class animatedly and I thought – I want to do that. It was then that I realized and decided that I could spend the rest of my life teaching. Teaching computer science, nonetheless. Because teaching – this is something that I could be passionate about. This is something that I am passionate about. And it’s part of my inheritance. (My parents are both college professors).

So after graduation, I taught at the Institute of Computer Science in UPLB for three semesters and one summer. And I had a blast doing it. And now I’m taking up my masters so that I could keep doing it and so that I could do it well.

But one other dream kept creeping up on me, asking to be – in a way – fulfilled. No, not the doctor thing. I still inwardly freak out through House and CSI graphic scenes. And no, definitely not the accounting thing. The recording artist thing – well, I do sing in church. And I do write songs. But the dream that kept creeping up on me was the journalism thing.

Sometimes I still find myself wondering how it would feel like to affect a whole nation with written words (and get paid for it, nonetheless). Sometimes I find myself thinking thinking if I could juggle a life that is on one hand so fast paced, so filled with people, so filled with interviews, and so filled with deadlines – yet on the other hand, is so somewhat laidback, because after (or before) all the rush – you’d just sit in front of the computer and type away to your heart’s content (or until you reach the article length limit).

…

Which explains this blog. Yes, this little thing started out as something where I released random rants and raves. But now I’m bringing it to the next level. Uhh, no, not to the next level of ranting and raving (I hope).

Just to the next level of writing. To the next level of inspiring. To the next level of encouraging. To the next level of influencing.

I wondered how it felt like to affect a whole nation with written words, right?

Well, I hope this little blog would affect not just one – but many NATIONS. With words carefully-yet-passionately typed out. Released through this world called cyberspace.

Enjoy.

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Categories and their Descriptions

Let me just use this page and this section to explain the categories that I’ve let my melancholic soul arrange my blog posts into. You can use them to make browsing easier, because some topics might interest you more than others:

FAMILY. All entries concerning my family. Balberans and Lubricas alike.

FRIENDSHIP. I value friendship. Thus I write a lot about this topic. Here you will find posts concerning the people I call friends.

GEEK TALK. MS insights, BS rantings, what have you. Anything to do with computer science and my life as a student.

GOD and me. Might be darkly melancholy at some points. Or sunny-ly perky. Or just bursting with passion. But if it concerns God and me, you’ll find it here.

HEART SONGS. Poetry. Songs. When prose leaves me frustrated, I become all poetic.

LESSONS FROM LIFE. You can interchange this with the next. I myself even wondered what made them different from one other. But I’ll mostly be posting stuff on this topic in the LIFE AND LESSONS category.

LIFE AND LESSONS. Whatever lessons from life that I want to share and impart. You can get insights from even the most trivial thing. And of course, this one’s about my life as a whole.

LOVE LOVE LOVE. Love stories. Fictional and metaphorical.

PLACES. Entries concerning places. Places here in Malaysia. Places all over the world.

PROJECTS. A new blog, a new collection or series of stories, what have you? Check this out for my latest projects.

RANDOMNESS. What I do when I just need to type everything down without a definite theme in mind.

SKETCHES. When words fail me, I turn to art.

STORIES. Fiction galore. I so love doing these. New characters. New faces. But often with tales so strikingly familiar.

WORDPLAY. A play with words, leaving readers to read between the lines, finding out that there are more than just white spaces.

I might add more categories soon, but for now, that’s the list.

Happy reading!