About This Blog

I'm in the process of building my own website/blog and it is proving to be such an arduous task. There's just so many things about it that are testing much of my decision-making skills; e.g. name, overall design, organization, contents, etc. Well as far as the site's direction is concerned, I feel like I need to lay out a clear path and here are my two cents so far...


After a very long and careful process of thinking, asking, researching, reading, thinking again, and reading again, I finally decided on what direction I want this blog to take.

The most important factor that I took into consideration is "Am I gonna make this site an earner?" If I was going to be moving a lot and finance my trips, might as well make this blog a moneymaker, right? I've read a lot of blogs and a lot of them are plastered with maybe a bit more adverts than they ought to have. I have nothing against it, in fact a lot of bloggers are earning throught it, but I asked myself as a reader, "Am I gonna read a website like that?"

In the process of reading hundreds and hundreds of blogs, I've known myself a lot more as a reader. Out of all those materials. I realized that am more drawn into blogs that tell stories, from personal accounts. I didn't really care for guides, for budget breakdowns or for catalogues. I wanted organic blogs that I can consume as a human being that craves for stories, they be spectacular, adventurous, sad, horrible or what not. Of course, I also really care about the syntax and semantics. They help me to not be put off of a piece.

Things are not set in stone yet but for starters this blog will be about stories from experiences that I collect personally. I'll be putting a lot of pressure on my storytelling skills I guess. I hope things look up though. In the future I might put up guides, who knows? But for the mean time, I see myself doing them not.

(NOTE: I might actually end up putting this in my About This Blog Section)

P.S. What the hell is a PSN blog?

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How about Coron solo?

yup. Will post something on this later. ciao

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Graduates, it's snag-a-job season. Ryan Holliday of New York Observer, a dropout, has a word or two.

This morning I was in Google Adwords, trying to hit the ground running on my hatchling-stage blogging. I was playing around with keywords (or phrase) "my first job out of college" when I came across "snag a job". At first I laughed at the coarseness of the term and mainly because I was not familiar with it at all and it honestly sounded a bit ghetto. It turned out to be the most-searched phrase when it comes to job hunting though.

So for some reason I hit the keywords "how I snagged a job out of college" (I don't remember how it came to me but it just did) in google. And then this came out in the first page: "Dear Graduates: Lessons from a college dropout". Ryan Holliday, a college dropout did have some inspiring words to give out to the people of the moment, the graduates. Then it hit me. After all the pomp and circumstance, each one of us have had that moment where we're confronted with the question, "Now what?", overwhelmed (or distraught maybe?) at the prospects (or the lack thereof) of staying straight in the path to fulfilling dreams.

PHOTO: Graduates tossing cap in the air. (Paul Bradbury/Getty Images)

Personally, as well as it is a series of challenges, I believe that life is also determined by decisions after another. We fail at them most of the time, but of course we learn in the process.

And then of course he has this one line that appealed to me the most:

"...don’t wait for your dream job. These things aren’t gifted, they ensue as a result of our choices. We will them into existence."

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LAST AFC Challenge Cup (2014)

Yes, you read that right! It's the last!

Philippine Azkals just lost the AFC Challenge Cup 2014 to Palestine by a free kick! (anger)

And people on twitter are trying to look smart (or probably just as the usual delusional Filipino character when loosing) by false-hopedly creating a trend:
2012 - 3rd place
2014 - 2nd place
2016 - Champions?

And Im like: umm yeah, cuz in some other alternate timelines there'll be a 2016 AFC Challenge Cup.

Well, bad news, this is the last! There'll be no more redeeming this year that could have been. It should have been a motivation enough for the Azkals. But no, they don't know how to dribble! I'm actually a bit surprised they can actually move the ball. hahaha. I'd like to give more credit of the survival of the team to Phil and Muller. Those two deserve so much more than just a second place.

