WHERE DO I BEGIN 2.0

Now that my virgin column was finally delivered by Caesarean section, so to speak, last week through the relentless proddings of our usual suspect, Ms. Nelly L., here I am once again typing on my Underwood portable manual typewriter for my second attempt in my journalistic journey. I have had no formal instruction in this kind of profession except for a very short stint as News Editor of our school organ in the 1960s, The Letran News. I was told that all I had to do was fill in the Ws and the H for a news story, meaning the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I have forgotten now what news story I first wrote about, but suffice it to say that it landed my name in the Editorial Box as News Editor.

After a few more news stories, I let the other student writers contribute their articles. Sometimes I  joined the Letran News team in faraway Highway 54, then to the Cacho Hermanos Press facilities on Reliance St., Mandaluyong, if I am not mistaken. I saw the dinosaur era of the time printing business using metal casings falling into columns that would form the pages of our school paper. Today, those remain memories, with all the unseen workings of a laptop or computer for printing output.

To return to my short bio in my first column, geography makes destiny, as I see it. My residence brought me nearest to Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Intramuros, since we were then living in a government facility in Port Area where my father, Engineer Antonio F. Villacorta, was manning the Construction and Maintenance Section of the Ports and Harbors Division of the Bureau of Public Works. So I am an original Batang Pier, and at a young age, I would see white, uniformed Caucasian sailors stroll along the bars that line 13th Street. I still remember the Alhambra, the Shamrock and the Metro Garden and Grill Bar just at the back of Myers Building where the only Kodak store with capacity to print colored pictures was located.

(There goes my limit of 300 words for a column. Read me again next week then. Love you, bye, as my daughter Atty. Anna V. Arellano in New York would say.)