On the 7th day of October 1982, a healthy baby girl was born weighing six lbs. in G.S.I.S., Matina, Davao City. She was the fourth child born of Leonardo O. Laborte and Lourdes B. Laborte.
Young Yolanda Miah’s elementary and high school years were spent at Davao Central High School, formerly Davao Chinese High School or Chinese School as it was often called. Fey Mei Yah that is my Chinese name by the way, in case you didn’t know ;). The school was teaching Chinese lessons in which she had a hard time learning the language for this was all new to her to think that they weren’t Chinese, but eventually she had learned to speak, write and read the language even without the help of her parents or a tutor, not that good in the foreign language but at least she maintained a good grade. She was a shy little girl often bullied by her classmates but, she fight with those bullyboys and girls who always teased her, and they did not intimidate her. As a child she was fond of playing with robots, guns, cars, motorcycle and bicycle together with her cousins and friends and as she grew up she was interested in basketball, a sport that not all the girls really played but for her it is a nice sport that she enjoyed playing, she also liked playing chess with her classmates and friends after their lunch breaks and whenever they’ve got the chance to. She participated in a lot of events like playing basketball, chess and track in field, in which she garnered an award in each event, not the first but not the last. She graduated on March 1999 and receives an Alumni award for being in the institution from Elementary ‘till High School.
She decided to take up the course Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering even if she know she was not that good in mathematics and have heard a lot from her classmates that an engineering course is really difficult to take. Her mother wants her to take up Pharmacist and let her take an exam to the University of Immaculate Conception, where she passed the entrance tests but upon knowing that she also passed in AMA Computer College, Davao. She insisted to her parents that she would really like to enroll there and take the course of her choice, as she was interested in computers. It was in her college years where she was active in some of the school’s activities and there she met a lot of interesting people and friends. And it was in those years where she was interested in a sport called Taekwondo; she joined into the club Taekwondo and became a secretary for four years and participated in the Mindanao Taekwondo Championships. She was into a lot of clubs like the Chess Club where she was also the secretary and won in the Little School Tournament Women’s Division; Red Cross Youth Club, Circle K, Peer Counselor’s Circle and was into the School’s yearbook; CADRE where is she is one of the staffs and in school paper; DataLine, first as a staff writer and later on became the official Photojournalist. During Intramurals she always participated in basketball and in chess wherein she won for two consecutive years.
On the 4th day of March 2003, a tragic incident happened at the Davao International Airport in Sasa, a bomb explosion killed a lot of people including her beloved father who was there in the waiting shed waiting for her second daughter and wife to come down and welcome them, but that didn’t happened because of that incident. My mother and sister were rushed to the hospital and stayed there for a couple of days. They went here to attend the burial of their grandson and did not expect that they will also attend a burial for their father and husband.
On May 2004 she took a short-term course in Networking Basics and Router and Routing Basics at AMA Computer College, Davao. On August 2006 she finished her course of Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and just been waiting for her graduation this May 2007. She had her On the Job Training (OJT) at Lé Parisen Located at San Pedro Ext.; she worked there for three months, from August to October 2006. She was one of the Production Assistants for the Short Film entitled “MarsoKwatro” (4th of March) by DreamArtz Production, which was an official entry to the 2nd Mindanao Film Festival which garnered most of the awards during the awards night.
Miah, as what her friends called her is a good friend, she’s always there for her loved ones. A music lover, sporty type of person, loves playing computer games surfing the net and watching movies with her friends and family. She had fun constructing her own website at http://meiyah.webs.com, it’s not yet finished and still working on it, little by little. (Wa nako giganahi ug padayon ani, wehehehe….)
-This was made way way back in college (LOL), part of my Bibliographical Sketch (kunohay).-
And now Miah is soooo into Blogging, as you can see I have 7 Blogs already but not all of them were updated regularly, though I am trying to update it once in a while.
