Atheista -

 

Unbeknownst to most people, Helga (a fellow PBA finalist)  and I actually went a state high school in the backwater province of Laguna. Would you believe that the two of us had to do considerable manual labor in the fields (FIELDS!) for Agriculture class? We weren’t the best of friends back then but we shared the enviable task of interviewing *gasp* Slapshock at the peak of their popularity. Both of us also spent considerable time under the Advanced English program where we were trained to handle the production of our school paper. Gideon Lasco – another Philippine Blog Award recipient — is another schoolmate of mine. If I’m not mistaken, he was also one of the last people ever on the Advanced English curriculum.

We all hail from the University of the Philippine Rural Highschool in Los Baños. It’s a little known school outside of Laguna so we’re ok with just being known as UP Integrated School’s sister school in the boondocks. Despite being a virtual unknown, UPRHS or Rural as we (the Ruralites, talk about major eeew factor) affectionately call it has always had a solid performance in inter-school academic competitions and college entrance exams. Passing rates to the University of the  Philippines have always hovered above the eighty percent mark while graduates have been routinely nabbing slots in the list of Oblation Scholars and Integrated Liberal Arts – Medicine roster (during my time, UPRHS took four of the forty available slots – only Quezon City Science High did better with five).

The student population is quite small at a measly 120 per year level. A vast majority of enrolees are from Los Baños, Calamba City, San Pablo City and Bay with a handful of students from other smaller towns in Laguna and Batangas. Since it’s a UP unit, the tuition is negligible. The curriculum has relatively high standards except in the field of Computer Science. To further emphasize the rustic nature  of RURAL life, we only had one year’s worth of a computer subject and what did we do? Well, we  programmed in Turbo Pascal during a time when the language was nearing obsolesence.

Most of my classmates then could write well and had the inner drive to express themselves. The environment sure was conducive to a multi-faceted type of development instead of focusing on purely academic pursuits. The faculty was definitely supportive of athletic and artistic endeavors.

Why am I exactly pointing these things out?

Well, despite the seemingly strong reasons that would make Ruralites *chuckle* excellent bloggers, there aren’t a lot of them right now. Prior to 2007 – the year when the troika of Espina, Weber and Lasco (ok, just play along) broke out of cyber obscurity— there were no UPRHS bloggers in the mainstream. Though technological limitations maybe a serious stumbling block – no campus internet access as of 2004 — I’m sure most students have a stable connection at home and with the many computer shops around, the option to blog is definitely for the choosing to anyone with the time and love for writing.

On the flip side of things, when was the last time that a high school blogging sensation hit the scene? Maybe it’s a case of overapproximation but I sincerely think that it’s anomalous to have only three bloggers [all three good enough to be Blog Awards Finalists] from UPRHS.

 Speak up people! Let’s go back and teach the kids to blog. hahaha.

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Here are my other Philippine Blog Awards related posts – Obrigado and Valediction.

Do you think that being in the Blog Awards is a walk in the park? Think again! We all know that the organizers and volunteers had to move heaven and earth to get everything ready for the big night but for nominees and  finalists, it was also quite an experience. Shutters were literally going off at every second and at photographers were definitely ready to moments as they happened.

This was how I spent my time on the lead up to the awards night:

Saturday, September 20
7:30 AM
I was actually supposed to be on duty on the 21st but since I had a nice classmate who agreed to swap duty schedules with me, I opened up my Sunday afternoon (clerks may go home by 12NN if not on duty during weekends) and set myself up for a very challenging physical task. Going on duty on a Saturday meant that I was only A  DAY removed from my last 24-hour tour of duty at the Medical Intensive Care Unit. Translation: I’ll be lucky to be awake at One Esplanade if I ever wake up on time.

Fortunately, it was an uneventful tour of duty without any mortalities. I had a couple of hours of sleep inside a very humid and poorly ventilated box with a serious mosquito and cockroach infestation. By the time I woke up, my feet, arms and other exposed parts of my body were covered with pruritic erythematous  (that’s itchy and reddish) wheals. After the sole endorsement round of the day, I called up my Mom to ask where she was. I wanted her  to accompany me to the Awards to: 1) give her an idea of what the blogging community is like and 2) make sure that I don’t do anything stupid. Continue Reading »

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From what I recall from last year’s Philippine Blog Awards, the Personal category was actually one of the first awards given out last year. I still remember who the finalists were – Bikoy Villanueva, Mae Paulino, Juan Magdaraog, Jessica Zafra and the eventual winner Shari Cruz. A big reason why I don’t have any problem enumerating this list of five  is because I was so obsessed with following the developments of this race that I even wrote a teaser on how I thought the race was going to go down. It was fun pretending that the competition was akin to a presidential tussle or an upcoming prize fight. Maybe my background as a sports writer got the better of me as I tried to tactfully disect each finalist’s strengths, weaknesses and actual odds of winning – all according to my very biased and absolutely not-so-centrist standards.

