BETTER THAN IT GETS -- SOMETIMES

(Speech delivered at the launching of IN ANOTHER DRESS, the e-book, by Vee Press and Vibal Foundation, at the Manila International Book Fair at SMX Center, Mall of Asia, on September 17. Likewise launched were e-books by Noemi Lardizabal Dado and Lady S.)

I started my blog four years ago and named it Ode to Old – a thinly veiled attempt to put romance and poetry into aging. I thought if I could convince my readers it’s alright to grow old, then perhaps I could feel good about it, too.

I was at the edge of retirement then, anxious over the prospect of living half a life. You know … waking up with no more "gosh-I’m-gonna-be-late" get up and go. Dressing up with no destination. Walking without direction. Taking coffee and lunch breaks – uninterrupted.

I decided to blog, hoping it would engage and absorb me well into antiquity.

I sub-titled my blog “the best is yet to be.” I did it tongue in cheek, wistfully, wishfully, almost with a sense of desperation.

As I blogged on, I was surprised the jitters began to ease.

Blogging gave me a voice to talk to the world. But one has to talk of things the world would care to listen to.

I guess that is how a blogger learns to look at things with a fresh eye, to look for the instructive, the comic, the unusual in the most commonplace experiences. Or else, WHO would read what a blogger writes?

The requisite introspection in blogging put me in touch with inner wisdom that told me if I didn’t worry, I would arrive exactly where I am now and MORE pleasantly.

I vented left-over toxins every now and then. And I wondered if it was true that once you put down your troubles on paper, they stay put there.

Two and half years into retirement, AM I HAVING THE TIME of my life?

Well … even though most of the jitters have fled, there are days in fact that I do magnificently, days I cope miserably, and days I just seem to get by.

Which, come to think of it, is almost the exact same way my younger days, my pre-retirement days, used to zig and zing and zag.

So, then as now, there are days I couldn’t seem to do anything right, and days everything falls into place, and days ….. I just don’t know.

But I DID know, ten months ago, when my blogs were compiled into a thin volume entitled “IN ANOTHER DRESS” then published and launched, I could almost glimpse the “BEST that was yet to be.”

And I DO KNOW THAT TODAY is another day for hoping that indeed age is an opportunity, much like youth, though dressed differently.

Thank you, Vibal Foundation and Vee Press for reincarnating the book in the digital sphere, for making possible this opportune, exciting, high- tech version of IN ANOTHER DRESS, making virtually the whole world its prospective reader.

Photo credits: Noemi Lardizabal Dado, Alina R. Co

They could have pranced all night ...

Only for that day, they will play dress up to the nines. The moms who blog and lunch and farmtown together, who whisper deep dark secrets to each other, and attend each other's kids' birthday bashes. Only for that one day, they won't be drudges nor grunges but rather hot mommas on the run -- but only on cam.

Both Chats and Cookie wore their dreamy wedding gowns. Chat's was off shoulder, off-white, minimalist (her word). Cookie's was a spaghetti-strapped, lightly embroidered number that couldn't by any stretch of the imagination be called maximalist. Each married ten years (more or less), they seemed to have defied the years as they fitted easily and flawlessly into the flowing white dresses they wore on the last day they were maidens. They were so pretty one could almost cry.




Cess, slender as a whisper, looked like a girl going to her first prom in a half black, half psychedelic outfit that showed off her waif-like, almost pre-pubescent-like figure and sweet countenance.

Noemi stirred excitement when she announced she was coming in the Pitoy Moreno gown her mom passed on to her but changed her mind for reasons she didn't explain. She was nonetheless glamor and sophistication personified in what she settled for -- her silver wedding anniversary outfit. A maroon, off-shoulder, gown with a darling sparkling side accent.


Anna showed up in a two-piece burgundy ensemble. Snug. Sleeveless, backless, strapless. Audacious for someone well past 60 and who for 30 years considered it unchaste to wear anything more revealing than three-fourths sleeved and sabrina-necked blouses. But what the heck, what did she write "In Another Dress" for?


At professional photographer-blogger Mike Yu's residence-cum-studio at Bel-air Village, Noemi, Cess, Cookie, Chats and Anna posed and preened and pranced and strutted, as Mike gave out directions: "smile," "ok, look serious," "now, act wacky." He was generous with his "greats" and "nices" and "perfects" as he clicked away.

