I consider being friends (and meeting) with Liz of wellwhatever.com, Rhiz of guitarchic.net and Joni of taintedsong.com as the biggest blogging achievement I got this year. Blogging brought the four of us together, four different individuals sharing the same passion. — Mae, lastleaf.org

Who would have thought I’d be part of someone’s biggest blogging achievement this year? :) What can I say? Ditto, girlfriend.

So.. when’s the next kape kape? :)

SM Hypermarket is hosting another party for bloggers slash the announcement of the SM Hypermarket Blog Writing Contest. The biggest blogger party evaah is happening on August 23, 2007, Thursday, 7:30 p.m. at the Taste Asia, SM Mall of Asia (beside SM Hypermarket).

SM Hypermarket is looking at hosting this party for 500 bloggers and friends! Kamusta naman sa dame.

So here are the specs:

What: SM Hypermarket Invites Bloggers to Party!
When: August 23, 2007, Thursday, 7:30 pm
Who: bloggers of any size, age, status or whatever
How: Just leave a comment on any of the coordinators blogs
Why: Party and awarding ceremonies for the winner of the SM Hypermarket blog writing contest
Where: Taste of Asia (beside SM Hypermarket), SM Mall of Asia

Marc and I were assigned as point persons for the SEO crowd, hence, if you’re an SEO blogger, specialist, project manager, whatever, (or if you’re simply my friend hehe) and you want to be part of history, just leave a comment to this post and have yourself listed. Or, you can navigate over to Aileen’s post and find your specific niche there.

Join na. You don’t want to miss this one! ;)

You can view the master list here.

With me in the booth: Sasha, Sharm, Aileen, Markku, Marc, Ely and his friend.

That’s me with the “Band of Bloggers”, and I don’t even know what I was doing there, I just happened to be outside the booth and someone pulled me in. LOL. Let me just say, Cliquebooth rocks. You have to remember them next time you hold an event, seriously. Check it out. (In case you start to wonder how this picture set happened, I edited it. It’s impossible to have four shots with different people in one set, yup.)

I’m tempted to send some link love to everyone I saw there, but they’re just too many. So I’m sending this one to the organizer of all organizers, Miss Aileen Apolo, and SM Hypermarket, for that very successful Taste Asia event. Clapclap (standing).

Oh, and because I promised, here’s some link lovin’ for Ely for the pink umbrella that made my night (thank you!!). And Markku, the guy who every girl wants to have an issue with because he’s cute and single, and because you know no one will strangle you to death or send you anonymous hate comments when you post pa-cute pictures of yourself with him (ha!). And Sharmskee for the endless talk about cute Swiss hockey players and those camwhore moments. And Jayvee, for making takas for me one of those coke tumblers (oh, wait, sorry, am I not allowed to tell everyone that? hehe). And Mikey and TJ for being on bodyguard-slash-kuya mode to me the whole night. And Jomar who took us in, gatecrashers that we are. And Miss Janette, and Ganns, for expressing their concern towards my emotional state, judging from my twits (don’t worry Ma’am, Sir, those are just twits. Hehe.)

But really now. The real highlight of my night (but of course Markku’s still a close second) was finally meeting Abel’s family: Chel, who I only knew through multiply and twitter, and their adorable little princess, Tiana.

There’s something about watching Tiana twirl in her cute flowery dress in the middle of a noisy and crowded party that made me want to tear up right there and then. And I wouldn’t elaborate lest I start emo-ing again, but really, candid moments like that (of a little girl twirling, or clutching her Mom’s hand, or hugging her Daddy as he carries her, oblivious to the noise going around her) sends my world to a halt, making me wish that life is as simple as that which is seen through her eyes.

Gaah. Didn’t I just say that I won’t elaborate? :)

It was lovely finally meeting you, Abel, Chel, and Tiana. ♥

Oh, and by the way, there was not a moment in that party that I didn’t wish Liz, Mae, and Joni were there. It was a relief making up and spending quality girl bonding session with these gorgeous bloggers at Serendra last night (Wednesday), though. But yup, that one deserves a separate post.

• Jeffrey Zamora has invited you to be his sister. (When he’s my high school best friend. Sister?? No way. :P)
• Andrew Aleta has invited you to be his second cousin. (When he’s my college friend/orgmate.)
• Nikos Sanchez has invited you to be his distant relative. (When he’s my brother.)
• Gino Carteciano has invited you to be his online buddy. (When he’s my online stalker, not buddy. LOL. Peace baddie!)
• Josiah’s Catering has invited you to be his business partner. (Uhh, okay.)
• MyKid’s World has invited you to be her business partner. (Acceptable.)
• Noemi Dado has invited you to be her friend. (Finally. Something that actually matched! Then again, it’s the safest network connection other than “online buddy”.)
  
• Chel Quitoriano has invited you to be her sorority sister. (When she’s a Twitter friend, and the wife of a blogger friend.)

And well, 2 out of the 10 invites, I declined, so I won’t mention them anymore. Heehee.

Looking at my multiply connections, I realized that I currently have 4 sorority sisters, 3 life partners, 2 fiances, 1 fraternity brother, 1 mother, 1 boyfriend, 1 neighbor, 1 distant relative (in the form of my brother) and 1 ex-husband.

Multiply is funny that way. With their limited network relationship options, you have no choice but to tag your enemy your “Friend” (then again, why would you add your enemy to your network? hehe), or your friend’s friend your “Online Buddy”, or your roommate your “Neighbor”, or your friend’s mother your “Mother”.

