Blame it on Rio. No.

RIGHT, Sam and Suzie, the new parakeets of the house.

I abandoned regular blogging months ago. I got basically lazy. I had Manila weather to blame it on. Why?

With the warm Manila weather, everything else could wait.

First order of a day would be either getting up so early or so late. I prefer the former. I am usually up at five in the morning, and having coffee and toast bread.

If ever I go to the 6 am mass, I'd be in front of the computer at around 7:30 and having a formal and bigger breakfast at 9 am. Then the lazing around bit continues after lunch. If I have any appointments, or chores to do outside the house, it'll be done in the mid-afternoon.

With the sun streaking through the house, the laid back existence is easy to do all day - going through the papers, doing crossword puzzle, surfing the Net, reading , doing social networking and calling people, and blogging takes a back seat.

But if ever I wake up early (which is more the norm), I make it a point to do the yard before I hit the laptop. My dog Shadee, and now the parakeets, get my early attention and care.

If I were in Toronto these days ,with the winter in full blast, I'd be camped at home and blogging more. It seems that with a cold weather, I need to internalize my energy and let it out by writing.

Not with a warm weather; the energy is spent sweating out by doing even the minutest and easiest of things. So blogging becomes laborious to do. Even leisure activities take so much energy.

Deprived.

I've enjoyed reading a certain blog for over a year now, but gradually steering away from it. I no longer enjoy reading the posts by the author.

Since the advent of the Internet, and then blogging, people have been offered a gazillion choices of free reading materials. Before Internet, people relied on radio, television and newspapers for news. Now, mainstream newspapers, radio and TV networks have on line versions, and blogs of countless origins offer first hand views of breaking news and insignificant happenings throughout the globe.

Blogging has become business for many. It's used to promote products and services. But to a great majority, blogging has still remained an outlet for writing daily occurrences in life - much like a diary.

I find it appalling that many so called good writers , some even award-winning writers waste their talent blogging about tasteless, mundane subjects. One blog has even become a mirror of the author's sexual deprivation.
What a waste!

Shorter Meaty Posts Just Like Appetizers

Bloggers take their stuff either too seriously or too lightly. Both are fine. It depends really on your objective. Do you blog to release those sleeping creative giants in your brain, or do you do it to preach, to politicize, to earn money, etc.

The point is, it's all up to you. It is your blog.

In my one year of blogging, I didn't really expect people to read; it was more for me.

But since it's in public domain, it's better to have some quality, informative stuff. Writing personal diaries like this blog, is just like talking to a relative or a friend.

When you're on the phone, especially if on a cell phone with limited calls, you want the conversation to be meaningful.

Or like hors d'oeuvre or appetizers, blog posts should be pleasing to the palate but not too heavy on the stomach.

There, I've reminded myself to write more interesting and direct-to-the-point stuff.

Private View

Private view (ing) is defined by MS Encarta as " preview of a film or an exhibition that is only open to invited guests."

In today's very global and very public communication arena, men and women, private and public personages and corporations have to contend with the issue of privacy. In hundreds and thousand cases, the floodgates to people's privacy had been forced open.

To avoid costly lawsuits, especially from among the "sue-loving" North Americans, social networking sites try to enforce "rules of the game" and etiquette. This includes verifying whether one has permission to post a picture of another individual; a lot of times, it happens when putting up group pictures, say, of weddings, outings, or big events.

Tons and tons of websites and blogs contain countless photographs which are easily downloadable by any one. Camera cellphones simply snap people and places without the permission of the one being photographed. And then, there's the innocent capturing of tourists into one's camera or video, when you just want to film a landmark. Take the Eiffel Tower - you can't seem to find a view or angle of it without heads and bodies bobbing up and down your camera; or maybe, try to snap a photo inside any Greenbelt, and you'd know what I mean.

Which brings me to my point: Edit.

In one episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray suggested editing the wedding video of brother Robert and sis-in-law Amy, in order to splice the scene where mother Marie tried to stop the wedding.

Edit. Yes. Books, magazines and films get to be edited before publication and showing.

This same technique should be applied to websites and blogs. The author must be vigilant to preserve the privacy of others. Just recently, for instance, I had to edit a picture which I posted in this blog. It (Statue of the Navigators, Lisbon) prominently showed people in the background - people I did'nt even know; they were "accidental tourists" in my photos. So, right away, I pulled the picture and cropped out the "tourists" fast, lest I be questioned or be held liable for it. The beauty of blogs, you can edit even after you published a post.

In one organization, where I worked a couple of years ago, we even had to ask students and clients for a "release form," before publishing their photos in the website, annual report or the newsletter. Some people won't sign; they just want private viewing of their images.

Tell Me About Yourself

Hopefully, when a job hunter goes for an interview, s/he has prepared for it. Job counsellors and job search workshops advice would-be-employees to put on their best act for this event- clean, conservative suit, professional-looking briefcase, no outrageous hairdo nor jewelry, no chewing gum, no smoking. And remember to talk about yourself - your job accomplishments, to put it more precisely.

The most difficult question in an interview - Tell me about yourself - has sent inexperienced workers to think of it as a trap; while the flamboyant ones think of it as an ego trip, but the educated job seeker knows it as the moment to sell oneself for the job.

The About Me section in a Blog works the same way as in the job interview. It is the section of a blog that should be devoted to tell readers who you are, to gain their trust. If readers know salient points about you, the blogger, they will be drawn more to you and to what you tell them.

When I created this blog, it was intended to jog my mind out of a rut; I was out of a job. I didn't know much about blogging; all I knew was I enjoyed reading news on the Internet and used the Net to research for various purposes. So the About Me section had baffled me. What do I talk about me? Should I post a photo of me? Since my blog is a conundrum of unrelated topics and stories, would people even read it - thus, I postponed telling about myself.

" According to the AOL "Blog Trends Survey," nearly 50% of bloggers say they do it because it serves as self-therapy, and one-third of bloggers who responded say they write frequently about self-help and self-esteem topics. The survey also revealed that when it comes to relieving real-life pressures or dealing with personal issues or tragedies, six times as many respondents prefer to write in their blog or read blogs written by others suffering from similar problems rather than to seek counseling from a professional.

Conversely, only 16% say they blog because they're interested in journalism; as few as 12% say they blog in order to break or stay ahead of the latest news and gossip, and a fractional 8% blog in order to expose political information.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 8 million Internet users say they have a created a blog, and according to a Technorati study, the number of blogs in existence doubles about every five months."

For more than nine months, the section About Me didn't say much about me; today I decided to tell about me.