The ladies also pranced in informal outfits and costumes and props they thought represented the themes of their personal blog sites. Chats was the quintessential Fitness Doyenne as she posed in jogging pants and sports jacket, while Cess sat for the camera wearing the uncanny combination of shorts and tees and angel's wings, a subtle symbol of what a young, stay-at-home mom ought to be to stay afloat and keep sane.

At one point, one of the ladies fretted: "Oh, dear, we are all dressed up with nowhere to go?!"

Nowhere to go?

But didn't they go to "town, " a metaphorical town ? -- and painted it red, had the time of their lives, behaved like dorks or divas (take your pick), did something they've never done before except perhaps in their imagination, and did it with all the flaire and elan and bravura they could muster? Mike thought they were "naturals." "Natural for what," it didn't occur to any one to ask.

Perhaps this is one of the late-life adventures the most senior of the ladies subliminally foresaw when she wishfully subtitled her ode20ld blogsite "THE BEST IS YET TO BE." It should be right there ... along with her bucket list of visiting Bohol and Batanes, of writing a book, of walking in the rain, of drinking one too many, of picking her neighbor's rosal flowers when the neighbor is not looking.

How did the blogging moms end up in Mike's studio, making like one-day celebrities? Blame it on the stars maybe. Better still blame it on Noemi who moves with Mike in bloggers circles. Blame it on Noemi's penchant for dragging along her barx when she gets exciting invitations like Mike's.



Yes, Mike Yu, who is between photographing stints abroad, has been taking photos of bloggers for several months now for his Bloggers Gallery project. Before the end of the year, he plans to gather and showcase the photos into an exhibit.

(Mike, we all feel lucky to have been photographed by you and perhaps make it to your exhibit. Thanks and hugs to pretty Bambi who wielded her magic brushes and combs to transform us or at least for trying to, while engaging us in her charming chika. )

P.S. Wench, you missed the adventure, and what an adventure. Rolly, thanks for "... as a whisper."

Over the Hill and Blogging

On the edge of retirement, I became a blogger.

When I began my blog, I thought I’d write about the truest thing of myself I could think of -- that I was growing old, miserable, and afraid.

My first blog pieces rankled with pre-retirement jitters. I made fun of my fears at best, fed on them at worst with dramatic flourishes.

My sister, a government lawyer, died 10 months after she retired. Technically, it was a conspiracy of diabetes, asthma, hypertension and depression that did her in. But virtually, she stopped the clock herself with her own obstinate refusal to live empty days with husband gone, work done, and children flown from the coop.

I had reason to be paranoid, hadn’t I?

As I kept blogging, I was surprised the negative vibes eased.

With its requisite introspection, blogging could have put me in touch with higher wisdom, an inner guru that tells me I would have arrived exactly where I am now without worrying – and more pleasantly.

With its requisite raising of external awareness, blogging made me watch out for opportunities to try new things, meet new people, and to look at experiences with a sharp eye for the instructive, comic, unusual or O. Henri-esque twist, with which to hug, tug or at least nudge the reader.

Can it be true that once you put down toxin on paper or -- uhrrmmm -- onscreen, it stays put there?

Most obviously, blogging became a hedge against my fear of a life bereft of purpose. It was something I could do with a passion well into antiquity, as long as rheumy eyes can still peer and squint and gout-stiff fingers touch-type.

I have since retired.

My blogs no longer brooded as unrelentingly as before. From one day to the next, I could be distraught or upbeat or just lackluster, and the temper of my blog pieces could swing with my inner pendulum. By turns, I reminisced about lost youth, paid tribute to someone important to me, philosophized about my losses, made mountains out of little mounds of achievements, laughed at my spotty record as mom-wife-sister-worker-friend-neighbor, celebrated the first- time wonder of being grandmother, vented disappointments and frustrations and leftover dreams and aspirations. I also narrated stories of women who confided in me their hurts for an aborted book project a decade ago.

In short, I blogged chunks of my life and pieces of my mind.

Two and a half years into blogging, I have yet to discover the secret to being old and happy. Nor am I that convinced that the best is truly to come. But I now know without doubt that when I learn to love myself, I wouldn't care how old I got. I am getting there both in years and in self- esteem.

