Encouragement

My dad regularly reads my blog (thus, the wholesome topics always. Hehe). Rather than leaving a comment, he would end up sending me an email, with the blog's entry title as his subject line. Everytime I receive such emails, one thought comes to mind: "Oops. Grammatical Errors." Hehe.

You see, when I was around 7, my dad started us on diary writing sessions. Every day, my brothers and I had to write a one page entry, which we'd have to review the next day for his spelling and grammar corrections in red ink. The proof-reading went on throughout our entire academic life. My dad would go through our papers and we would always end up rewriting. As that entire process took a while and away from our leisure time,we learned to not voluntarily have my dad check our stuff. Hehe. Occasionally, we were a lil careless and left papers lying around. True enough, when we would come back for them, they'd have the infamous red marks.

I got an email from my dad this morning regarding my June 8th entry. No grammatical errors this time around. Rather, it contained a few tips on the use of figures of speech. That, and an encouraging line which went: "You were born with the word in your tongue, a pen in your hand, and the imagination of a writer and an artist". That left me speechless.

Throughout the course of this (and my previous) blog's life, I have gotten several comments from friends regarding my writing. Some are even urging me to shift careers. Thanks guys!... I should say, though, that coming from my dad, the words sounded a ton better and made me feel like the next generation Shakespeare, Asian version :)

Dad: thank you for having had the patience to teach us good English, for the constant encouragement, and most importantly, for helping me find my passion - writing.