An hour ago (around 9 in the evening), I was reading the Philippine Star after my mom bought it when she left the house earlier that morning. I was so relieved since my day is incomplete without my dose of PhilStar. So I was turning page by page and ended up reading this article from my fave lifestyle writer, Paulo Azcarazen which is, and always still about the glory that is old Manila. But I’ll tell you more about that later. Sooner after, I was flipping at the SUPREME section of the Star and find myself reading (for the second time) a feature story written by Gino Dela Paz.

   It’s been a week since I actually read an article of his, for which his take on tried-and-tested yet “terribly awful” formats used on certain Philippine program genres really caught my eye. This time, his latest eye-catching piece is all about the matter of blogging. To make the long story short, he’s been a blogger himself since 2002 and only stopped a year ago, not out of boredom but for “property-intellectual rights” reasons as well as trying to balance being a blogger who post 2-3 entries a day and being a writer for a respectable paper such as the Philippine Star.

  Sa totoo lang, I kind of agree with him. Sometimes, when you start something new, it initially gets to you and before you know, it never stops until the time comes that the steam coming out of doing it begins to dwindle out of your interest. Gino may have lost interest when blogging became a kinda of a trend for which the common tao would show their stuff much the same way that they did to other social networking communities like Friendster, MySpace, Youtube, and recently Facebook.

  Since 2001, I’ve been in the online social networking thing and right now, I’m active at several community forums as well as a few social network sites.

  I still remember how I got hooked over blogging. It was last March and me and my batch of graduating hopefuls are about to gain our freedom after 4 years of torment and joy under the ruling dictatorship. My friend Dianne indirectly introduced me to Multiply when she posted a blog entry and had the link posted on YM. I wanna comment on her post but I have to register and that was how it al began. Now, I’ve made around 107 published and unpublished posts. Not sure though when I would stop.

  It’s always weird on how I make such blog posts, including the ridiculous titles for them. If you wanna know my secret on making a “J-Blog”, here’s how:

1. There must be something, or someone that would spark an interest for you to write about. It can be a person, a place, a thing, or even an unfortunate event happened to you. (For example, whenever I take the jeep ride home to Valenzuela from Monumento, Caloocan City, I have to bear the ever annoying filibustering of Mamang Barker who does nothing but hit on us commuters while at the same time, having a smoke)
2. Your mind would suddenly undergo brainstorming the moment it caught the attention of such. You would mentally compose your proposed blog post. Skip to the actual writing, you would print out through you fingers your “mental draft” over the matter.
3. Here’s the most difficult, having to think a very eye-raising title to your blog. It has to reflect the content of your blog so that your readers would raise interest on reading it, if ever it tickles their fancy. It doesn’t have to be overly ridiculous or boringly simple, but just right. (Remember the controversial “La Muda Chillon” post? The entry’s title caught the attention of more than 25 bloggers passing by, and before you know it, the blog ended up with having around 500 views in total).
4. Write it like you’ve never write before. From the start, you really need have an idea of what you’re suppose to write from the very start. Without it, you’ll end up getting tired of writing something not worth your time nor the electricity bill Meralco would charge to your parents. Take it from me, the reason, I had more than 100 posts (including still unfinished and unpublished ones) is that I know what I’m writing about and once I do, it’s only a breeze. The fun part is that I get to finish one blog for an average of 2 hours (long posts usually) and 1 hour at least (for shorter ones), thanks to my fast typing fingers and my brain-fixed ability to unknowingly recognize keys from the keyboard without looking or not looking at the monitor while writing with minimal errors. That’s how it feels to be IN THE ZONE.

   So far, I have a lot of things that I wanna write and yet I can’t write them all because not all the time kailangan ko isulat ang lahat ng mga hinagpis ko nor anything that crosses my mind unless I have to (like this one). Not really sure when I would actually stop blogging since I’m still hooked to it much. Other than that, I don’t really have the kind of pressure that Gino dela Paz may have trying to balance being a PhilStar writer an a blogger. I’m not a professional writer but I love to write since it serves as my comfort zone, an alter ego, a friend. Gino’s main reason for it is that blogging had become too mainstream but it became mainstream because of people like him in the first place, plus he’s concerned about identity theft or something.

  I’m not totally close from the last thing that I’ve mention but if you feel your heart is with this, then go pursue it. No one could stop us from doing what we wanna do except for ourselves so let them be. To close this conversation, I just hope this 108th blog would become a big inspiration to everyone.

ENJOy!

Sa mga nahihirtapinh magsalin ng mga Western Songs sa Wikang Pambansa. Pakinggan ninyo ang awiting isinalin ni Michael hango sa Spice Girls na “2 Become 1” at sana’y ma-“inspire” tayo lahat!

    Last wednesday, may pagkaweird ang araw ko. Di ko kasi maasahan na kahit araw ng Halloween ay may magseseryoso. Heto ang kabuuan ng kuwento.

    Nung umaga bago pa man nagsimula ang klase, naidlap ko sina Hoogie, Marlon at Issi sa may canteen a.k.a. CAF. Nagtaka ako sa sinusuot nila mula sa malayo kaya nilapitan ko. Looks like they have already feel the Halloween spirit. Hoogie in a mala-Matrix outift, Marlon with a glowing red horn na head band. And Issi?…First guess is Dr. Seuss but all she can say is….”Guess again…”.