I also know now that much like youth and the middle years, old age is what we make it. Getting old does not take away our capacity to laugh (or cry), to be passionate (or nonchalant), to get involved (or stay detached), to grow (or atrophy) . And it does not completely disenfranchise us from making the usual life’s choices.

We can choose to be old and hopeful.

Sometimes, I still forget. But as I blog on, I am constantly reminded.

(Draft intro to a prospective book that's half reality and half in the realm of dreams)

Here's One for Rachel

Rachel is a biblical character who personifies filial love and devotion of the highest order.

In Heart of Rachel, the blog, the reader can follow the everyday life of a modern
Rachel, but one whose family is intact. This is the life that revolves around Yohan (Rachel's one and still only child) and her loving husband. I haven't seen Yohan but I am privy to his sweetness, pranks, and wisdom, prodigious for his age -- including what Rachel has called 'yohanisms.' I guess I am one of hundreds who have followed Yohan's growing up with much delight and anticipation, through the blog. It is for me like having a virtual grandson. :)

The blog brims over with the simple and complicated pleasures and challenges of motherhood. A feel- good blog, through and through.

I vote for Heart of Rachel for bloggers' choice in the Philippine Blog Awards.

Catching the Blog Bug

(A slightly edited version of this post was published in Sunday Inquirer Magazine, September 30, 2007. Click here and here for the SIM pieces. )

In this digital age, when people meet socially, they exchange mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Now, they have begun to swap web and blog addresses, too.

Having a blog is a badge of honor among serious internet users. It is like saying: ‘I have my online home; you have yours. I visit you; you visit me.”

As they read and comment on each other’s posts, bloggers form friendships and build an online society like no other. This is known as the blogosphere where members converse, share ideas, join forces for some common cause, arrange to meet face-to-face, and, yes, differ and bicker.

Bloggers are arguably the crème de la crème of Internet users. Their demography reveals they are young (15-35), highly literate, and upwardly mobile. They are perceived as an influential group that can persuade, mold public opinion, sell products.

Big business is waking up to the power of bloggers to inform and influence. Globe Telecom began the trend of gathering bloggers in product launches and other events. SM Hypermarket elevated it a notch with blogger parties, a blogging contest, and blogsites of its own. Product development and marketing staff of food companies are known to monitor food blogs to feel the customer pulse. Restaurants like Portico and Max’s Fried Chicken invite bloggers to sample their menu and ambiance. Meanwhile, the number of businesses placing advertising spots on high-traffic blogs is growing.

Blogging power was palpably demonstrated recently when a newspaper columnist, earning collective bloggers’ ire with her elitist remarks against OFWs, buckled down, apologized and offered to resign.

Already questions are being asked of blogs as a new medium of “citizen journalism.” Will they threaten paper-and-ink newspapers and magazines? Will they push out more traditional websites? How much more impact can they make on doing business?

Blogging wasn’t too respectable in the late 1990s when the first blogs appeared. Back then, a blog was little more than an online diary or journal of events. It was at first dismissed as an easy, sleazy way of publicly revealing or promoting oneself.

Today, there are an estimated 200,000 Pinoy bloggers -- from about 40,000 a year ago -- and hundreds of different kinds of blogs. Many are still very personal and journal-like. Some are philosophical, political, family-oriented. There are blogs for every hobby or interest imaginable: sports, music, entertainment, food, home, arts and crafts, fashion and style, health and fitness. There are individual and group blogs or networks; business, professional, technology, and advocacy blogs.

Many bloggers are frustrated writers who find instant gratification in blogging. “I am oh-so familiar with rejection slips,” admits one newbie blogger. “Now I am my own author, editor and publisher.”

There are, of course, blogs and blogs and those that have made it. “Making it” may mean differently to different bloggers. It may mean making big bucks out of blogging, winning a prestigious award, or simply being read by thousands of loyal followers.

Any “A list” of local blogsites will include yugatech.com by Abe “Yuga” Olandres, widely regarded pioneer and master among Pinoy bloggers. Blogging since 2000, he owns many other sites and portals that earn income for him. Bloggers and readers log on to his pinoytopblogs.com for an objective ranking of the best blogsites by popularity and category.

