September Blues

Baker’s Note:  In light of that deadly storm that passed through the Philippines this past weekend, I hope this message finds you and all your loved ones safe and in good health.

This blog ain’t dead.  It just seems like it.

This month has proven to be a very exhausting one for me.  I haven’t been able to find the time and muster the energy to either finish pieces that have been in draft for quite a while or to start writing new ones.  I’ve been doing a lot of writing at work, business writing that is (memos, reports, and appraisals) on a daily basis that by the time I get home in the evenings, I find myself too mentally exhausted to do some blogging.

I have the September blues too in a number of ways.  Summer has ended here.  The nice, warm days are over and the cold weather is starting to settle in.  The trees are starting to shed leaves.  I’ll miss the greenery and the warm, sunny weather around me for the next few months.  The cold makes it much harder to get up in the mornings.  Dressing up becomes a chore because of the number of layers one needs to put on.  I want to spend more time in bed but I can’t for fear of missing my bus if I do so.

My weekends had been busy too since they were spent helping my cousin get settled in his new apartment.  I helped him shop for furniture and other stuff that he needed in his apartment.  It was exhausting to do all that moving of furniture from the car to his fourth floor apartment.  As a result, I have been suffering through some aches and pains throughout my body for weeks now.

September also reminded me of my own mortality.  My blood pressure has been at an elevated level since early last year.  My doctor has so far refused to prescribe any blood pressure medication to bring it down and has only recommended a lifestyle and diet change at this point.  It bothers and depresses me quite a bit because prior to that, my blood pressure had remained at a normal level for quite a long time when compared to a lot of my friends and other people my age.  But I guess that’s part of life.  Somewhere along the way, things happen that remind us that there’s a limit to our stay in this world.

And as September drew to a close, Typhoon Ondoy suddenly came and battered the country with rains and floods not seen for decades.  All the concerns I wrote above are nothing when compared to what a lot of people lost in my home country.  The town where I spent my elementary and high school years was one of the hardest hit.  A lot of childhood friends and their families still live there.  I hope and pray they’re ok.  I’ll find a way via some friends and high school classmates based here and in the Philippines to somehow extend help.

Thanks a lot for all the visits and the comments you have left in spite of my rather long absence from these pages and from your respective blogs.  I will make up for such absence somehow sometime, hopefully soon.  I need to regroup right now given the demands on my time and energies these past several weeks.  But I will surely be back.  Until then, I wish you all well.

The Blogging Habit

April and May have both turned out to be relatively quite unproductive months for me as far as blogging and bloghopping are both concerned.  I only managed to post four entries for the entire month of April when my past monthly average was roughly 10 or 11 entries.  I’m not faring that much better this month either because this current entry gets to be only my third one for May. 

Why the concern with such numbers, you might ask?  Well, the concern is not really about the low numbers per se, but more of a lament over what has been amiss from my daily routine recently .  Blogging and bloghopping aren’t just acts of writing a blog entry and reading others’ blog entries, respectively.  After a while and if done often enough, both become habits; both become significant parts (though in varying degrees)  of our daily lives.

And blogging and bloghopping have indeed become habits of mine.  Up until a couple of years ago, I used to start my day at work reading the news from websites maintained by the New York Times and MSNBC.  Even though I still visit both news sites on a regular basis, they are no longer my first stops for the day.  Before my workload reached an atrocious level several weeks ago, I bloghopped once I logged into my office computer.  On the average, I spent about a good half hour reading the latest entries of bloggers my blog is linked to before I finally turned my attention to work. 

But that wasn’t the end of it.  I would also bloghop a number of times during the day not only to catch up on the latest entries from fellow bloggers but also to stimulate my mind while drafting a report for submission to my boss or while I’m reviewing the work of a subordinate.  Whenever some free time was available, moments that have become increasingly rare lately, I would even start composing a blog entry.

The blogging and bloghopping would continue in the evenings once I was through with dinner.  It was one way for me to unwind before I turn in for the day.  Those reads helped take my mind off from the stresses of the day.  But aside from giving my mind a much needed break from all things work related, it is through reading people’s blogs that I get to learn more about the world around me.  Each person has his/her own story to tell, a valuable piece or two of information to share, a life lesson to impart, and every once in a while, a joke for everyone to enjoy.

