The Ronald Anthony Diaries

If you've been reading my posts for some time now, you would have guessed that I'm a gamer. Is that something to be ashamed of? I don't think so. It's just another hobby for me, a diversion, like a lot of other things, like this blog for example. Me, a 32 year old grown man...and I still play video games. While there are those who keep dissin' video games for being a waste of time, addictive, promotive of violence and potentially harmful to kids, I am certainly not one of them...to a point of course, which I will explain further as we go along.

My eight year old kid likes to play video games as well. In fact, I believe that video games can have a positive effect on children, as long as there are limits.

It is well established that video games improve hand-eye coordination. They are also known to improve problem-solving skills, and teaches them careful risk-taking. It helps social skills as well (particularly during multi-player gaming sessions that the players have to cooperate with each other) and helps me and my kid bond (either when we play cooperatively or against each other) since its a common interest between us. Lastly, I believe that it provides a way for kids to be introduced and exposed to technology.

Whether we like it or not, technology will play even a larger part in their lives than it did in ours, and their success in the future may very well in part depend on their ability to adapt to it, and to use technology effectively in whatever field they choose. Being exposed to technology at an early age eliminates all the mystery, and makes them all the more eager to learn about it, and more capable of integrating it with their lives if necessary.

But of course, there are certain caveats that we have to be aware and careful about. There are indeed extremely violent video games out there, which are meant for a mature and more discerning audience. Kids should definitely not be allowed to play these games. Examples are Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which are meant to be played by adults. Here's a small tip that you may find helpful in this regard. Before choosing a game for your child to play, check out the ESRB rating. You'll be able to tell if a game is appropriate for your child's age or not.

It also goes without saying that anything done to excess will definitely be bad for you, video gaming included. Playing video games should not be done to the exclusion of other worthwhile activities, such as playing outside, biking, reading, and studying. Set rules, and make sure your child follows them.

Lastly, video games, like too much TV, make a bad substitute for proper parenting. More often than not, we sometimes tend to use such technological conveniences as baby sitters, as a way of occupying our child's attention while we do some other things. We should never take our responsibilities as parents for granted.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that gaming done within reasonable limits can be a very fun and worthwhile activity, and maybe even teach kids a thing or to. We just have to make sure they don't play too much.

Quaere Verum.

(Originally posted May 22, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

When my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last May 7, someone came up with the idea of having a photo shoot involving the entire family. Well, a studio was set up in my father's building and quite a number of shots were taken of the entire family, including those of my brothers and sisters. Here are some family portraits:

(Originally posted May 15, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

For some reason, this is my favorite baby pic of my son...:-)

Last Sunday [June 26] my son and I found ourselves at the 4th Annual Toys, Hobbies & Collectibles Convention at Megatrade Hall 3 at SM Megamall. I guess you can say that being there was a toy lover and collector's dream, with all the collectible and hard to find toys being sold.

Action figures of all sorts, intricately detailed scale models, hard to find toys, and toys from decades ago were on exhibit, and offered for sale. Its a shame (or perhaps a good thing) that I couldn't afford to splurge on toys. Otherwise I would have bought everything in sight. Yeah, I'm a grown man, but it would seem that I have never really gotten over my love for toys, and I even have a bit of a collection myself. Its also something that my son and I enjoy doing together, as he also shares my love of toys, which, considering his age, is probably no surprise. :-)

We didn't really get to buy anything (some of those buggers cost an arm and a leg), but we had fun just looking at all of the exhibits. Here's a a picture of my son fooling around with a scale model of the parasite from the movie Alien:

(Originally posted July 3, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

In order to practice my son's penmanship (which is quite atrocious, like mine when I was his age), I told him to write down a short story from his own imagination. The story below is what he came up with. This is my son's third attempt (according to him) at writing a short story. All the words are his, but I did have to make some corrections to his spelling and grammar. He originally spelled names with small first letters, the word happened as happend and believe as beileve. The artwork is also his. Who knows? Maybe he could be a great writer someday. Or at the very least, a contributor to this blog. :-)


The Fantasy Tree
by Ronald Anthony

One day, Jack planted a tree in their garden. Months had passed since Jack planted the tree. Then one day, a mysterious thing happened. Jack couldn't believe what he saw. The tree grew strange fruits that he never saw before in his entire life.

Jack told his mother, but she didn't believe him. Then a few days later, Jack's mom came home from work very sick with a high fever. The illness lasted for days, and the medicine she took did not help. Then Jack had an idea.

