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It seems the Hive has been very busy while the rest of the real world has been on a halt. What's up, Hivers/Hiveians!

I still have to post on @theycallmedan's initiative so it seems I have a lot of backlog to catch up. We are now on Enhanced Community Quarantine here in Cebu due to COVID-19, so I think I can be more active here in the coming days. I tried to sort everything out before the quarantine. Tensions and high emotions were also prevalent in the office before the lockdown so I was a little bit stressed this week.

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I am really grateful for this challenge by @anomadsoul with the support of @blocktrades and @ocd. This feels like a second chance for me to introduce myself to the community. For those who have been on Steem longer than me, I guess you know how crappy my introduction post was. There wasn't even an #introduceyourself tag because no one told me there should be one. Now it feels like I should redeem myself through this introduction post in the Hive community.

So...

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/r4TrjrON-20200328_110212_0000.png ### WHO AM I ###

I am Kim Ybañez and I'm from Mandaue City, Cebu, Philippines. I grew up in Silab, Amlan, Negros Oriental, but we transferred here in Cebu when I was in second year high school. I graduated in the University of San Carlos - Talamban Campus with a degree in BS Chemical Engineering. I passed the chemical engineering licensure examination last May 2016 and started to work as a product engineer in a semiconductor company in MEPZ, Lapu-Lapu City last October 2016. I am currently a product engineering supervisor in the same company under Silver Plating Process.

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That's basically my technical background. Now for my blogging background, I have been writing since I was in elementary. I remember I was our school's representative for district meets in feature writing contests and extemporaneous speaking contests. That continued in high school. While I had always been a constant school's representative in quiz bowls, I was also a contestant for feature writing under campus journalism and extemporaneous speaking contest. My background is focused mainly on writing, but public speaking was also included in my portfolio although one I could not be so proud of.

One of my greatest achievements was when I won third place in an on-the-spot essay writing contest that was initiated by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region VII. In other contests, I usually placed at the third spot which probably means I was not the best, but I was not tanking either.

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All those writing gigs stopped when I was in college because chemical engineering was very demanding. I embraced the technical side of me as everything seemed to revolve around maths and engineering applications. But I guess I will always find myself writing because when I was graduating, I wrote articles for different clients as a freelancer on upwork.com. I earned a few hundred dollars there, but I stopped when I was scammed by a client who wanted to pay directly via PayPal. I wanted to bypass the upwork payment system becuase they would cut 10~20% of your earnings, which then led to scammers trying to exploit that vulnerability.

One of my dreams was to have a blog site of my own, but with the hosting fees that I couldn't afford, I set it aside before. As an avid traveller, I wanted to share my experiences through my blog, but I don't want the hassle of setting up a site even on free sites like WordPress or blogspot. Back in 2017, I was told by @legendarryll that there's a legit site where you can earn through posting and it was steemit.com. I immediately joined Steemit without any prior knowledge about blockchains and other stuff about how it works. I didn't ask any questions, unlike those I invited, because I saw it as an opportunity for me to set up a blog while earning at the same time.

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/LEbxllZr-20200328_104354_0000.png ### WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING ###

My registration was accepted at Steemit, which was synonymous to Steem that time, last September 25, 2017 and I would say that a lot of things happened since then. I have to say that the Steem community already hated Ned even before I joined Steem. I witnessed a lot of hardforks, but I didn't mind most of the time except the last HF21/22 and then this one, HF23.

I had no prior blogging experience when I joined so I just posted whatever I can think of. There's no niche so everything's chaotic. At this point, I would like to mention and thank @curie and its esteemed curators and reviewers. Without @curie, I would have left Steem a long time ago. I really felt that my posts were unappreciated, but when I received my first @curie upvote, everything changed. Curie has been my standard when it comes to quality content because it was really difficult to receive a curie upvote back then. Once upvoted by curie, it means your post is exceptional because it has been vetted, debated, and reviewed by the curators and reviewers.

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Before curation was cool, @curie already cared about quality and rewards distribution when abuse was rampant on Steem. Bidbots, circle jerking, vote farms, and other forms of abuse made a lot of people leave Steem, but I remained faithful producing quality contents until it became hard to resist to abuse.

Good thing HF21/22 happened because if not, it's either I left Steem or I succumbed to abuse just like what others did. Post HF21/22, I have to thank @ocd, @ocdb, @curangel, @travelfeed, and @steemitworldmap for supporting my posts. I can say that I reached my current status not by the support of whales but by the support of countless curators from different curation initiatives.

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I didn't leave Steem before amidst the internal squabbles and declining token value because I believed in the technology and the idea it brings - decentralization. When Steemit was bought by Justin Sun, I immediately knew he wanted to centralize the chain due to his press releases on Twitter. I just never thought he could get so low in his actions that brought us to where we are now.

### MY PLANS IN HIVE ###

I have three travel/food blog series: Kim's Quest, Kim's Taste, and Definitely Cebu. Those series are aimed at promoting Cebu and the Philippines to the international community. Due to the immutability and resistance to censorship of Hive, I plan to continue them here. You can browse in my page if you want to see the previous editions of those three series.

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When this coronavirus is all over, I will definitely travel more. I am actually considering to resign from my job and focus on travelling, but I have a lot of factors to consider. Since we're on quarantine, I will be more active here.

As I have said in the past, I will go wherever the community goes and I proud to be part of this community. I just hope that the original ideals of Steem will not be lost as time goes by. Whatever happens, I know that the community will survive because we have survived an attempt to buy us into bowing a central entity.

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I will continue to climb mountains and share my adventures here. I don't want to promise, but I will just do my best to continue posting quality contents. I see Hive as a repository of my life's significant moments so I want to package my posts in a way that the memories are best preserved.

I will try to reach out more and make friends with everyone here. I just to let everyone know that I really appreciate every upvote, comment, and repost that I receive. While I don't seek validation, it warms my heart to know someone appreciated my post.

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/n6zi5TOn-20200328_105841_0000.png ### REQUEST ###

Steem has been very technical and the learning curve has been very steep. I just hope to lessen the technicality because majority of the possible new users don't care about the technical stuff. They just want the experience. I think it's difficult specially that we're dealing with money and economics will always come into play, but let's try anyway. I hope that anyone with knowledge about how this thing works will not hesitate to help those uninitiated.

I guess that's all for this introduction post. I am just happy that I'm part of this milestone. This will go down in history as the triumph of the community over a shill dictator.

Steem is dead. Long live the Hive!

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/yBTdaLfX-badge_creating-on-hive_dark_480.png_{A huge appreciation to @nateaguila for this amazing badge!} -----

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Kim Ybañez _{Welcome to Kim's small corner in Hive. He is a chemical engineer by profession, but a blogger by passion. He is a wanderlust and an adventure seeker. Join his quests as he visits secluded destinations, climbs mountains, tries new and exotic dishes, and explores his country (The Philippines) and the rest of the world even if he's still a poor corporate slave with tons of bills to pay and two siblings to support in college.}