These thoughts bring back to mind a piece of advice that Carson Taylor (1876-1962), the American founder of the Manila Daily Bulletin (as the Manila Bulletin was called during the pre-martial law days), gave to Hans Menzi (1910-1984) back in 1957 when Mr. Menzi purchased the paper from Mr. Taylor.  On the newspaper business, Mr. Taylor’s words to Mr. Menzi were, “Selling newspapers is like selling Coca-Cola.  You’re selling a habit.”

The words remain very much true about the newspaper business today.  And though the circumstances may be a bit humbler, the same can be said about Blogging as well.

A Baker’s Little Makeover

Early this past week, yours truly did a little makeover on this page.  I decided that after a year or so, my old avatar badly needed a change.

My old avatar was a black and white picture of my idol, John Lennon, taken some time in 1963.  It was a photo taken of Mr. Lennon in a rather pensive mood.  The picture also showed Mr. Lennon with his geeky glasses on, a picture and side of him that was rarely shown to his fans during that time.   The photo appealed to me because it kind of showed that caught in the midst of all the madness generated by Beatlemania was a thoughtful man who wrote and sang about his thoughts and feelings for the world around him.  He and the rest of the Beatles eventually got tired of all the mania and madness that mired all of their concerts and appearances.  The physical and mental exhaustion took their toll on the band and eventually led them to quit touring while they were still at the height of their popularity.

Like millions of other bloggers, I decided to start my own personal blog to write about people, places, events and other things that personally matter to me.  I see this blog as a repository of my personal thoughts and views and in a lot of ways, I also chose it as a means to share knowledge with anyone who may come across it while journeying through cyberspace.

As with everybody else, I too have my own personal issues.  Although I may have written about them and will, no doubt, write about some of them in the months and, hopefully, years to come, I hope to maintain a positive and optimistic tone whenever I do.  With every issue and problem we face also comes an opportunity or two for learning and self-improvement.  Failure and pessimism will rule our lives only if we allow them to.

Thus, please let me introduce you to what my new avatar will be moving forward.  It shows a smiling and happy chubby Baker standing behind a counter where a couple of his bakeshop’s products are on full display.    I like it simply because of the happy, pleasant and optimistic disposition that the character’s face projects.  The drawing’s simplicity also appeals to me.  Plus, not only is the avatar in line with yours truly’s pen name (naks!), but the Baker’s cheeks also bear a slight resemblance to mine.  (Hehehe)

Anyway, I hope you’d get to like it too.  If you don’t, you’ll be taken off my blogroll.  Haha  Just kidding.  Although I remain a John Lennon fan and although his music and writings remain strong influences in my life, I don’t think he’ll mind it one bit if I replace his photo with this one.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure that he’s already satisfied with all the publicity and exposure he got during his lifetime.  Right, John?

Finally, the avatar above is a cropped version for I had to make it fit onto the frame allowed by the WordPress blogging platform.  Thus, let me show you the original comic illustration from where I sourced it:

How I wish I could shrink the entire image and make the entire drawing show on my avatar but due to technical limitations, a lot of the details would have been lost.  Thus, I have to make do with a cropped version.  But I will keep the original drawing here as part of the documentation of my blog’s history.

Thus, don’t be surprised if you see this avatar in your blog’s comment box one of these days. 

Awarded and Tagged Baker

A few weeks ago, I received an award and a tag from my blogger friend, Blogusvox of The Sandbox fame.  I enjoy reading his blog a lot because through it, he chronicles the life and work experiences of an OFW (Overseas Foreign Worker) in the Middle East, a land where the culture is very different from our own.

I have to say that I’ve learned a lot about an OFW’s life through Blogusvox’s writings and musings.  A lot of us non-OFWs are aware, as a general view, that an OFW’s life is not exactly a bed of roses.  But that is a view seen from 20,000 feet above the ground, so to speak.  Very few of us non-OFWs (unless we’re related to one) are aware of the hard details that make up their daily struggles just to help their families back home and to fulfill some of their lifelong dreams.

Through Blogusvox’s writings, I get to see the OFWs’ daily struggles up close.  One gets an appreciation of what an OFW goes through as one reads his posts be they in written or illustrated form.  The reader shares his happiness whenever he writes about his family and what they’ve managed to accomplish in all the years they’ve spent in a foreign land.  But the reader also gets to share in the sadness and anger whenever he writes of negative experiences he and our countrymen suffer or put up with at the hands of their foreign employers and the locals in the area be it in the form or racial or job discrimination or the failure of their foreign bosses to give them credit for a job very well done.  But the worst for me has to be those stories of how fellow Filipinos mistreat their countrymen in a foreign land.  In my humble opinion, no behavior can be lower than low when one mistreats one of his own kind.