This idea was to give mom a fruit from the tree for her to eat. He had this idea because two weeks ago, Jack gave a piece of fruit to his baby sister Erica. To his surprise, a weird thing happened. His sister's asthma disappeared. Jack thought that the fruit could cure any kind of illness.

After giving his mother a piece of fruit, her fever faded. Jack and her mother were very happy.

To be continued...

(Originally posted July 5, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

Aaron was not able to go to school today, he was having a fever. Maybe he was just run down by his field trip yesterday, as he had been swimming. I called him up a few minutes ago, and it's nice to know that the fever has subsided somewhat, and he's feeling much better.

Hope he's feeling even better by tomorrow.

Last night was the only real time that my kid actually surfed the internet. I first taught him how to do that a couple of years ago, but at the time he could never seem to muster up the patience to wait for a page to load. Can you blame him? I hardly had any patience myself then. Web pages geared towards children tend to be graphics heavy, and it was just too much for a measly 56K modem. His reading skills were also a bit limited at the time.

But that was then.

It has only been a couple of months since I went up to DSL (see my previous post here) and I thought I reintroduce my son to the World Wide Web. To my surprise, my son took to surfing the net like a duck to water. He used the mouse like an expert, even using the mousewheel and built in back button. He hardly had any difficulty reading, except for the occasional big word, unlike before. Of course, he was also very slow in typing in an address, but that's to be expected. When I told him that virtually anything that he wants to know about can be found on the internet, his eyes widened and he shot off a list of things he wanted to look for.

I left him in front of the computer for about a half hour, and he managed to visit a fair number of sites which apparently caught his fancy. I checked the browser's history, and here are the sites that he visited:

Gundam Official.com
Official Yu-Gi-Oh! King of Games Web Site
Cartoon Network
Astronomy For Kids - KidsAstronomy.com
Star Wars

Ah, kids these days. :-)

I guess that means that he will be cutting into my computer time as well. :-) That's ok, I only hope he doesn't turn out to a nerd like his Dad. :-)

(Originally posted June 5, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

(Originally posted May 29, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

One of Aaron's favorites songs...

This one of my favorite pictures of my son. I call it "Lakeside Serenity." Of course, you can't see his face, but that isn't the point of this shot. In it my son sits quietly while gazing across the expanse of a tranquil lake. If you look at the date at the lower right corner, you would see that it was taken almost five years ago. My son was just three then. That year was very tumultuous for me, for lots of reasons. Maybe this picture best describes the inner peace that I so longed for at the time. Things have gotten a lot better since, but on occassion I just look at this picture to remind myself how truly difficult it can be at times to find peace in your heart. Sometimes the search never really ends...though you know that it can only be found from deep within one's self.

(Originally posted March 13, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

Since my son was getting a bit bored on the drive home to his mom's, I gave him my camera phone and told to him to take pictures of anything interesting that he saw along the way. While some of the pictures were blurred and uninteresting, some...actually a lot...were quite good. Here are some of the pictures he took:

Could it be that he actually has an eye for photography? Maybe. At least I hope he has. What do you think? Well at the very least, here's another thing I can probably encourage him to develop. :-)

(Originally posted April 11, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

A recent picture of my eight year old son Aaron, for those who haven't seen him before, or haven't seen him in a long time. It has been his ambition for the past couple of months to beat me in Dragonball Z Budokai 3 (a PlayStation 2 game) but I don't have any intention at the moment of letting him win...*wink*...not when I can go Super Saiyan 4...;-)

He has a web page of his very own containing a lot of pictures and links at http://www.geocities.com/ron_allan_pablo/, but unfortunately it has been almost three years since I last updated it. I'll probably get around to updating it real soon.

Handsome little devil ain't he? Just like his dad...;-)

(Originally posted Feb. 4, 2005 on Quaere Verum.)

This is the very first post of The Ronald Anthony Diaries. This blog chronicles the different events, situations and occassions that I have experienced in the course of being a father to my eight-year old son, Ronald Anthony, or Aaron as everyone fondly calls him.

This blog was spun off from my own blog Quaere Verum after I noticed that I have been making a lot of posts about my son's experiences, as well as my own, in the course of being a father. I thought it would be nice to collect all that material and put in in a single location. Future entries about our adventures would also be more appropriately posted here. Who knows? Maybe when my son can take over this blog eventually. Now that would be something. :-)

I'll be reposting some of my entries from my own blog relating to my son in the next few days, and I'll be coming up with some brand new posts when I get the chance.

My son and I are both glad you were able to visit, and we hope you'll be able to drop in from time to time. :-)