Another blogging pioneer is J. Angelo Racoma, who talks about making money from blogging at The Jspot (racoma.com.ph). He knows whereof he speaks: he left a comfortable 8-5 job to blog fulltime. He now works from home as editor-in-chief of an international blogging network, which enables him to hire his kababayan as bloggers, researchers, and web designers. The Racomas are a blogging family – from the matriarch, Dine, 49 down to the baby, Alan, Jr., 11.

Connie Veneracion, who quit lawyering for mothering, founded pinoymomsnetwork.com this February and parlayed it months later into a widely-read electronic magazine run by about a hundred members who exchange mommy stories. Connie, who began blogging in 2003, is also the author of two food blogs, pinoycook.com and pinoyfoodtalk.net.

Noemi Lardizabal-Dado, may be a come-lately, but her months-old aboutmyrecovery.com won last year the first ever blogging category of the Philippine Web Awards which used to recognize websites only. She writes about bouncing back from the loss of her young son and translating grief into positive energy through various advocacies, including support for the bereaved.

Olandres, Racoma, and Dado are all professional bloggers who have succeeded in monetizing their blogs on the basis of readership volume. Olandres, however, warns “blogging is no get-rich-quick scheme” and that “blogging is for everyone but earning from blogs is for a few.”

The inception of the Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) this year was an unmistakable signal blogging has finally come to its own. According to Jayvee Fernandez, award co-organizer and another master blogger (abuggedlife.com), blogs are judged by a panel representing both mainstream and the new blogging media, on quality of content, consistency in sticking to niche topics, frequency of blogging, popularity, and design.

PBA’s plum “bloggers’ choice award” was won by Market Man of marketmanila.com authored by a semi-retired management consultant who writes about “overspending in markets and food shops,” “chopping vegetables for therapy,” and cooking up a storm in his kitchen with a six-burner Viking stove, three refrigerators, and 200 cookbooks.

Here are other winners of the first ever Philippine Blog Awards in various categories:

Personal: misteryosa.com (views and reviews of a Filipina)
Home and living: Wifely Steps at toni.marikit.com
Socio-political: philippinecommentary.blogspot.com
News and media: Inside PCIJ at pcij.org.blog
Fashion and lifestyle: Bryanboy: Le Superstar Fabuleux at bryanboy.typepad.com
Technology: Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments at max.limpag.com
Business/Entrepreneurship: Reflections of a BizDrivenLife at ngkhai.net/bizdrivenlife
Entertainment: retzwerx.com (Filipino entertainment at its best)
Sports and recreation: whoridesavespa.com (all about motorcycling with a Vespa)
Travel: Ivan About Town at ivanhenares.com (personal travelogues in 46 of 81 Phlippine provinces).

Janette Toral, e-commerce guru, who blogs at digitalfilipino.com launched her own “Top Ten Emerging Influential Bloggers” awards last June which recognized new bloggers based on endorsement by peers.

But long before A-listers began to blog, there was Lauren Dado, the first known Pinoy blogger, who published an untitled journal in 1996, when ready-made blogging platforms and templates were unheard of. She created her site from scratch, at 10, with self-taught html language. Now 21 and an IT professional, Lauren still blogs at laurganism.com.

Lauren Dado at 10 (left) and at 21 with mom Noemi (right).

THANK YOU, SM HYPERMARKET

Thank you, SM Hypermarket:

• for my first ever big bloggers bash last Thursday, August 23 at Mall of Asia.
• for the drinks that flowed and the buffet table that groaned (with my fave shrimp tempura and baked tahong and other yummies)
• for my prized, pricey pair of Nike shades, a consolation win in the blogwriting contest that consoled me no end, never mind that it was spirited away by son within minutes of arriving home.
• for the bag of groceries I should have won if daughter had agreed to stay just five minutes more.
• for having it all and giving it all -- without stint -- for blogger me and other 399 bloggers who gathered together.
• for fun, fun, fun!
  

Here are some reminiscences of the bloggers night .. in pics.

Being called on stage to receive a prize

Feeling almost as vibrant as buddies Chats, Cookie, Weng and Rhodora

Posing happily with kids who came with mom

Be updated and interact with SM Hypermarkt through its blog.

