aka: how did i get here? why am i coding my own site in the year 2024?
i was born in the philippines, on august 2002. some of my earliest memories revolve around the computer. i remember seeing my brother play pokemon emerald on the family computer - the thick one. i was fascinated. we didn't have enough money for a console, and yet my brother found a way to play it on our computer. i fell in love with games because of him.
my siblings and i fell in love with club penguin. they slowly fell off from it, but i knew i wanted more. i found chicken smoothie, poptropica, animal jam. bin weevils, moshi monsters, pet pet park. my sister turned to tumblr. my brother had learned to torrent. we weren't rich, but we found ways to watch movies and read books and play games without spending so much money. all we needed was the internet.
it was chicken smoothie that was my first exploration into coding. well - okay, some people would probably want to hunt me down for saying that, but i consider forum's BB-coding as my first foray into using code to make my computer do things for me. i learned a little bit of HTML for blogspot - i had fallen in love with the animal jam community through blogs - and even used blogging as a way to tell stories.
i learned how to program in high school. i was good at it. really good at it. i wish i had pushed myself to learn competitive programming. hell, i wish i maybe pushed myself to keep doing coding. i still love doing it. it feels like a game. like a puzzle.
i love typing this layout out. i love typing the sharp open brackets and backslashes. i'm not sure why. it reminds me of my 7th grade days. it reminds me of blogspot. it reminds me of composing music - not necessarily with any kind of theory. just vibes.