There’s something about sitting in a train, knowing I’ll be here for the next three hours, that makes me want to write again. When I was 11, we moved from the rural Philippines to the capital. And as it turns out, it was already 6 years too late to train for and join the Math Olympiad team. So I joined the school paper instead. From the last year of primary school, to all four years of high school, I spent part of my day either writing articles to be published on the school paper or preparing for a competition. During those years, I was only assigned to write either news articles or editorials. I was either stating facts or giving my opinion. Nothing in between. No flowery words allowed, and not much imagination and creativity involved. When I think about how I am at work as an adult, I can see how those hours – sitting on a table writing quietly with my then best friends – shaped my way of expressing myself.
The best part of writing as part of your extracurricular activities in school, is that your work gets to be corrected. Every article was scrutinized not just for content but also for grammar. Those afternoons certainly contributed to improving my grasp of the English language. Our trainer didn’t get tired of reminding us to always have “Unity, coherence, and emphasis” in our work. Aside from news articles that follow a stricter structure, an article needs to have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.
When I went to university, there wasn’t much time for writing in school – there was only programming and when time allowed, sleeping. I think I wrote one news article for a Computer Science association paper and that was it. At that time, before Facebook and Instagram, there was something called blogging. Blogging was a way to express oneself (and for some their web programming skills). If you want to know who’s friends with whom, you’d look at people’s Blogroll. Most bloggers I knew had their blog hosted on blogspot, multiply, and WordPress. I had a couple of blogs myself, but you won’t find them anymore. Thanks to my adult brain, which at some point realized my thoughts as a teenager were not worth sharing with the world.
I started this website when I moved to Singapore. I didn’t have a lot of friends then and it was too hot to do things outdoors. I couldn’t decide if it should be a technical or personal blog, so I made it both.
When I moved to Switzerland, I recall my boss back then advising me not to write about my work, which was, to be fair, understandable. But I stopped writing completely. At the same time, social media picked up, while people’s attention span (including mine) decreased. Once in a while, I had stories I really wanted to keep alive and wrote about them. But for the last decade, I was simply hoarding this domain so that the other vaniecastro can’t take it.
In 2026, I want to get back to writing again, partially to save others from listening to my littlest thoughts, and partially to improve my German. I’m at the stage of learning German where I would like to polish my grammar. I just did my B2 exam last Saturday, and even though at this stage I should have studied most grammar rules in German, I have to admit that I haven’t mastered most of them. I know of them, but they still don’t come naturally. I then asked myself what more could I do? I’m listening to podcasts almost every day, I meet speaking partners twice a week, I meet a private teacher once a week, I read books and magazines in German. But the frustration only grows bigger.
I recall the afternoons during 6th grade at Mrs. Baltazar’s office with Beth, Debbie and Becky, then there was the Salt Grain’s office with Ms. T, her red lipstick and cat eye reading glasses. She was the first person to tell me not to put sugar in my coffee, because sugar ruins the bitter taste of coffee. The same friends from primary school were there with Xyril joining the group.
Writing has always been fun, but also a useful way to organize my thoughts. This time, I’ll use writing to take my German to the next level. If there are any German-speaking readers out there, feel free to look away when I start posting my raw articles in German—for now.
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