IMAGES FROM A DREADED TAPING

I'm better read than heard. But still, nowadays, better heard than seen. Plus I never really overcame a bad case of public speaking jitters, despite my age, despite mind-over-matter mantras, despite numerous lecturing assignments where I work.

So when Noemi Dado texted me I was among three bloggers Lifestyle Channel wanted to interview for a feature on blogging moms, I hemmed and hawed.

But wait, I self-talked, giving myself more credit than I would normally claim: "You're now Annamanila, aren't you?" Annamanila, the self-styled goldie but goodie. The one Gibbs Cadiz describes as an inspiration -- ahem -- "for other seniors not only to embrace technology but also to thrive in it."

So I sent word I was game.

Even then, when video-taping day drew near I wished for a minor catastrophe. Maybe, I'd get sideswiped by a car and dislocate my ankle. Maybe an attack of gout would put me out of commission for a day or two. Maybe, I'd have sore eyes, or mumps, or measles or colic -- anything that would give me airtight alibi for ducking out of the dreaded taping!

But July 19 came and I was, alas, intact.

So, I showed up (as though I don't always show up) at Tea Leaf and Coffee Beans at Eastwood, where the interviews were held.

I don't remember much about that morning, believe it or else. I only recall a vague sense of excitement.

The production staff were fantastic professionals, who made us feel relaxed. The makeup man was a magician, whose magic I defied. Mas maganda pala si Chiqui Roa in person, and so slim! And Cathy Babao -- I was prepared to gush to her about her mom (as though there's anyone who doesn't gush over Caridad Sanchez). But I must have gushed over her instead, so floored was I with Cathy's mestiza looks and unassuming ways. And Noemi, my ole friend Noemi, was her usual poised and cool and charming self, still at that late hour trying to pep-talk me.

I don't know how the episode would go when it finally airs, how ghastly I'd look, how much I had stuttered, or even if they hadn't edited me out of it altogether.

Whatever, watch it with me ... this Friday night, 10 PM (replay the next day at 10 AM), Lifestyle Channel, Momworks. Mombloggers talk about why they blog, what they blog about, the unexpected rewards of blogging, and what it takes to blog.

BLOGGERS, BEWARE!

When I began blogging seven months ago, I didn't bargain for a lot of things.

I didn't dream I'd get hooked; that there'd be (very) little else I'd rather do.

I didn't reckon I'd belong to a cool kewl community of bloggers, eyeball to the max, win "thinking," rocking," "schmoozing" blogger's badges, co-edit a Pinoy mom's electronic magazine, be featured in a newspaper, get interviewed on television.

And I most certainly didn't count on making a quick buck.

All I wanted was to help my favorite newbie bloggers win when I participated in e-commerce guru Janette Toral's "Top Ten Emerging Influential Bloggers" competition.

All of my nominees -- Dine Racoma, Gibbs Cadiz, and The Philosophical Bastard -- landed on the top ten. As though that weren't enough, I won with them, in a fashion -- $$$ in the side draw!

So all I can say now is: Thank you, Janette Toral and sponsors; Congrats all winners (of either puri or pera); and ...

Beware, bloggers!

Aww, Awarded I Am

Lemme see, is it: I rock, therefore I think? Or I think, therefore I rock?

If I am trying mightily to draw out existentialist meanings to blogging, thinking and rocking -- it's just from wanting to show I am truly entitled to the Thinking and Rocking Blogger awards given to me by esteemed blogging buddies. That I just didn't happen to be passing by with my umbrella open upside down when the awards were raining down. That Rachel and Gypsy and Singlguy weren't just mesmerized with my looks and style and charm (Ahem!). And that I didn't bribe them .

Seriously, now. Every blogger worth her dashboard knows blogging is its own reward, much like virtue. And to be given premiums -- medals, trophies, citations (and even tens of dollars and freebies) -- for blogging .. then that deserves an AWWWWWW! As in "Aw can't believe it .. you like me, you really like me (with apologies to Sally Fields.)"

Singl, Gypsy and Rach: I cannot tell you how much I appreciate these gifts -- especially coming from you who I so admire for -- well, what else, blogging, thinking and rocking. Its only measure is my inability to say how much. These are the first awards I ever received for blogging and I pin the medals on the lapel of my heart.