This year, the personal category was the last award to be presented. The way I see it, this category has got to be the most diverse due to its potentially broad definition. The approach to blogging in such a format spans the spectrum of personalities, temperaments, beliefs, cultures and even language of choice. It is possibly the most subjective award in the sense that it judges values that could possibly be actual equivalents. Breaking these virtual ties are  up to the discretion of the judges. If you ask me though, the short listed blogs reads like a very distinguished roster of accomplished individuals. And believe me, if I had enough time, I would go have gone crazy doing bookie work for the blogs in this category. Imagine if the finalists were actually released a week before! No one would admit it but I know a good number of people would lose sleep over the result.

Had I had the chance to deliver an acceptance speech, I would’ve asked my fellow finalists to go up the stage with me.  That’s how even the playing field was for me. And besides, it is personal, right? For this category, the breaks just ended up in my favor and had it been another year or another situation, the result would’ve been different. You can’t even begin compare the blogs in this category. Humor me as I pay tribute to the other finalists who are in my opinion equally deserving. * In no particular order: Continue Reading »

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For somebody who just started blogging in the past couple of years, I will honestly tell you that I didn’t expect everything that has come my way. Blogging was  supposed to be just one of the things that would keep me busy. I’m probably one of the  millions who are undiagnosed cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Growing up, I strived to learn new things may it be from reading a comprehensive Atlas at age 6, attempting to learn playing the violin at age 9 and scuba diving at age 12- all these while struggling to deal with the learning disability dyslexia .

I’m just the type who would be aggressive in just about everything that I voluntarily set my self to do. Of course, this would often be the cause of immense joy and disappointment for my parents and at times, conversations about focus and priorities would always arise. The thing is, I never saw myself as someone who will just be great in ONLY one field. I physically needed to be involved in many things – having a band (and for a time being in two), playing basketball competitively, being in med school, debating in national tournaments AND blogging. Figuring out how to balance out things given the obvious finiteness of time has been a challenge, but it was and continues to be a challenge that I welcome everyday. Continue Reading »

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From Bikoy’s blog:

Friends,

To those who read my blog, visit it regularly, or whatever, and think I deserve the a Bloggers’ Choice Award, do vote for Bikoy.net at the Philippine Blog Awards.

1. On your blog (at Multiply, BlogSpot, WordPress, wherever it is), tell us why you voted for the nominee (that’s me, Bikoy.net!)

2. Submit your post URL and some basic info to the Philippine Blog Awards committee using this form. Make sure that you provide the COMPLETE URL of the post you created for your vote to be valid.

3. Once you have submitted your vote post URL, wait for the confirmation from one of our committee members. Please be patient, we will manually go through each and every vote post to make sure it’s valid.

It’s that simple. You also get a chance to win a Nokia N82!

Thanks! Ha ha. This is such a popularity contest. It really isn’t a big deal, as I’ve largely ignored it the past days, but since apparently some people did vote for me, I might as well put some effort into it and campaign to solicit some votes so that the first ones don’t go to waste. I’d appreciate it.

Atheista.net formally supports Bikoy.net

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I was very passionate about campaigning for this blog for the Ten Emerging Influential Blogs writing project from a few months back but unfortunately, Pinoy Mountaineer missed the cut despite having more visitors and page views than probably all the other winners combined. As we very well know, you can’t keep a good blog down (pun intended), so when the Philippine Blog Awards revealed their short list of finalists for Best Hobby/ Recreation Blog, Pinoy Mountaineer was included.

Ironically, it took a more meritocratic -albeit less democratic — body to give the site the attention it truly deserves. I’m very please with this development and I surely hope that inspire others – others who aren’t necessarily in our little club for bloggers to come up with fresh ideas with content that people could actually use. We are at a dawning of an age wherein all that SEO/spamming bullshit have reached a point of obscurity and people are starting to use the internet for things that could actually help them grow in various facets  of their lives. Ok, I was talking through my nose on those last two sentences but you do get the point.

Mr. Pinoy Mountaineer is no other than my classmate Gideon Lasco. He was also a schoolmate back in high school but we never were well acquainted. I’m very happy that the class of 2010 from the  UP College of Medicine have one other  *ehem* blogger making waves in the local scene.

As for the competition, Pinoy Mountaineer will be up against a very distinguished and varied pool of finalist blogs:

Brown Rice -self-made cartoons and illustrations
Comicology – comic books
Life on Pinky Street – toys and collectibles
Bear Brick Love – toys
Bibliophile Stalker - books
The World Thru Postcards – postcards
DotAStrategy Blog – computer gaming
Sped Life Cebu – special education *how is this a hobby blog exactly?*
Stylemo – style

 GOOD LUCK GIDEON! Make 2010 proud. hehe

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