introductions and confessions

When the Internet was introduced in the Philippines in the early 1990s, our family eagerly got a modem and a dial-up subscription. I was the first among my friends with an email address. I joined a small community of chatters using mIRC, though I never attended EBs (“eyeballs”). I tried my hand at designing websites, starting with one for our design group during the early stages of HTML. (The site disappeared when we terminated our ISP subscription.) I had Geocities sites, frequented sites such as Salon.com (which had just started), and participated in newsgroups. I was hooked on the Internet.

My little love affair with cyberspace took a back seat to work and other concerns. During this time, I had short-lived careers as -- in no particular order -- a theater actress, an indie film art assistant, a researcher, and a freelance photographer. I finally took a job as a feature writer in a now-defunct business newspaper. I then went on to freelancing while designing, proofreading, and editing books. Now, I work as a writer/editor and editorial consultant for a communication and consultancy group. I hope to do more news writing and editing, too.

I didn’t start blogging until recently. My wait-and-see attitude to blogging stemmed from many things -- the demands of work, for one. Then there was caution: there’s a lot of hype out there, and one can easily get sucked in. Part of my caution was a reaction to consumerism and the “misuse” of the Internet. A big part of it was wanting to remain anonymous online.

Things have changed since my early traipses into cyberspace, but despite the bells and whistles, here's the bottom line: the Internet is still a tool for information and communication -- one that engages and empowers people. Hopefully, Convergent Journalism will help me adapt to the demands of an ever-shrinking world.