Before I flood this piece with gush and mawk, histrionics and hyperbolics ... let me compose myself and pass on the trophies as I have been instructed to do.

The envelopes please.

ROCKING AWARDS

The Rocking Girl award, is passed on to:

• Noemi, quintessential Prime-time Gal, who translated grief into positive energy, inspiring and giving hope to those who suffered excruciating losses like her -- as she now shines and shines. and rocks
  
• Chateau, Queen of Quirks -- the one, the only who can beat my own royal weirdness. She's very kalog and funny -- though she has to unfreeze first before she goes campy. With a heart soft as marshmallow for Nate, Patricia, Vgood and Technohub and big enough to embrace new friends like me.


• Leah, woman of many talents, not least of them mothering. wifery and blogging with savvy and wisdom and facility of language.


• Gina , whose cheerfulness and goodness of heart and humility just runneth over her blog site.
• Rhodora - blogger after my own heart, goldie, too, though many karats younger. Often giggly like me. Coping with life's ups and downs bravely. I like it, really like it, that she is in Law school pursuing an early dream. Rock on, Rhoda baby.

THINKING BLOGGERS AWARD

Now, the second envelope please. The Thinking Blogger award is passed on to:

• Chesca - whose pieces shift from being really down-to-earth to funny to absolutely deep and intellectual but not pointedly so. And her writing style, ooh, is to die for!
  
• Abaniko - whose "soul" is often kept in check in his posts on everyday things (travel, scrabble, badminton, photography, restaurants) but somehow sneaks out every now and then. The guy's got brains! which he doesn't flaunt.
  
• Myepinoy - though he blogs peripherally and is sometimes deliberately careless with his grammar (his words, not mine) he is an acute observer of events and is usually able to catch a different take on a subject ). Even his comments to others' posts are so well thought out they could be blog pieces in themselves.


• Toe - Need I say anything about Toe? When she first visited me, I felt like Mohammed being visited by the mountain. An illustrada whose heart is in the right place : with the masa.


• Vernaloo - One has got to have great thinking caps to make people laugh so hard and so consistently. She is at her best when laughing at herself. I sometimes call her "The Raconteur." And, yes, Candida -- go figure.

!!Now, the awardees are supposed to hand down the awards to bloggers of their choice!!

MY PARTIAL "TOP TEN EMERGING INFLUENTIAL BLOGGERS"

Speaking of awards, I take this opportunity to address e-commerce guru Janet Toral and submit my partial list of nominees to her "Top Ten Emerging Influential Bloggers" award: GIBBS CADIZ , theatre blogger without equal whose blogging has influenced others to appreciate and write Philippine theatre and music and art; DINE RACOMA aka SEXY MOM of D-spot for her prolific and exemplary blogs on parenting and family life, continuing education, friendship, and other values we hold dear; and PHILOSOPHICAL BASTARD for his not so bastardy and definitely philosophical takes on his young life.

Note: I deliberately didn't cite a blogger twice, though the line between thinking, rocking and influencing can be so thin. And I didn't give back any award to their source as we may end up just tossing the ball, sweet ball, to each other -- in the manner of mutual admiration societies.

The Fine Art of Blogging (Blogging Woohoos)

Whenever I am asked what I like to read, I am hard pressed to put across the diversity -- call it mishmash -- of my reading fare. So I say simply: "From comics to classics."

A like predicament confronts me now that I have been asked by Diogenes of http://www.quasifictionalviews.blogspot.com what blogging is to me. I feel a similar sense of being stumped, a familiar sense of boundlessness. Unfortunately, unlike the first question, I haven't worked out a cute-smug answer to the second.

Let me see ...

Three months into blogging, I find it to be the freest, most generous, and most flexible form of self expression there is on line.

There is no limit to blog content, subject, language, tenor. I think it can only be bound by one's imagination.

The art of blogging can be as fine as Picasso's art or Shelley's poetry or as crass as a bedtime story or an anthology of toilet humor. But by and large, it is somewhere in between. Mine is.

In the short spell I have been a blogger, I have published two short stories, a poem, and a daughter's award-winning piece. I have found myself sharing a piece of my mind, writing my heart out, reminiscing about my lost youth, paying tribute to someone I love or admire from one day to the next. Soon, I just might blog my bile out -- hoping to expectorate some overstaying toxins.

