Konnichiwa Minna-san! I'm Drew.
In case you're wondering, yes, I am new here in HIVE. I am new in the Blogging Industry and this will be my first blog. Heads up people for I tend to overshare, and this might become a lengthy post.
Here goes nothing…
Hi, I am Mark Andrew Salveron, 21 years old, and was invited to HIVE by 
What is my story?
I am an only child, born out of wedlock. My biological father didn’t have the guts to take responsibility for the mistake that has been done. Regardless, it is not a sob story for me anymore because my mother found a husband that cares and loves her for who she is, and treats me as his son despite them not being able to conceive a child of their own.
Before my Mother met my stepdad, I grew up in a household full of strong and independent women. My grandmother’s sister, I call her Lola Cion, an Old Maiden, was the one who mainly took care of me since my Mom had to go to her job. Aside from Lola Cion, I have my Lola Rosa, a widowed relative of mine, and her daughter Tita Pepot, to take care of me, and give me attention. Occasionally my godmother whom I call Mommy Ninang visits me to give me gifts and sometimes basic baby necessities. She also is a cousin of my biological father. Living with them, and also seeing my single mother surviving in raising me with their help, taught me how strong women are. It ignited the flame of feminism in my heart, and up to this day, I have high respect for women.
At the age of five, my mother started to see my stepfather. Since my Lola Cion was an old maiden she was very strict with my mom and gets a little bit overprotective and jealous of my stepfather. (At this point I’ll call my Stepfather Daddy because I consider him as my real father) There were times when my mom had to work for 18 hours straight because of the shortage of manpower in the company she is working for and will go home very late at night or the next day. This caused suspicion and escalated to arguments whenever my mom got home late. My mom had enough and felt that the household was toxic for me, so we had to move out. We spent a year living with my aunt and his husband together with their two kids until my mom and dad got married in July 2007, and after they got married we rented our own house in the same street where my aunt lives.
I remember that I was never really able to maintain friends as a child because my parents and I had to move out of our place after two or three years due to their job. My mom was a Supervisor for Housekeeping for an agency working for Canadian Embassy, while my dad was a technician. We had to move because of the distance between the house where we resided and the place of their job. We lived in Cavite at that time, and they worked in Makati, so the traveling time does consume their time. We moved to Taguig in 2009, which is located near where they are working and luckily, my father landed a job overseas. We moved to Cebu in 2012 because my father decided that my mom should settle down so that she will not be stressed. They planned to try again and conceive a child of their own, but unfortunately, up until now, I’m still an only child.
I still have a lot of stories about my childhood, but I figured that this might be very long if I tell it in just a shot. I am a very detailed person, and I don’t want this to become a boring introduction.
What do I aspire to be?
I was once a student taking up a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. I had a government-funded scholarship, a 30% discount because I was a part of the University’s Chorale, and has an additional 10% discount because I won the Student Council elections, and was elected as my department’s legislative representative, but because of the pandemic, I wasn’t able to maintain these because I wasn’t able to proceed to my second year. My father was laid off from his job abroad, and we decided that it would be safer that my mom would go back home too. My mom also had a job offered to her, in 2015, in the same country my father was working in. Yes, there is my scholarship, but when the pandemic hit, the 30% discount was removed due to the restrictions with social gatherings so we were not able to perform. Since I was elected for the next school year’s congress, the 10% discount was also dissolved because it would be unconstitutional if I proceed to serve as a representative even though I am not enrolled for the whole school year. I had to resign, and move on.
I’m still not able to go back to school right now because I’m still financially unstable and my savings is still insufficient. I have planned not to pursue Chemical Engineering because the door of opportunity for this course had closed for me indefinitely, but I hope that I will be able to finish this course in the future. Right now, I currently aim to enroll in Psychology classes because I see myself being a Child Psychiatrist in the future or a Professor teaching Psychology. I have always been fascinated by the behavior of a person and what are the reasons why they act in a certain way. Also, while studying Psychology, I know I will stumble into something that will help me discover more about myself, and help me with self-actualization.
What made me start Blogging?
I am a person who likes to try a lot of things if given the opportunity and is naturally curious. I value experience over material things, and I would invest in creating memories. I also enjoy learning a lot of new things. Culture interests me, and I know that joining HIVE, will satisfy my curiosity about how diverse we all human beings are. I enjoy reading blogs because the published stories comes from personal experience, and it makes it authentic.
Reading blogs inspired me to start my own. I always have thoughts that I can’t express, and this might be the way to channel all my creative ideas and share them with the world.
To be honest, though I am curious and seek experience, I still don’t have a passion yet. But, I made a promise to myself that it is my mission to try everything until I find the right one, and I want to share it with HIVE. I want to share my journey with everyone so that I can inspire those people who are still lost and are trying to learn more about their selves.
In this blog, you will see the things that I experienced, and I will also share all the lessons I’ve learned from them.
Thank you very much for reading this far, and I hope that you will tune in for my upcoming blogs.