You know how some people collect paper clips they find lying around? I seriously tried it. I walked around the mall, along Ortigas Center, and all the way back home just to get one (just one!!) paper clip sighting so I have something to say about my paper clip experience (or, now, the lack thereof).
And I kind of made it a point to go out of the office as I didn’t want to consider it a valid place to have an extraordinary paper clip encounter. You see, I have a box of paper clips on my drawer, some on my folders, a couple hanging by my cork board, and I’m sure there’s a pink one somewhere in Camille’s jungle of a desk too — in short, one is more likely to see a paper clip lying around in an office than not. I wonder how Markku and Nikki just find paper clips lying around — along the side of the road, in a park bench, etc? It’s even more interesting how Nikki finds one all the time, anywhere she goes! (Gaah. Maybe if I stop trying, if I stop looking, I’ll find one. When that happens, I’ll let you guys know.)
Amazingly, albeit my failure to find a wandering paper clip, this experience has virtually brought me to places, and people, and ideas (and dreams) I never thought possible. One thing that surfaced in this paper clip project is that, what paper clips are for different people has gone beyond what they were originally made for and what their very name implies (you know, to clip papers together). Simply put, paper clips have become more than just, well, paper clips. There’s the manly habit of using paper clips as tooth pick, cotton buds, or something to pick your nose with (come on guys, couldn’t you be any more disgusting? LOL). There’s the rare fashion of using paper clips to adorn the hair. There’s the usual OC method of organizing files with color-coded paper clips.
And then there are those whose lives were changed because of one paper clip. There’s this guy who started with one red paper clip, which he traded until he ended with a house in Canada. And there’s this Filipina who wrote a story about a yellow paper clip with bright purple spots, which ended being published, and eventually became an award-winning children’s story book.
Paper clips mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And if we would spread our imagination, there’s more to paper clips than meets the eye.
Prior to this, I didn’t have any extraordinary paper clip experience. I don’t collect paper clips like Nikki or Markku. I don’t have a bad childhood memory that has to do with paper clips like Mikey or Ade. I don’t know how to make hearts out of them like Tina. I do remember that Maid in Manhattan movie and the little paper clip moment the little kid and the man had, but unlike Mae, I never once tried if it would work for me. And I definitely WON’T use paper clips for the purpose of personal hygiene, ok, TJ and Jake? (You have jobs! Buy cotton buds will you?!)
Perhaps I just didn’t have any reason to sensationalize what paper clips are for until now.
It’s true what they say.. there’s always something extraordinary about the ordinary, in the same way you find beauty in the most trivial of things. You ignore the fact that you share the world with billions of paper clips, until this one point in your life when it created for you a way to reconnect with an old friend. Which in turn became an excuse to connect with all sorts of people: People who use paper clips to take wax off their ears. People who have traumatic experiences with paper clips. People who collect paper clips, and use them to define moments.
Now, I have every reason to see paper clips in a different light. This could be it, my paper clip story preserved in a blog forever. It may not be as grand as Nikki’s, or Oneredpaperclip’s, but who knows, this could be, for me, the beginning of something else. I’m excited to find out.
Here’s more link love to the rest of you who commented and shared their thoughts on paper clips: ♥Joni♥, Jun, Jayvee, Rob, Romz. Merci. ♥
Edit. A bit too late but here’s the challenge: I blog about it, he makes a song. (I know there’s something not fair about that, LOL.) For what it’s worth, he “won” the dare because I missed deadline, but really now, I’m confused. (Why did you win again? We both missed deadline, didn’t we?) Anyway. Here’s his song which you can also find here.
And think when trials come
Like heavy weights they press you down
At times it seems it never ends
Just bend along and change again
to gather all life’s sheets again
And remember there is strength in you inside
Like paperclips we hold life’s one big bind
One big bind.
And for some reason, I chose to blog it here because I want to keep that blog, as much as possible, sanitized from occasional outbursts such as this one unless the outburst is because of a new pink gadget, or me getting an email from, say, Search Engine Journal or Matt Cutts (LOL!) telling me that they want to interview me (pathetic, I know) or they want me to write with them (dream on Riz!) or something like that. Anyway.
I have a pending meme to work on, plus piles of SEO stuff to do, and some backlogs at 901am. In short, there are a lot of things I should be doing now. But let me pause everything else for this overwhelming, funny, and unbelievably cool news flash.
Oh WOW. Guitarchic.Net ranking fifth is unbelievable enough. Getting 5th and 6th places is outofthisworld!! :upsidedown: So hey, Andrew, I don’t know you (and I’m sure you don’t know me either) but because I’m benefiting a lot from your little project over there, and because I love that you’re promoting the local, Filipino-powered blogosphere, you’re now officially my most favorite person in the whole wide web.
Okay. Just for today, lest you start to think I’m psycho or something. Hehe. :)
And because I’m overjoyed, here’s more link love to Andrew dela Serna the man behind all of this, and to Ratified.Org.
Lemme just say it feels good to be blogging using the first person again. I’ve been writing news articles the whole day, and it kind of drained me avoiding the “I” points of view when for the longest time I’ve been accustomed to using the first person in my blogs. Oh well. I guess that’s what this blog is for. :P
Anyway. Updates.
