Featured Community Member: yolswels091

Back when I was still in college in my country, the Philippines, I learned about Viikii, (it was spelled like that back then) from some of my classmates who were so fanatical about Korean shows, as well as actors and actresses and K-Pop boy bands. I'm a very serious student so I didn't pay attention to it. I wasn't into it even though Korean shows started to infiltrate Filipino television. It wasn't until a friend of mine recommended that I watch Goong and Boy Over Flowers that I actually liked watching other Korean shows.

So I created an account on Viikii.com and learned that it's a community-based website. It didn't interest me that much as I didn't have time to explore the whole website. I was still in school and studying seriously, so for me it was one of those websites where you create an account and forget about it after a few days. Yeah, it's true.

After graduating from the University, I went to US and started working. It was the kind of job that kills your social life, so I looked for help from my laptop and that became my best friend. To kill time, I started watching shows on the net. Then I remembered Viikii.

Viikii was still there. I had forgotten my previous account so I decided to make a new one dated September 15, 2010, one that is still alive now. It was really hard for me at the beginning. I didn't have friends or any contact for that matter. I can't even remember who the first user was that I made contact with. So after looking through and exploring the website, trying to learn to navigate the whole thing, I still ended up quite confused about how everything works. What got me started was finding some of my fellow countrymen on Viikii. BINGO! It's a translation site. That's what Viikii is all about.

I started as a Tagalog subber. At first, I was scolded. I translated some lines in Sungkyunkwan Scandal without anybody's permission. But I didn't know there was a system of Channel Managers, moderators and such. I can't remember what happened after that, but I ended up as a regular Tagalog subber for some dramas. I'm quite diligent and looking at how my subbing credits increased by the minute made my day. lol

After a couple of months of subbing, I felt envious of other users. They're had some big roles in channels and I feeling bored with subbing. English is the second language in the Philippines, so translating English to Tagalog isn't that necessary. What really interested me were the segmenters. "They're so cool," I thought back then. It's like they have their own world in Viikii.

Then I learned about SEG101. I'd say that they did a great job at scaring people -- the Channel was really intimidating... lol. At the time, they were celebrating their first anniversary. They had a very long list of aspiring students so the wait looked like it would forever. Luckily, I found out about their Avatar Contest, and that they were giving admissions to the top 3 winners. So I joined and submitted 2 avatars. I was actually surprised by the results because the avatar that I didn't have any expectations for got the votes and won me 3rd place. It was a very simple avatar design -- it was a person holding scissors, a globe and a film strip.

So I became a SEG101 newbie. I concentrated on learning the proper way to segment alongside with my mentor FTHIA. After a few months, I graduated. With my SEG101 badge, I had the confidence that I could finally segment.

My first contributions as a segmenter were in Lie To Me, which I think was one of the first Korean Dramas Viki licensed. My first day segmenting on a real project was a mess. I got the first part on episode 1, and I thought it took me forever to finish. My God, I was so conscious of my timings and everything. But as episodes went on, I got my confidence to race alongside with the segmenting veterans. Sadly, Lie to Me didn't do well. But I was still optimistic and had started to love segmenting -- it was my first segmenting project after all. After the show ended, I became Lie to Me's number 1 segmenter garnering the highest number of segments.

Becoming a Viki user was much more helpful than I thought. I said earlier that my job could kill a social life. I didn't choose it because I'm a loner or anything, but it's just that some people, like me, just don't have the luxury to choose a better job yet. But it gives me a lot of time to be on Viki. That's basically the life that I have right now, and I have gained lots of friends across the globe which is the best experience of all.