About

July 28,2010
ABOUT
My name is Quirico Monte de Ramos Gorpido, Jr. I was born in ST.Bernard,Southern Leyte, but I grew up in Ozamis City,Misamis Occidental,Mindanao,where my maternal grandmother, Marcela L. Almendras (deceased) has decided to move together with the whole family and settled there until her demise.
Yours truly is a product of combination of different groups of Filipinos indisputably dominated by their respective inherent Mother Tongues. My mother Lourdes Almendras Monte de Ramos (deceased) who is from Southern Leyte speaks Cebuano. My father Quirico Siervo Gorpido, Sr.(deceased) speaks Waray-Waray and hails from Northern Samar. My mestiza maternal grandmother Marcela L. Almendras (deceased), a half-Spaniard has her roots in Ilocos Norte. My maternal grandfather, Tomas C. Monte de Ramos (deceased) is also from Southern Leyte.
I studied in grades one and two at the Misamis Institute, later, re-named Misamis College(when I was in high school).Sometime in the 1980s,it changed its status to Misamis University.
However, I studied in grades three and four in St.Bernard when my mother, who became an early widow, has decided to move to the place together with my younger brother Emmanuel. After finishing the two level grades, we received a telegram instructing us to go back to Ozamis because Lola Ilang has died. There I studied in grades five and six at the Ozamis City Central School, where one of my classmates, a son of a medical practitioner, Artemio Tuaño Engracia,Jr.,later a UP-graduate Journalism student, now promoted as news editor at the Philippine Daily Inquirer, after serving as the paper’s one of its Sportswriters .
Three years after I graduated in high school at the Immaculate Conception College in Ozamis City as a working student, I decided to go to Manila to see the place and to look for a job. I have experienced working different manual jobs until I was able to work in 2 private companies:1)at the Communication Foundation For Asia in Sta.Mesa,Manila and 2)at Merck,Inc,located at Salcedo Village, Makati City. Here in Maasin City, my base,I was once working at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources(DENR) which holds its office at the Capitol Site, where the Provincial Capitol is also located, for more than a year.

While living in Metro Manila I have enrolled as a self-supporting student at ICS for a home study course in journalism. Nevertheless, at the time I have lost my job, I was forced to stop. Although a journalism undergraduate, I was and I’m practicing what I have learned in my study.
For many years I was a correspondent to the Tacloban-based regional weekly, The Reporter, whose founder was a Maasinhon by the name of Agustin “Guz” Cerro Arnaiz, Sr.(deceased).It has its Maasin Branch office in brgy.Mantahan. But it closed shop after 34 years of serving the public.Recently, however,it was revived by one of his daughters on an online edition only.
Later I became a correspondent to other newspapers one after the other also for several years. I was a former correspondent to three Cebu-based newspapers: Visayan Express (now defunct), The Freeman and the Cebu Daily News. In Tacloban City I was also a former correspondent/news contributor to the weekly Tribune for three years and one year for the Leyte Samar Daily Express.
After I have learned little basic lessons in computer in 2007, thru the sponsorship of a kind, generous and good standing businessman, I applied again as a Correspondent at the LSDE during the last week of November 2007 by calling its Editor-In-Chief Vicente S. Labro. He then referred my application call to the publisher/owner, Dalmacio Grafil who accepted and approved my application.

The Blog
This blog will and shall contain miscellaneous articles: news stories, opinion/commentary articles, feature stories, anecdotes, personal and impersonal essays, other writings and most probably some news pictures and other pictures consider relevant by yours truly, after I can save some amount of money in the future more enough to buy a digital camera.