Threaded Comments On. I just installed Brian’s Threaded Comments and I’m loving it. :) Feels like Livejournal and Tabulas over again. Yay for me. I love responding to comments, but ever since I shifted to Wordpress, responding to comments didn’t appeal that much to me anymore because it looked cluttered and I had to scroll back up and down to see which comment it was that I responded to and I hate it because I’m OC that way. So anyway, thanks Brian, whoever you are. So far, in my list of the best wordpress plugins, this one has climbed the charts. :)
Click Happy Update. As I was updating Click Happy and was rummaging through my hard disk, I realized that I’ve unconsciously built a collection of Chuck Taylors shots through the years. And I remembered I once started an album in tabulas I called Chucks Love, which I failed to fill up. Now, the tabulas album becomes a category in my psuedo-photoblog. Wanna check it out? :)
Heroes Season Ender Spoilers. (Stop reading here if you haven’t finished season 1 yet.) I just finished watching the last four episodes of season one and I was like, “That’s it? That’s what everyone waited for for so long?” Don’t get me wrong, I love that cheerleader girl. But really now, I didn’t expect that the “Save the cheerleader, save the world” thing would seriously bring the story to its (supposedly) climactic end. I mean, come on. I thought they just had to add that line somewhere in the middle of the story to lighten up the script or something. But no. That line happened to be Nathan Petrelli’s last words before he and his brother, Peter Petrelli, exploded to pieces. Seriously.
I still love Claire Bennett, of course, and if there’s one Hero I’d want to be, aside from that Matt Parkman guy who can read minds (who also died in the end, pfft), I’d choose to be Claire. I’d love it if I could just jump out of a building just for trips, fall face flat on the ground, stand up, and walk away as if nothing happened. So. Cool. Bbbbut, do they really have to kill the two Petrelli brothers? The Sylar death I could accept (after all, I bet some cosmic power would raise him from the dead and make him live through season two). But the Petrellis? Dying? What’s the point of killing both the antagonist and the protagonists? Ok, fine, too much spoilers. Are bloggers allowed to write about these things? Fine, I’m stopping.
Tonight, my friends and I were having our usual talk over coffee (and siopao, and mais con hielo, and whatever finger food was available) with Pastor Dave (who happens to be my Ninong too) and his lovely wife, Ninang Nory. Being about 20 years older than we are, I sometimes feel as if they’re in a constant lookout for ways to “connect” with our generation. And I have to say, as far as the generation gap is concerned, they are pretty much successful bridging it in. They’re definitely the coolest forty*bleep* yearolds in the planet.
There are, however, some bloopers here and there. And here’s the winning moment tonight:
Pastor Dave: “What’s that site you were talking about again..? Uh, pantyhose.com?”
The rest of us, staring at him, confused.
Pastor Dave: “The one with those videos you were all laughing about..?”
Normi: “Ohhh you mean happyslip.com!!
All: Oooohhhh!!
It was, of course, followed by an endless round of laughter. Pantyhose.com pala ha. :P
I guess there’s still generation gap, after all. :)
The night went on like that. But on top of all the laughter were insightful views about life, and relationships, and faith, and God, and family, and making the right choices, and just about anything under the sun. From as serious as spirituality and Bible doctrines to as trivial as pantyhose.com, er, happyslip.com, we all had our triple dose of self-reflections and realizations (more like reminders) that somehow fueled us up to face the world again.
My happy thoughts for the day: Faith. Friends. Laughter. And love everywhere. I’m stuffed. ♥
Oh, and Ninong Dave, if you’re reading this, it’s hap-py-slip, ok? :)
Yesterday, I was out with a friend (slash business contact) for a possible SEO project consultancy with one of his clients. On the way home, we talked about SEO stuff, which, surprisingly, is still a foreign language to him considering he has been a blogger, and a web developer for quite a number of years already. From on-page optimization, to linkbuilding, to SEO Philippines, to Black Hat SEO, to my personal linkbuilding tactics, etc, we had a fun time discussing and learning from each other.
At one point, we discussed about the differences between Black Hat, White Hat, and Grey Hat techniques.
Black Hat SEO — methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This includes keyword stuffing, hidden keywords, comment spamming, etc.
White Hat SEO — conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and/or involves no deception. This include publishing unique and fresh content, and getting legitimate links, etc.
Grey Hat SEO — falls somewhere in between. Sometimes there’s a thin line between what’s legal and not. As they say, in SEO, there’s always a grey area too. :P
But you know what’s really working for me right now (and the past months)?
Pink Hat SEO — linkbuilding achieved through distributing pink and girly wordpress themes; and being all pa-cute and charming, posting pa-cute pictures of yourself, and uploading pa-cute podcasts to get more traffic, and doing personal favors in exchange for backlinks. And then, there’s twittering pseudo-emo posts that aim to spark fellow twitterers’ curiousity, making them visit your site just in case you posted a more elaborate story about what you posted in twitter just about five minutes ago. (Face it — women have the potential to RULE the SEO Industry. Bwahaha.)
With Pink Hat SEO, before you know it, you have a network of lurkers who would either talk about you behind your back, or visit your site out of sheer curiosity. Whatever the case, you get traffic anyway. :P
Once upon a time, there was me, waiting for "happily ever after" to happen. Hi, this is my life, mush and all. Don't say you weren't warned. ;) Can't get enough?
Daily Dose of Twit
Haha goodbye plurk. :) PLURK NOW OFFICIALLY BLOCKED IN THE OFFICE. We all know this is coming. :) 8 hrs ago
You know how some people collect paper clips they find lying around? I seriously tried it. I walked around the mall, along Ortigas Center, and all the way back home just to get one (just one!!) paper clip sighting so I have something to say about my paper clip experience (or, now, the lack thereof).
