Most of my early education came under the auspices of the St. Paul de Chartres Congregation. There was a time when I seriously thought of becoming a nun. A top scholar throughout, I garnered three undergraduate and two graduate degrees, three of them in the Humanities and two in Science. I have taught in Asia, in West Africa, in Europe, in the Middle East and in North America. My line of specialization is ESP, the teaching of English for special purposes. My private areas of interest are health, human behavior, parapsychology and astronomy and languages. I am a voracious reader.

There have been dark periods in my life but I always managed to bounce back. My indestructible optimism, my enormous capacity to feel others' pain and my generosity to love make me the person that I am. I am a scholar and an artist, an incorrigible romantic and a very down-to-earth person all rolled into one. I am not bad-looking either.

I became aware of the Net while in the Middle East. There I had an account through the University where I taught but it was only a Bitnet account. On Bitnet I could send and receive E-mail to and from all parts of the world but could not access the resources of the Internet itself. There was another limitation to my university account -- as a female staff member, I was allowed to communicate only with other female staff. Man or woman, if you were caught trying to communicate electronically with the opposite sex you'd lose your account at once and you might be dimissed from your job.

I did not discover the wonders of the Internet till after I came back here from the M.E. At first I made use of my account only to send electronic mail to realtives and friends in various parts of the world. The first list I subscribed to was Sugbu-L, and after only a few days of mere eavesdropping I started to take an active part in Sugbu action. One thing led to another. Through Sugbu I learned of Cebu-L/Balita-L, Pinoy-L, the SCF, the CANSCF and many other Lists (literary/mediacal) and subscribed. Somehow -- I honestly don't remember how -- I found out about and subscribed to Freetalk. Almost quit Freetalk after only a few days of lurking. There seemed to be more silliness and vulgarity than I could stomach. Luckily I stayed for I soon discovered that behind the facade of silliness, often off- color, there were some pretty wonderful, intelligent human beings there and mentally-stimulating topics come out now and then. Freetalk is "free talking". I love it!

Very active membership on some lists has kept me so busy that I have had little time for any of the other facilities of the Net. It was only very recently that I got around to build a bit of a Home Page. I have one in place now but it is far from being what I envision a good home page to be. Bear with me....

I love the Net. It has opened a whole new world for me. I was aware, in a general sort of way, that there were vast multitudes of interesting, wonderful people out there; but, for all I could do to find out about them, they might as well not have existed. By means of the Net I could suddenly leap over the barriers of time and space and get to know people from whom continents and oceans separated me. Oh brave new world that has such wonders in it!

At the very beginning I felt, in a vague sort of way, that getting to know people on the Net was somehow not right. It seemed a waste of time because with virtually all of them, the meeting would never go beyond words; it seemed incomplete, this meeting of people along only one dimension of human experience, that of language; and there seemed to be a considerable risk of deception. Words are the stuff that dreams are built on, but they are also the stuff that hate propaganda is made of. With all the other signals of communication missing -- no sudden shift of eye to alert me to an insincerity, no tell-tale blush, no change of tone of voice -- how could I possibly tell truth from falsehood?

It did not take me long to understand that the conventional notions of propriety or truth do not apply to meetings on the Net. While there is indeed no way of either confirming or refuting what people tell me on the Net, there is also nothing much to be gained by deception. Sooner or later those who stay on the Net long enough understand that, and they start projecting themselves as they are. As they ARE or at least as they very much would LIKE to be, something one should not quickly dismiss as insincerity. The man or woman who tells you (s)he is the faithful, loyal type may at least be facing in the right direction. The line that separates being from wanting to be is often so thin as to be indiscernible. We have it all in us, the best and the worst, and wanting to be identified with the best can make all the difference. A short Houseman poem comes to my mind:

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave;
And miles around the wonder grew
How well I did behave.

But now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain:
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.

Not so on the Net. If I say something on the Net, people actually "listen." I can tell from their responses that they have heard what I said. They listen because there is no pressure on them not to listen -- no need to rehearse their next argument so as to be ready when they are called on to contribute their two-bits worth again, no getting irritated and frustrated by the fact that they have to fight for an opening in their opponent's torrent of words, no panic that they might not be heard. They can calmly "listen" to every word that's said and then as calmly compose their responses. I think it would be a good idea if two people engaged in a quarrel were made to sit down and to continue their quarrel by writing messages to each other. It would take care of the problem that they don't hear what the other guy says because they would not be busy mentally composing their own reply. The Net inevitably teaches people the art of listening. Some learn faster, others take longer to learn, but all the ones who stay on the Net learn sooner or later. Those who are not willing to learn don't last.

The Net offers people -- women in particular -- a wonderful opportunity to find out who they really are and what they are capable of. It is the platform on which the reticent and the insecure can grow wings. The Filipina who, very much a child of her culture, tends to listen while her lord and master -- father, husband, brother -- pontificates, discovers to her delight that people listen to her on the Net. The fact that she is "merely a woman" is much less important than the quality of her utterance. It is a heady feeling to be listened to for the first time -- to be listened to, to be taken seriously, to be told that one has interesting things to say -- and the Filipina who has experienced this headiness won't slip back into oblivion without a fight.

Since I started to interact on the Net, I have not had much time for t.v. and night life any more.:) I believe without reservations that the Net is a much more wholesome and ultimately a much saner space than t.v. The Net stimulates creativity; t.v. kills it. As a friend of mine puts it, "Much better to bedoing than to watch other people do."

I have started to make use of other Internet facilities. For me the Net is the most wonderful universal resource person. It has answers for just about every question I ask it. And all that within easy reach of my home. It has added a most wonderful new dimension of independence to my existence. I don't have to ask people to find out things for me or to take me to places where I can find out myself. And to think -- thought at once exciting and a bit frightening -- that this is only the beginning. After all, the Net has existed only a few years. Oh Brave New World.... Fe Leonor