If I were asked today what else I would have become - aside from being a practicing journalist - I wouldn't have any other answer. Yes, come to think of it, I don't know of any other profession that allows you to have the best of both worlds - work in order to earn your keep, while at the same time, tremendously enjoying what you are doing.

As a gangling youngster back home in Cagayan de Oro City, I have always imagined myself being in the writing profession someday. After all, the opportunities that were laid out for me at that time followed a somewhat regimented pattern.

If, indeed, it is true that one acquires skills and talents as inherited from one's genes, then I must have followed in my mother's footsteps. While earning her college degree at the Ateneo de Cagayan (now Xavier University), my mother worked as business