I had my first blog probably when I was in my early 20’s, Philippines then was different compared to what it is right now – with all the killings, a populist president, writers, journalists and cultural workers are killed en masse. I decided to stop blogging when I started to use the social media. Like everyone else of my generation, I started with Friendster and I used this platform until, if I can still remember, 2007 when I started to use Facebook. I decided to stop blogging and maintaining my own website when it was easier for me to connect to friends, my readers, colleagues, and family members through the social media.

I was a Facebook addict. It’s the fist thing I checked when I wake up every morning and the last thing I closed before I sleep at night. For almost a decade my life was dependent on Facebook. It provided me opportunities and memorable happy experience but it equally gifted with horror stories – from bullying and body shaming in 2016, to death threats since Duterte came into power, to relentless surveillance and intimidation. I returned to blogging because I am slowly leaving social media.

This website is my window to my readers and comrades back home or those who were scattered elsewhere on the planet. The extrovert in me would still like to engage people through exchanges of ideas, experiences, histories, and even the most mundane things such as advises on relationships, cooking, traveling, and life in general.

I will try to be as generous in this website. But please remember: I need to write, to focus on my research endeavors, spend time reading and being with my friends – or, fighting an oppressive government. I can’t be on this site daily just to update everyone.

I will slowly exit from social media and move all my energies in keeping this site. I don’t need to be in constant contact with everyone. I don’t need to be always accessible to those do not really care about me and works.

Thank you for being here.