WHEN I was a kid, I always thought I would become a scientist when I grew up. That was actually my original dream, though my paternal grandfather Lolo Nardo and my Ninang Lulu (the elder sister of my dad) thought I’d become a lawyer. Mainly because Lolo Nardo was a lawyer (he went to the UP College of Law and joined Sigma Rho), and Ninang Lulu also became a lawyer. Heck, I almost enrolled after passing the UP Law Aptitude Examination, heh

But science was my first love. I actually find it somewhat ironic that I became a journalist, because while I was always an avid reader, I didn’t start writing outside school work till third year high school — and that was mainly because I had a crush on our English teacher Miss Natalie Nebit haha.

I loved the young scientist’s encyclopedia collection my parents bought me and the “scientific experiments” I conducted. And in 1980, I learned to love science even more when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos started airing on TV. If you can find a DVD, get it, and get a copy of the book that accompanied the TV series while you’re at it if you don’t have one. In 2005, The Science Channel aired “Cosmos” with updated computer graphics and footage for the 25th anniversary of the series.

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