Gloria is the original Daragang Magayon (http://daragang-magayon.com) in the Pinoy Blogosphere. She grew up in a small barrio in Sorsogon where everyone originated from one family with 12 kids. If she married somebody in the same barrio, that would be incest. But she didn’t. She is not even married to this date, despite the fact that she is now a mother to a cute, energetic boy she calls Raine. She grew up eating every green leaves available cooked in coconut milk with chili, guisadong bagoong alamang and fried tinapa (smoked fish). They only had pork on Sundays.

Gloria is 100% bicolana and is her parents’ unica hija. She was sent to college under UP’s Iskolar ng Bayan Program and got her student allowance from her parents’ pigs and chickens. She was the first in her barrio to go to UP and was first in her family to finish college. Her father, a jeepney driver, had big dreams in sending all his kids to college and he started by sending Gloria – his eldest – to UP Los Baños. She then went on to finish BS in Chemistry and went to work in various analytical laboratories and then spent ten years at the prestigious International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Laguna as Researcher.

After college, Gloria went on to work and earn money so that her 3 brothers can go to college too. With her fathers’ 50-pesos-a-day earnings, college was just impossible. Gloria became the family’s bread-winner, got her family out of poverty and sent his brothers to school. Their family then became the talk of the barrio because their house remained a bahay kubo with only one room. While neighbors’ mansions kept sprouting because parents were either OFWs or the daughters married foreigners. Lawanit and tabla were the walls and pawid and bamboo made the roof of their house. But her family’s priority was and still is, education. Her father believed that education is the key out of poverty and that it consequently will give the next generations, better life.

When Gloria was barely 15 and not ot of high school yet, her mother gave birth to twin boys. It was the twin’s birth that turned Gloria into her family’s labandera. She had to go down the hill where their house is located to go down to the ‘balon’ (burabud) where she had to take a bath and do the laundry daily even before it’s daylight so she’ll catch the jeepney that will bring her to school in town before 7 am. But because Gloria is flat-footed, the basin with the laundry will come flying out of her head to the bottom of the hill as her feet slips off the mud staircase. That’s how she broke one of her shoulder blades that will continue to give her back pain for the rest of her life.

If Gloria didn’t pass the UPCAT, she would have taken dressmaking as a vocational course. She practiced by sewing all the twin’s shorts and pajamas.

Fast forward to today…the family’s dream house is now a work in progress. One of her brothers is now a ship navigator who will soon become an officer. That brother of hers dreams of being a ship captain that will continue to shoulder the house-building expenses. The older of the twins now has a degree in IT and has just been hired by a company in Parañaque. Gloria told him to shoulder the monthly electric bill. (He doesn’t have a choice. Else, Gloria will spank his hide.) The younger of the twins on the other hand is on his last year in BS Marine Engineering and hopes to board a ship as soon as possible with his Kuya’s help (the ship officer).

Gloria’s father died in October 2005. He at least lived to see his two grandsons and the start of the house-building. Consequently, Gloria went back home to the barrio in April 2006 to live with her recently-widowed mother. She has been blogging for a living eversince. Currently, Gloria is contemplating on going back to school since her brothers are done with college and are now earning their living (except the youngest one who has 1 more year to go). Either that, or she will become her mother’s caregiver in her old age and just live on the dollars that her brothers will send home. Gloria finds the thought quite tempting especially that her brothers already promised to take care of her son’s college education just in case that she won’t be capable of doing so in the future.

Either way, Gloria is just too happy to go back to the barrio where she is now enjoying the joys of modern day technology: internet (out of her 3G phone), satellite TV and refrigerator (they didn’t have one before even when she was already in college). Most especially, she is just too happy to be able to take afternoon naps the way she used to in the barrio when she was a child. She just hopes to be able to convince her son to take the naps with her. He is just too active he prefers to play in the backyard instead of sleeping during the day.

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