Waltzing on the Web (Reposting from Jose Carillo's Essay)

Waltzing on the Web

I'm feeling lighthearted and buoyant today, June 2, 2017, so once more I'm sharing with Forum members and my Facebook friends and fans this essay that I wrote way back in 2003 about the wonders of the then newly emergent World Wide Web.

I don’t remember now if it was because the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle had fallen in love with the English phonetics expert Professor Henry Higgins, or because she had miraculously acquired such exquisite English under his tutelage that she had convinced the crusty London upper class that she was a member of Hungarian royalty. But there she was ecstatically singing “I Could Have Danced All Night” in that magical bedroom scene of the 1964 movie production of the stage musical My Fair Lady, waltzing all by herself and wondering what brought her so much joy:

I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things I’ve never done before.
I’ll never know what made it so exciting,
Why all at once my heart took flight…

Waltzing on the Web

I'm feeling lighthearted and buoyant today, June 2, 2017, so once more I'm sharing with Forum members and my Facebook friends and fans this essay that I wrote way back in 2003 about the wonders of the then newly emergent World Wide Web.

I don’t remember now if it was because the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle had fallen in love with the English phonetics expert Professor Henry Higgins, or because she had miraculously acquired such exquisite English under his tutelage that she had convinced the crusty London upper class that she was a member of Hungarian royalty. But there she was ecstatically singing “I Could Have Danced All Night” in that magical bedroom scene of the 1964 movie production of the stage musical My Fair Lady, waltzing all by herself and wondering what brought her so much joy:

I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things I’ve never done before.
I’ll never know what made it so exciting,
Why all at once my heart took flight…


All of my readings from grade school through college, in fact, would amount to only a tiny fraction of the readings that I have already done on the Web in the less than six years that I started mining it for its treasures. And I have been enjoying every minute of my freewheeling incursions into its pages, far better than when I had the likes of Professor Higgins telling me to my face to read my English textbook from cover to cover or else fail and repeat his English course. (2003)

This essay first appeared in the English-usage column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times sometime in 2003, © 2003 by Manila Times Publishing. It subsequently appeared as Chapter 1 in Part IV, Section 1 of the author's book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language, © 2008 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.