Don't get me wrong though. I was so thrilled for this team. With the absence of North Korea (which has World Cup experience) from the tournament, the title was up for grabs by any team really. It got everyone pumped up. And then of course we owned serious contenders: 2012 1st runner-up Turkmenistan and 2014 host Maldives. In the 2012 tournament, we actually beat Palestine for third place. So the title was looking more like Philippines' for the taking. And then of course free kick happened. And Rota doesn't know how to dribble. It was embarrassing!

With the dissolution of the AFC Challenge Cup, the Philippines' (and actually everyone's in Asia) only chance at Asian Cup is through a Qualifying Tournament. This will be tougher for PHL. And we might be waiting a long time before PHL debuts in Asian Cup. For anyone concerned, winning AFC Challenge Cup was actually the easiest route for countries categorized in the 3rd tier (or as what AFC calls "emerging nations"). For example, Philippines wasn't even given a chance to enter the Qualifying tournament for the 2015 Asian Cup. Plus, Asian Cup happens every four years. So by the next time the PHL team even gets a chance at entering the tournament (2019), Phil Younghusband would be 31! (and I would be mf 30!!!) So yeah, let's cry more for this chance lost...  T__T

So, with the AFC overhauling the Asian tournaments in the future, the only tournament that could keep the Azkals busy for the mean time is the AFF Suzuki Cup (biennial), which they can actually win if they have the right motivation and talents. If the FIFA rankings truly represents the goodness of right now, Vietnam is actually the only country above us in the AFF region. Other than that, chances at major international showing for PHL Azkals is looking bleak, save for the mediocre, special, selective, team-sponsored pseudo-tournaments.

But who knows? Maybe the Philippine team can actually make this lost tournament a turning point. Maybe we'll get more and better talents (but please save Phil and Muller). Maybe we'll get more funding. Maybe football will level with basketball and boxing as popular sports in the country. Maybe we'll dominate AFF. Or AFC. Maybe we'll debut in the Asian Cup sooner than we expect. There are a lot of maybe's for now. But each is a promise. Hey, each one has to build from ground up. For the mean time, Asian Cup 2015 is happening without a team from the Southeast Asia.

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Digital Footprint: From ego search to deleting yourself from the internet.

Trying to get my name unsearchable online. How to? Will be the subject of my personal research the next few days.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/how-robb-lewis-is-helping-web-users-erase-their-digital-footprint-with-justdeleteme-website-20140308-34e1v.html

How Robb Lewis is helping web users erase their digital footprint with Justdelete.me website

Sydney Mordning Herald

justdelete.me

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TV personalities are not good role models

(will get into details later. For the meantime, I'll list the ones on top of my head ala Arya Stark. In Arya Stark POV, these personalities should be killed altogether so as to bottleneck their influence on Filipino mass culture.)

Filipino Drama/Teleserye.
Robin Padilla.
Kris Aquino.
Claudine Barretto. (all the Barrettos actually)
Marian Rivera.
Tito, Vic and Joey. (most esp. Tito)
Willie Revillame.
Vhong Navarro.
Most PBB contestants in their teens.
Most of Philippine TV actually.
Politicians.
Filipino drama again.

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I swear I lived

Wow. OneRepublic is scoring so high on my list of songs that inspire. I actually like how they're building a portfolio of feel-good tracks. Usually, when I'm having a banner day and needs turning around emotionally, I just put on tracks like "Good Life", "Feel Again", "Counting Stars" and "If I Lose Myself". I don't regret the choices. They always make me feel better about myself. For a moment, I don't regret the bad choices I've made in life because at the end of the day, they cannot be undone. Sadness cannot be helped, it's an emotion but what matters is recovery. And weirdly, OneRepublic helps me up in more times than I care to admit. I'm glad that another song is being added to that repertoire.

Anyway, I just heard the song for the first time on one of the admittedly most guilty-pleasure tv shows I watch, 90210 (Yeah, I know. Let's all laugh at the remaining person on earth who still watches 90210). Anyway, it was a series finale episode and this played. It was also timely that I'm getting so much shit in my life lately. I needed some sort of validation that no matter what comes off of what I do, I can ultimately say that I did it all... And I lived. This song made me, it made all the world of difference. Here it is. It's from their latest album, "Native". It's called, "I Lived".

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