Author: Gabriel

Learn To Read

One of the nice things I like about big Press gigs is you occasionally get the chance to talk to other writers, many of whom have been in the business for decades. Yesterday I was seated beside friends from Manila Tribune, a sorta celeb guy from Studio 23 and interestingly enough, editors from 34 year old magazine Mod.

I unfortunately wasn’t able to ask for a calling card, so I forgot her name in the mayhem that is a Press event that included the usual big announcements, a displaying of new prods plus of course feeding us and raffling off prizes. At any rate we fortunately found time to small talk about a topic close to my heart, the dwindling number of readers and quality of written and spoken English in the Philippines, something she knew well about, coincidentally being a CEU Journalism Professor as well.

So here’re I’ll share a few things I’ve learned to believe.

One, is that I don’t think ‘Learn To Read campaigns’ are very effective. I’ve seen the ones Inquirer tried to do plus maybe a few others, and they’ve tried going the celebrity route (celebs explaining what reading has done for them etc.) but for the most part, that turns me off more than interests me. Of course, I’ve never been interested in celebs in the first place, so I’m probably an exception.

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I’m Coaching the 14-17 yr old boys Basketball Inter Village again

We’ll be known as the Clippers for some odd reason, and first practice is 7am Sat. I’m super excited primarily because it’s the same boys I’m coaching save for a few who’ve gotten older since last year, and secondarily because, secretly, I really wanna get back at the Blue team which beat us by a hair the last time.

As if I’m not busy enough.

Ack, no matter. The game has given me so much, but it has also taken so much as well. I would’ve thought that I’d have stopped learning now, years after the times when I was any good, and when I thought I could’ve contributed the most. If anything, I’ve learned playing it is essentially a selfish thing compared to coaching it. Consequently if there’s any reason why I’m not interested in playing it anymore, its because teaching it, coaching it and sharing it is a thousand times more fulfilling than playing it.

So there. Lesson learned. And more to come, it seems. At any rate, all basketball talk aside, if and when those boys need me, they know I’m just a knock on our door away.

Yay.

Today is a milestone day for the Exchanges, which I’ll extend to my person, if it doesn’t mind, as well. I just had a meeting that I’d never thought would’ve happened if I didn’t have my notes and their calling cards on my left breast pocket as proof. A meeting with the kind of people and the kind of topic that I’d have only dreamed about, and if you’d have told me would happen a month ago I’d have told you you were talking nonsense.

No it’s not Google or anything even close, but to me its a big step forward. I’m really sorry for not being able to talk about it directly, but I figure its good logic and business sense to keep my mouth shut, at least till things are on black and white.

Continue reading Yay.

Where’s My Money, PayPal?

Just wanted to add to the discussions around the local ‘net. Upon receiving news of the ability to withdraw from PayPal to a local account, I tried making a withdrawal of $50.00 to my Philippine bank account on Feb. 12, and I’ve yet to receive it. It’s already Feb. 27.

There are two methods for me to receive money via PayPal, one is via my UnionBank Eon card and another via the new method, using my SA account at a relatively big local bank. Today, I tried withdrawing via my Eon card (yes I haven’t learned my lesson), but I really need to set up a reliable method. I tried sending just $20.00 this time.

PayPal’s resolution system on their website is not adequate to handle these particular situations as it is designed primarily for ebay scenarios where delivery or service have been performed and there is non-payment, or variations of such.

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Taking Care Of My Sis’ Kids

I’ve been surrogate parent to my 2 nieces and nephew for the past 2 weeks since their mom has gone abroad. Lemme write down whats been going on:

  • The 19 year old is running for a Student Council position at UP and I don’t agree with her wild schedule that makes her go home near midnight almost daily. I’ve cleared most of it with her mom but I’ve pretty much made it clear making us worry isn’t cool. I don’t understand why she doesn’t wanna learn how to drive, I’d imagine teens would jump at a chance to learn because of the eventual next step – a car of their own, and besides we live so far away it’d definitely help her out. For the most part however she’s easy to deal with, it’s just the sched, and besides after seeing the traffic at our place she’s probably doing the right thing by not having to deal with that craziness everyday.

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.asia Is Useless

First, Asia is varied and each individual country that makes it up is distinct, from culture to language to currency, religion, beliefs, political systems, socio-economic structures, economies, the way we look, eat, dress, etc, Each country pretty much has little to do with one another.

Second, that means a website using the .asia domain will have an unclear audience. Uzbekistan, for example, is in Asia. So is Iran, and yes, the Philippines. Even within just SouthEast Asia, there is little to share. I’m sure people in Myanmar and Brunei have about as little to share with me here in the Philippines as I do with those in Laos and East Timor.

Third: Conversely, creating a website or a section of an website that makes content for an international audience makes far more sense. In fact at the moment, a lot of websites already do this using either subdomains (http://philippines.domain.com) or subdirectories (http://domain.com/philippines), which can even be extended to specific sub-regions or cities (http://domain.com/philippines/cebu). In fact, why not get a new domain just for that purpose (http://www.domain-ph.com). These techniques perform essentially the same function.

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