I was able to chat with my sister back home last night. My dear nephew was among the contestants in his school's science quiz bee. And Macky, my nephew, at age five and a half, was the champion! His mom Sharon got up the stage to hang the gold medal on his adorable little neck. Sweet, sweet boy! It was such a happy moment for the entire family. Oh, I do miss them all.

Yesterday, I went on a trip outside town with David. I always enjoy our out-of-town trips. We went to Nantou which is two hours drive away. I've been on the road lots of times since moving to Taiwan a year and a half ago, but considering the island's size, its extensive network of roads and expressways just boggles my mind. I was born in Caloocan, a city near Manila in the Philippines. I have traveled by car and bus several times that I can't help but compare the state of the roads back home and here.

Traveling by car from the capital Taipei, down to Taichung in central Taiwan where we live, and down south to Nantou, Tainan, and Kaohsiung is a breeze. The roads are well-maintained that one can drive North of the island then down south in less than seven hours. Remembering the state of the roads and highways back home made me sigh in admiration for the Taiwanese people. And they aren't stopping there. Right now, work is on going for a light rail system that will connect the whole island and further speed up travel time.

When, I wonder, will my homeland match this?

Been writing several articles for a website since morning. I'm still blue and struggling to come off it. Haven’t picked up that Astronomy book just yet. I feel exhausted. I’ll go take a short nap now.

I'm having a bad day and to forget my misery, I turn to reading. I went to the public library and borrowed two books. One is an illustrated copy of Stephen Hawking's, 'On the shoulders of Giants' which I promptly finished by nibbling on the biographies of the giants of science and Astronomy - Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. I totally skipped reading the excerpts of their works because, frankly, I'm not up to those lengthy, scholarly stuff. Besides, the reason I picked the book was to read about Stephen Hawking's take on these great men, seeing as he is considered their equal by the contemporary scientific world. I wasn't disappointed. Hawking's insights on the work physicists and scientists do tempered any criticism he may have had for the their frailties. For all their brilliance and amazing scholarship, these men had their own personality quirks, disappointments, trials and triumphs. Kind the makes them accessible to ordinary people like you and me. The other book is, 'Astronomy through the Ages' by one Robert Wilson. I'm just starting on this one. Says on the preface that the author will explain the history of Astronomy, here I paraphrase, without making my head ache. Sounds fairly inviting to me. From Chapter 1 aptly titled, The Beginning was this sentence explaining humanity's origin in connection with the universe: "We are children of the stars". Hmmm ... profound in a way considering my current state of mind. More on this next time ...

It's a friday, my favorite day of the week and it's only fitting that I get my blog up and running on a Friday. This is like the nth time I've been doing this but I need to be patient. I kept getting something wrong that afterall that's been typed, edited and saved, the end product was not what I labored and wanted it to be. Oh dear me! I have written two completely different 'first posts' and in the end (I hope this will be it), it will be about my rants on putting this baby on the blog map! So please bear with this blog newbie. That said, welcome to my internet journal.