yey

my first five pencil rating in igougo.com here!

cool!

igougo.com is a website where any individual can write travel reviews about any place in the world. my good friend, rowie, recommended it to me since she knows i love traveling. i registered 2005, but it was only this year that i actually started logging in entries.

they rate entries from one star (which is not a star but a pencil) to five stars, with five being the highest. my average is three stars, which is when they start handing out points. i've had four stars before, but i don't think i bothered reading about it on my e-mail until today.

i never realized how cool it was to get such an affirmation for doing something i enjoy! traveling and writing about it. see here!

Hi manlalakbay,

Journal Name: Davao: Touring the Home Front
Journal Entry: Kadayawan Festival

We just wanted to take a minute to send you a special "thanks" for contributing to IgoUgo. We're happy to award you one of our top ratings—and valuable GO Points^SM—for this phenomenal review. As a top contributor, you won't want to miss:

• The variety of great rewards you'll earn by writing more reviews like this one
• A chance to make your reviews shine even more (and rack up more GO Points^SM) by uploading your vacation photos
• The IgoUgo Hall of Fame, where our all-time top contributors are recognized for their travel expertise and superlative journals

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us directly. Thanks again—we look forward to reading about many more of your travels in the future!

Sincerely,

Your IgoUgo Editors

How great is that! Getting a four-star is really tough already, but I hope I can get a five-star soon. :)

hello.

buhay pa ako.
pagod.
pero buhay.

nagpaparamdam lang.

uncle tom babauta's cabin

he is one of those people who has made me feel like an 80's child failure.

i've only come across him through conversations with jvp friends about the 80's, of which most of my stock knowledge are on bagets, hot shots and ninja kids. even dear heart and ps i love you are hazy memories. except for the fact that i clearly remember most sharon cuneta movies are shot in baguio.

pia, zaza, teacher mike and good old randle discuss about tom's (uy, close!) sarsi with egg commercial. and i have no memory of such but heard about the ad. i asked if tom babauta was his screen name. apparently, it's not.

so when jan and i spent time with his friends v-day eve, i made mention of tom babauta. to which mytch and andoy, both older than me, replied with blank faces (same response to randle's name. that is queer! i thought every ateneo high dude would know him. anyway...). i suddenly had doubts that he (tom, not randle) is merely a mass hallucination by people older than 27.

i completely forgot about that awkward moment of being the only one knowing something of the world. until i came across nostalgia manila's entry on 70's quotes. and lo! a mention on tom babauta.

and to completely verify his existence, i googled him (yes, wahaha! "i am in google, therefore i am. the new movement of philosophical thought has come!) and aha! a mention here and here. (but it could be that one plagiarized the other, or they are the same people who wrote about dear tom.)

still. HE IS REAL! HE EXISTS! Tom Babauta is not in the same league of the Tooth Fairy.

And what good does this knowledge have to do with my life? Absolutely nothing. Except for the satisfaction that my 80's Jologs Trivia has upped a notch. ;p

online flirting

i decided to check out my old myspace blog. admittedly, i wrote better back then. maybe it was because of my subconscious frustration for not having a partner. or maybe because someone i had a "one-night stand" (for most of the night we were chatting while standing) with was reading my entries occasionally that i had to sound smarter than i was. hehe!

rueful and hopeful

Ah.

I disappoint myself.

Just a few moments ago, I had to urge to read random posts from biyaheng mindanao. Seeing portions of how I wrote back then made me realize that I hardly gave time to getting the right words to express and organize the many thoughts that mill about in my mind.

The past few months, my posts have been pretty reckless and feckless that it is almost obscene. To me anyway. Looking back at biyaheng mindanao has shown me that.

It’s a waste of a God-given gift. I’m not a great writer, but I know I can write. And I have put it to waste by merely listing down whatever comes to mind, be it crap or gold, without real thought or introspection. This year, I have merely hopped on from one person’s blog to another and whined, “how come they write so well, but I can’t.” Bah. I never even bothered to try.

Maybe because I have become impatient. So impatient that there is I merely spew words that my fingers would type, rather then mull about it and decipher what I mean to say.

I apologize. Not to people who read what I write, for they have the option to merely shrug off the shit I post. I apologize to no one but myself. My personal history written on this blog has been tarnished because I have fallen short of what I can be in things that I have potential in. Mayhap it be fear of having to work hard then ending up a failure, mayhap it be for the imagined lack of time.

May the words I quill in, not only for this blog, for other things as well, be a reflection of what I really am capable of. Rather than being merely a potential. Twenty eight years of potential is bound to smell fetid and rotten if left unused.

I pray that I celebrate myself this 2007.

Is this vanity? Perhaps. In my heart, I celebrate all the people that are in my life. Those who have journeyed with me in 2006 and the years past, be it physically or in spirit. Every time possible, my dears, I whisper a prayer for you. A simple but sincere one, one that seeks your safety and fulfilled desires.

And yet I have forgotten to celebrate myself. Many a time, I have lashed upon my back for doing wrong or not being good enough. But rarely a cheer or encouragement for a job well done.

That is injustice. What have I really got? What do I really hold? Only me. Only my identity. Only my gifts. And I ignore it. Bah. Injustice.

…
…
…

Ummmmmm… that felt great! The rush of words from mind to fingers… May this be the start of something promising.

Happy New Year everyone.

Though my nose be clogged, I smell things of interest. The sulfur from a dragon’s breath, newly-sliced apples, squeezed oranges, the imagined stench of a durian, the noxius fumes of car exhaust, the tinkling of fairy wings.

Though the my skin prickles with cold, I also sense a coming evolution on many levels. Let us be ready with our prayers and our faith.

May we learn from the past.
May we hope for a better future.
May we live in the present.
May we all celebrate ourselves, both our flaws and our beauty!