    Later that afternoon, I chanced upon one of the many DV students I usually see during 10-minute intervals. She’s all wearing gothic black with black wings stuck at her back. She wore that the whole day, I guess so medyo weird out lang ako.

    Ang nakakatawa lang talaga when Ferdie and Niko made a reason why role-playing is fun. I can’t really tell you guys exactly the details but if you want, you can check out Mandz’s take on those two guyz to see why. Right now, I’m still laughing just thinking about it, lalo na nung isang beses na tumili si Niko na parang “aaaaaghhh!” and Ferdie was like “YOU KILLED MY DOGGIE!!!”. Hehehehehehehe…!

    Hoogie was having a Halloween party at their place, so that pretty explains the Keannu Reeves outfit (if its not the matrix, maybe UNERTAKER?). Well, I couldn’t really say how I should describe him so I said, “Si hoogie parang Rock Sheik”. Mikee corrected me for it is supposed to be “Rock Chic”. Di ko kasi alam ang tamang term kung ano ang tawag sa male equivalent sa rock chic so I went for sheik na lang para as if si Hoogie ay namamahala ng isang sheikdom.

    Yah, bago ko nga pala makalimutan, kahit hindi Black Friday, dami akong nakitang nakablack sa CSB. So weird….

Dream #1-Billy Crawford Tried to Shoot My Sister a.k.a Billy Crawford Killed Kuya
    Hehehe, This is not really one that I have dreamt about but that of my Ate. That was last Sunday, October the 21st. She just woke up when the rest of us Habitan siblings are eating champorado for breakfast. Mom’s away in Korea and my dad is the one looking after us.

    Looking disoriented as she goes downstairs to have a piece of that camporado, she quickly remembered what she wanna say to us and here it goes:

    She had a dream last night that she and Kuya Evan was riding in a van. Ate’s at the back while Kuya was at the passenger seat at front. There was a mamang driver fetching them to wherever they were headed to. All of a sudden, police vehicles were at guarding at that section of the road that the van was heading to and there was this very unfamiliar vehicle with an oh-so familiar face driving it, Billy Crawford, as in the very Billy Joe Crawford. Well, what do you expect? Simon Cowell?

    Back to the story, the police were blocking that side of the road and the two older siblings were caught in the crossfire. The police moved back but Billy Crawford came nearing to the van where Ate and Kuya were. Even if there were back-up guarding the van’s behind, they can’t get close to Billy as he is too near the ate and the kuya.

    He brought out a gun and aimed it towards the front view window. Ate was so scared she told Kuya and the driver to hide. But it was too late, Billy came in front and shoot the brains out of Kuya and the dirver, dead! Now, the already terrified Ate has more reason to be terrified-Billy aimed the gun at her and as he pulled the trigger of the gun, she screamed and woke back to reality.

    Wow, ha…she nearly got starstrucked literally. Hehehe. We couldn’t stop but laugh as how she told us her dream. There was not an explanantion why Billy went mad but it’s all over…for now…

Dream #2-I Dream of The Breed a.k.a. How The Breed Came To Be

    Now this time, this now my dream. It was a Tuesday early moring (Otc. 23), and I had this very strange dream about deadly flesh-eating mad dogs.

    My dream was set in an island of nowhere and the inhabitants were deadly flesh-eating mad dogs. I didn’t see myself in my dream but I did witness on how the Breed came to be.

    It turnes out, they cute, fuzzy, man-friendly and harmless dogs trapped in the woods. They were of different varitey but they all moved as a herd. The reason they became the breed was that, they somehow crossed upon a large container filled with spaghetti sauce. The smell of the sauce was very inviting that it all attracted the herd and they all went for the kill-they ate the sauce.

    It turns out that the sauce has long been expired. I was not sure how was it expired, when has it been expired and how in nowhere did a container filed with rotten spaghetti sauce would end up in the iddle of the woods in the iddle of an unknown island in the iddle of the ocean?

    Suddenly, the dogs began to change in reactioon to the sauce. Finding out that it tasted awfully bad, they transformed into the vicious flesh-eating mad dogs we see on The Breed.

    Now, quite a strike of coincidence, I began to feel a sense of dejavu when I was flipping the channels on our TV around midnight several days later (October 28 I presume).  Then I came across Star Movies and was surprised that their feature movie at the time was, nothing else but The Breed. weird isn’t it? Being a very thrilling movie, it didn’t really have a good ending, but in a way it is….for the dogs.

Dream #3-I  Suddenly I Thought Of You Today and Everything that You Are

    Now, this is now dream really but a dejavu moment on one of my past dreams suddenly remembered. IIt was only last Sunday, the 28th, that I wa using the PC. I was working on a special project. Currently, I was using the Paint Program to draw potraits of people. I was only in the middle of  making  my first one when suddenly a strange feeling of familiarism  suddenly came over me.  It is as if, I  was doing  a  computer-generated potrait before.  Then came a thought of one of my past dreams  (you could say it is a vision but  surely it’s not the kind of vision  that Phoebe  experience nor Cordelia’s on TV),  a  dream about me doing the same exact activity that I was currently doing.

    So far, I’m already done with my portraits but  they are yet to be published anytime soon .

———–
It  is really mind-boggling that you get to reexperience your dreams through visions and that dejavu sense. Not only is it quite disturbing but  the kind of dreams  that I am having is sort of telling me about future events that will come  sooner or later than I would think. This phenomenon has been going to me since I was  6 years old and I do hope there would be an explanation  to it, better less than what my dreams can tell when.