point and counterpoint

Pen, ink and paper. Not mine, though (Flickr.com)

AS WITH MOST BLOGS, I’M start­ing out with a “manda­tory” first-post, one that explains the  ini­tial pur­pose, objec­tive and direc­tion of hav­ing this blog. Start­ing this blog was some­thing that I’ve long desired, but was unable to accom­plish given the nature of my work. My web host­ing account had been only a repos­i­tory of some per­sonal files; now, I’ve decided that this must change.

Most of the peo­ple  I expect to read this blog know me more as a musi­cian and as a pro­gram­mer. Not many know that before I immersed myself into music books and hacked my way through data­bases, I was a writer, a lan­guage enthu­si­ast and, of course, a book­worm. I learned to read and speak in Eng­lish before Taga­log. Our house is stocked with plenty of good books that I read on my own voli­tion. I even joined and won spelling quiz bees. (And in case you were won­der­ing, I was the man­ag­ing edi­tor of my high school’s school paper.)

What hap­pened was that some­where along the way, my focus shifted to other diver­sions, espe­cially music. While they weren’t bad things per se, it also meant that my writ­ing had to take a back seat. My Eng­lish is still good, yes, but what’s the use of hav­ing to mas­ter it if I didn’t use it at all? There was a time when I was a care­free writer, and words flowed as eas­ily as har­mo­niz­ing a four-part chorale piece.

After much soul search­ing, I decided to go back to writ­ing. It will be a slow and painful jour­ney, but I have to start some­where. In time, I know, writ­ing will become sec­ond nature, as it was in the begin­ning. Hence, I decided to (finally) put up this blog, on my own domain (and also as a way of remind­ing myself that that’s exactly why I had to spend for this web­site rather than using a Blog­ger account.

Expect changes and nov­el­ties. Con­sider this blog as a con­tin­u­ing work in progress, much like life itself. Be lib­eral in shar­ing your com­ments and feel free to sug­gest post ideas, but be civil.

Wel­come, gen­tle reader, and happy read­ing