Ramblings Intérieurs

No, this is not about the old rock band that popularized the song about the ghoulish gay (I just coined that term…haha!) This is about two young girls I read about in Philippine Daily Inquirer that I think would define the youth today.

28. Carla Gisela Ysabel Concepcion

This 21-year-old senior at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, won first prize of this year’s BPI-DOST Science Awards over six other finalists. Why did she win? She found a unique and inexpensive way to track the movement of cancer cells in the human body. I won’t explain the details about it because you might get lost along the way but I know this is a great discovery. I know something about medicine and stuff. I took up a 6-month caregiver course about a few years ago but unfortunately I wasn’t able to apply the things I learned. I can tell that I learned a lot in those 6 months. Wait, I’m going away from the subject. To make it simple researchers have learned a great deal in recent years about how cancer cells develop and what causes them to grow out of control, little is known about metastasis, or the dispersal of late-stage cancer cells to previously unaffected parts of the body. And this is what Carla Gisela Ysabel Concepcion discovered with the help of classmates and research associates Mana Xyza Oro and Kristina delos Reyes. Why is it important? Metastasis is the cause of 90 percent of deaths from cancer.

29. Ladylove Torsiende

My favorite newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer, put up a contest of sort wherein readers are asked to write a certain wish and they would grant the wish depending on the wish and the circumstances of the wish and the wisher. It’s like "Wish Ko Lang" but not quite. One young girl wished to meet a man that she admires so much. However she didn’t want to meet Piolo Pascual, John Llloyd Cruz, or Richard Gutierrez. She wanted to meet-hold your breath-81-year-old business tycoon John L. Gokongwei.

The young lady’s name is Ladylove Torsiende. Why did Ladylove wanted to meet John Gokongwei? She idolized him. Gokongwei’s journey from humble beginnings in Cebu province to the top echelon of Philippine business has become her source of inspiration. Ladylove thought that Gokongwei came from a rich family but after reading a story in Sunday Inquirer Magazine, she learned that Gokongwei’s is also one of the famous rags-to-riches story. And she wanted to be like him.

Ladylove Torsiende is a bright girl from Cotobato City who was forced to drop out of high school because of her family’s financial difficulties. But despite the financial difficulties, she was determined to continue her schooling and she was able to finally get back to last year after three years and was able to enroll for a six-month computer vocational course at the Notre Dame University and is set to take the Department of Education’s high school equivalency test this month.

Ladylove also dreams big like her idol. She wants to study in Ateneo de Manila University’s John Gokongwei School of Management. When Gokongwei told Ladylove, "Ateneo is a tough school to get in…" Ladylove simply replied, "I dream big." This definitely had Gokongwei impressed that he promised to pay for Ladylove’s tuition in Ateneo should she pass the entrance exam.

I hope the two girls above would inspire other youths of today just like they inspired me tonight to write about them in this blog.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 6:44 am and is filed under Countless Reasons To Be Happy and Thankful That I Am Li, Current Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.