As a result of all the above, I consider it an honor then that he chose my blog as one of the recipients of the Honest Scrap Award.   According to the folks who came up with this Award, “the Honest Scrap Awards are bestowed by bloggers to fellow bloggers whose blog contents or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

A big thanks again to Blogusvox for this award.  He chose to give it to me because he likes my new site’s layout and finds my posts to be well thought out.  Thank you very much for that compliment, Pards.

The following are the Award’s rules:

“When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real.

Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have 7 friends. Show the 7 random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!”

I wish the rules allowed me to select an unlimited number of blogs because truth be told, I enjoy reading and visiting the blogs listed on my Blogroll.  Anyway, this award has rules and I must comply with them.  Thus, the following are the 7 blogs that I personally find brilliant in content and they are the following: (listed in no particular order)

1. Career Mom Speaks – A very informative blog that discusses a Manila-based working Mom’s views on relevant career, parenting, insurance, and personal finance matters.  A number of her posts also focus on the challenges working women face trying to balance work and family life;
2. How Brother Utoy Failed Salvation History – Written mostly in the vernacular, this is a very funny, informative, sometimes irreverent but often witty blog authored by a very intelligent and funny Filipino seminarian based in France;
3. P0kw4ng’s Uncensored Mind – Uncensored this blog truly is.  Behind the funny (adult humor) and witty lines one will find a very perceptive and thoughtful lady who shares with her readers her thoughts on life, her children, love and her adventures (and misadventures) in Europe;
4. Wits and Nuts – A wonderful blog written by a Filipino based in the Middle East, it covers the author’s rather wide array of interests such as travel, food, music, and current events.  Excellent writing on display;
   
5. Pulse – If you are into dining, movies, and travel, this blog, authored by Em Dy, a doctor based in the Philippines, is surely worth visiting.  Not only are her posts very informative, I personally feel that there’s always a positive and optimistic tone to them that make her blog a very enjoyable read;
   
6. Tales of a Backpacker – Every life has its share of joys, challenges, frustrations, and small victories.  Whether in English or in the vernacular, this blog by a Manila-based journalist writes about all her experiences with eloquence.
   
7. Worth A Thousand Words – This is a photo blog authored by a Filipina based in the West Coast.  Photography is one of her passions and it’s always a pleasure viewing the beautiful pictures she posts on her blog.

Now I proceed to the second part of this tag to list down Ten Honest Things About Myself.  Here they are:

1. If you want to kill me, all you need to do is set a trap for me using any of the following dishes as bait: pancit palabok, pancit bihon, longsilog, puto binan, Ferino’s bibingka, KFC chicken, and lechon kawali.    I never tire of these dishes;
2. December 5 is a date that will forever remain etched in my memory.  It was on that date that as a third grader, I got sent out of the classroom three times and in three consecutive class periods for very talkative behavior ;
3. When a particular song fits my mood at a particular moment, I don’t hesitate to play that song over and over.  If the mood lasts for an extended period of time, such as days or weeks, then expect the same song to get played over the same period of time.
4. I can dine in a restaurant all by my lonesome.  I use those moments to be alone with my thoughts;
5. If I love a certain dish from a certain restaurant, I tend to order it all the time.  As a result, there are a few restaurants where once I walk in, the staff no longer bother to ask me what I wish to order.  ;
6. When engaged in conversations, it annoys the heck out of me whenever I sense that a person is not giving me their full attention;
7. I read both the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible from cover to cover when I was 9 years old.  Although I can’t claim to remember many of the passages, I remain very familiar with the lives of the Biblical figures mentioned in its various books;
8. Coca-Cola (regular) and Root beer are my favorite soft drinks;
9. Selecta has always been my favorite Filipino ice cream.  Macapuno, Coffee Crumble, Mantecado, and Quezo Real are my favorite Selecta flavors; and
10. Last but certainly not the least, I was a rather spoiled brat at the age of two.  One of the family stories from that time was that I made my dear grandmother get a taxicab to take the two of us home from the neighborhood hardware store.  It should have been ok were it not for the fact that the hardware store was only two blocks away from our family home.