On the other hand, some people are just too papansin (in a cute kind of way) or maybe too bored, that they’d opt to choose the weirdest of connections. Hence, your friend’s little brother becomes your “Ex-husband”. Or your other friend’s (also) little brother your “Boyfriend.” Then your brother becomes your “Distant Relative”. And your high school seatmate becomes your “Fraternity Brother”. And your college buddy becomes your “Life Partner”.

Life would have been easier if Multiply invents more specific connections. (Like, “Stalker” or “Boyfriend Wannabe” or “Friend’s Little Brother”). Or, why not leave an option where you can just type in the specific relationship yourself so you can say “Tita” instead of “Mother”, or “Blogger Friend” / “Twitter Follower” instead of “Online Buddy”. It’s much easier that way. :P

It’s just like the infamous Friendster Status. Why o why would they force us to choose between five options only (Single, In a Relationship, Domestic Partner, Married, It’s complicated) when there are gazillion statuses in the world! What about Exclusively Dating? or Waiting for Mr. Right? or Looking But Not Really? or Single But Not Available? or Engaged? Because of their limited options, the world is suddenly full of complicated relationships and dosmetic partnerships and people pretending to be in a relationship. Hehe. And look, “It’s Complicated” is already patented to Friendster. Tamo nga naman. They now own the phrase “It’s Complicated”??! :D

Oh well, going back to Multiply, there’s always “Friend” and “Online Buddy” anyway. I guess all relationships can boil to those two lest you can’t find anything specific. ;)

So.. you have a multiply account? Add me up. Let’s see what relationship you’ll tag of me. ;)

Kudos to the developers of Twitter for creating something grand out of something non-sense. I like how Jayvee put it:

It can be so useless to the point that its engaging. I remember my old literature professor talking about how useless literature and the arts can be — but then he added that “in the most useless of things can you find the most profound lessons.”

Oh, and Mikey, (surprisingly) said something profound about it too (congrats dude, you managed to write a whole sentence without the curse words):

..in a vastly tech-driven, socially dysfunctional world where people would rather touch plastic keys than converse with other people, Twitter’s value proposition is a rather attractive one.

Twitter brought me back to those mIRC days in highschool when you would login anytime within the day just to see if your friends were online and to let them know what you’re doing. Social-networking wise, Twitter’s just like YM, and Gtalk, difference is, you won’t have to rely on chat logs and message archives to recall conversations, plus, there’s no flooding too (in a sense).

And it’s much like blogging, only you blog one-liners at a time — something that works for me coz I usually get a lot of thoughts within the day, which I don’t get to blog about anymore ‘coz I’m too lazy to string them all together.

Ultimately, it’s just nice to announce to the world (and to no one in particular most of the time) what you’re doing and/or what you’re thinking about any given time. For me, it helps me preserve moments as they come — I love freezing moments. Like scribbling non-sense at the back of my math notebook when I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the lecture. Or doodling snippets on my planner for easier recall of what happened when. Or sketching sunsets and guitars and swirls and little hearts and flowers on my notebook in the middle of a meeting with the boss. A bit far off already but, well, yeah, something to that effect. :P

So hey, if you’re on Twitter, add me, add me. If you don’t have a Twitter yet, what are you waiting for? Sign up and ADD ME. :D

Besides, it was the very first Philippine Blog Awards. And two of my (online and offline-also) friends, Joni and Marc, were nominated, and I somehow wanted to be there for moral support. And I was rooting for Ely, Markku (congrats dude!), Mae, and Liz (congrats girl!) also. And even though I was missing-in-action towards the end of the preparations, I figured the least I could do was to be on the sidelines, cheering on Tina and Jomar and the whole Stage and Deco Committee, as well as the rest of the wonderful wonderful volunteers of PBA07.

Plus Josiah’s Catering was there, and I sortof deem myself accountable to Tita Jet and Tito Boyet Versoza (owners of Josiah’s Catering) since I was the one who asked them for sponsorship to begin with. And then there’s Jayvee (whom I seem to be accidentally-on-purpose bumping a lot into lately) and Gail (who was very understanding when I had to excuse myself from my assignments). I know my presence there that night didn’t really equate to any significant difference, but I had a lot of reasons to want to be there.

In spite of a lot of things, and although I didn’t think being there helped me to feel normal again, I’m still glad I came. I know it’s a tad too late to be posting this, but just the same, congratulations to the organizers, winners, and volunteers of the Philippine Blog Awards 2007. Looking forward to next year’s big event. c”,)

Why? Beats me. Hehe. In any case, thanks, Liz! And the lovely crew of New Maria. More power (to us)! :)

A few weeks ago, I joined the group mainly because Joni was there–and I think I’ve been pretty obvious about how big an influence that girl is to me pfft hehe–as well as a couple of female webmasters I’ve always admired and reverred. As I kept on reiterating back there at PinkSEO, I’m an advocate of girl power, of women making a difference and being exceptional at what they do. And with NewMaria’s concept, registering wasn’t a hard choice to make.

# New Maria is a non-profit web site with a purpose to showcase Modern Filipina talents in writing, web designing, software developing/programming.

# New Maria is a Modern Filipina, someone who got the confidence to show to the world her skills and talent.

So here I am, one of the newest members of New Maria (and proudly too). If you’re a girl, and you think you have what it takes, come, join New Maria NOW. c”,)

* * *

Now this one’s from out of the blue. I have a decision to make before this day ends (er, more specifically, before Megamall closes tonight): Ang hamster ba, pag mag-isa, nalulungkot din?