What I have not done (yet) is to blog a daily journal of events. Much less an hourly one which seems to be the fad among bloggers these days -- I think they call it twittering?

By and large, I prefer to blog about action that takes place within (my mind) rather than without (my external, material world).

What I like most about the blogworld is it has become an open marketplace of ideas through posts and counter-posts. (Fortunately or unfortunately, Philippine bloggers are way too courteous to argue openly and fiercely on issues, no matter how controversial. I haven't seen too much disagreements and the little I find rarely ignite into full-scale conflagrations or debates.)

When I strayed into this cool, kewl blog-a-day world, I thought I'd do it peripherally, given my superwoman roles of mother, wife, worker -- not to mention less reputable roles of mediocre online scrabbler and badminton pulot girl.

I couldn't have known I would be hooked-lined-sunk.

Nowadays, it's the first thing I do when I wake and the last thing I do before bed. It has infused a get-up-and-go into my morning, given "rise and shine" a new meaning. Beats cafe cappucino!

At work it has led me to the wonders of multi-tasking. I key in one paragraph of open-faced manual or book-writing, then two paragraphs of stealthy blogging. Between the legitimate and the illegitimate, my days fly like a song.

Nighttime is quiet, guilt-free time to indulge it. I begin 10-ish and before I know it, its -- omg -- past 1:00 of the unwelcome new morning. Blogging crunches time better than a Spielberg movie or a Steinbeck or Bob Ong book. Doesn't it sometimes make you wonder why people hafta sleep?

It has (re)connected me with friends, old and new. An old office colleague -- who turned out to be in the local blogging "who's who" -- welcomed me with band music and ticker tape parade (Exag!). A high school friend popped up like a sweet meteor from the blue (No exag!).

I got to meet middling mom bloggers who like me felt OP at first. Together, we agreed to try to crack the youth-dominated blogsphere as denizens every bit as entitled (I think we're getting there). Later, I was recruited into Philippine Moms Network where I got to meet more mothers -- hot babes and cool bloggers all.

A blogging berks -- 20-ish, 30-ish all -- made me forget I had joints about to get unhinged. How musical their posts sound, with the ma'am, tita, po and opo deleted. Those who insisted on paying respect were asked to use nanamanila instead. Some of them swear I write so coolly and so hiply they couldn't tell my demographics from theirs and admirably hid their shock when they met ole Mrs. Grundy in four dimensions.

I have all these problems with techie stuff, given that my personal "hard disk" has a built-in firewall against them. And you know what?! -- I got to meet IT-savvy bloggers who'd listen to my "Help!" yelps and has designed (awesome) graphic headers for me, helped me link and put up blogrolls, taught me to cut and paste, and otherwise offered to spoon-feed and hand-hold by remote control.

And I nearly forgot -- I went into blogging as a hedge against fear of retirement. And now, I feel I can't wait to retire.

Isn't this better than it gets? Woohoo!

(Will try to write about bloggging boo-hoos/boo-boos later.)

(This piece is also published at quasifictionalviews.)

A "Little Gift" from Tsukuba

I am not sure why he did it.

• Out of dismay over a blogsite so bereft of artistic design value?
• Out of compassion for the elderly, infirm, and techie-challenged?
• Out of boredom one "nothing-better-to-do" afternoon at Tsukuba -- with cherryblossoms yet to bloom, Nippongo exams a month over, and doctoral dissertation still a year away?
• (Simply) Out of goodness of heart?
• (Simply) As a way of saying: "What are blog buddies for?"

Whatever his reason, Dimaks of Ctl + Alt + Delete did the incredible : Design, without being asked, an exquisitely customized theme graphic for ode2old!

It was everything I wanted the theme to be -- the title bannered over a magnificent sunset, setting off the best of light and dark. The yellows and golds do not dazzle, the blacks and grays do not forebode. It is a graphic expression of: "the day is done, long live the night!"

How he knew exactly what to do -- I will let him perhaps blog about. (ha ha)

The good news is Dimaks answered, when I worried he might be deluged with header-customization requests after this gets published: "No problem."

The line forms to the left, buddies! Hey, no more freebies now. Dimaks got himself a manager. And she doesn't only like sunsets but also $$$. $eriou$ :)