Google Mapmaker

Ever since I was a kid, I held fascination over maps. I buy maps—err; I let my parents buy me some maps. From the cheapest school maps to book atlases perhaps. Geography is my favourite subject in school. This is where you get to memorize the provinces of the Philippines and its capitals, per region, their culture and history. I sleep with the old Manila book maps back in the 1990s. I bring them at school. Maps have been my obsession-seeing places, imagining places and even memorizing the way how to get there. In other words, GPS has been programmed already since the 1990s, hehe!

Maps have given me comfort. It is one way to see the world—for me. Atlases at least gave me some glimpse. Yet it’s not enough. Postcard perfect photos, very shallow write-up, outdated facts and not so detailed maps were the limitations of these. Internet back then was still very limited and expensive—and was turtle slow if we compare it on today’s standards. So, I just go to the library and browse every atlas or any other books relating to culture, history and geography of the places. I’m not also that rich to go to Disneyland or Paris or NY…these were my humble flying carpets.

Continue reading Draw, Explore, and Serve the People: Mapping the Philippines and I