Today is a fine day that I almost forgot: it’s the first year anniversary of Marocharim.com.

Anyway, thanks to some prodding by Tonyo Cruz and some “de-mystification” by Miss Google Earth Philippines Aileen Apolo, I finally added another nifty new tool to my set of three active WordPress plugins: Google Analytics.  Great, I finally have a new toy to monitor… I mean, be more acquainted with, my audience here in The Marocharim Experiment.

Tonyo told me not to be too surprised with what I’m going to see, but I seem to have readers (or maybe blog-browsing robots) on every continent on Earth except Antarctica (I’ll start writing about penguins, grouper, and the international political implications of dividing the Ross Ice Shelf).  What really made my day of surveillance… I mean, readership acquaintance, was that I have a community of readers in unexpected places:

• Iran (I hope it’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)
• Belgium and the Netherlands (all I need is Luxembourg, and I’ve conquered the Benelux countries)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina (I heart your candidate for Miss Universe)
• Lithuania (my new favorite country… I LOVE YOU!)

It’s very probable that I got visits from Croatia because of feed-crawlers, proxy servers, or SEO specialists in the former Yugoslavia.  I don’t really care; the map to world-domination is clear that I am big in Eastern Europe… whatever.

So how am I doing in the Philippines?  Interesting question: my readers are centered around the National Capital Region.  What ticks me off is that I am way bigger in Makati than in my hometown of Baguio.  Ever since I installed Analytics, I got two - that’s right, TWO - visits from my own hometown.  For Chrissakes, I get more visits from Finland!

Of course, I may be getting way ahead of myself.  But hey, I love Google Analytics.

Will I live-blog?  Nope: I figure that an entire queue of (electric) power-hungry bloggers here in De La Salle University College of Saint Benilde will all take their turns at power outlets.  I think a big-ass battery pack is in order, but not till I get my 13th month pay.

Anyway, live from whatever-the-fuck-this-auditorium’s-name-is in CSB, this is WordCamp Philippines 2008.

Everyone’s got a WordCamp shirt (or at least everybody I know and have met before, like Ria, Arbet, Shari and Arpee), and thanks to the power of not having PayPal, I don’t have one.  I should say I don’t care, but I think a lot of WordPress-titude must have something to do with having a cool-looking shirt.  For starters, I do have some WordPress item-age at my disposal (in more senses of the term):

• WordPress sticker (this is SO going to my cubicle)
• WordCamp pass (I laminated it, so?)
• WordCamp Camper’s Badge.

Some notes on my Camper’s Badge… this is an absolute first in my four years of blogging: I can understand being called “Marocharim” every now and then, but I have never been called “Marocharim Rimorin” before.  Ever.  Just to be clear, I’m not complaining, I’m not making a big deal out of having a nickname I don’t use, but calling me “Marocharim Rimorin” sort of has that effect of calling me “Ronald” in public.

Again, I’m not complaining.

Anyway, WordCamp just started.  Viva la raza.

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UPDATE 2:08 PM: Matt Mullenweg, a.k.a. WordPress God, has just introduced new innovations in the coming versions and releases of WordPress.  I’ve been skeptical of WP before, but this has GOT to be the most rock-and-fuckin’-roll content management software that there is in the world today.  So much so that even Friendster Blogs - which used to be the blogging platform for pissants - is now actually using WordPress (from TypePad, I think).

And did I just just see Ria kiss Matt?  Tonyo can’t believe it either.

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UPDATE 3:50 PM: One of the more interesting things about being in a “bloggers’ convention” is that you get to know some parenthetical (non-tabular) demographics for laptop use.  For example, The Mordo (who is seated beside me right now… shoutouts for him pointing me to an unused power outlet) is using an Asus EEE 900, which is one of my dream machines.  Tonyo, who is also a proud owner of an Asus EEE, is the first blogger I’ve ever seen to use a Nokia E71 to blog.  There are MacBooks, of course, but I think I’m the only guy here using a Lenovo.

I got one shirt thrown at me, by the way… I didn’t leave this place empty-handed after all.

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UPDATE 4:39 PM: Q&A with Matt Mullenweg.  Leave it to me to ask the tough, important questions:

Marocharim: Why is your blog entitled “Unlucky in cards?”
Matt: In the States we have a saying, “Unlucky in cards, unlucky in love.”  So it kind of goes that way.

Hoo-hah, Ria, the swooning seems to work!

Marocharim: OK sir, who would you vote for?
Matt: I’m taking a chance, I’m voting Barack Obama.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen, Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, is voting for Barack Obama.

Furthermore: WordPress is an equal opportunity employer.  That’s it, I’m getting a job there.

I was at Greenhills the other day taking some assignments from a freelance gig, when I came across the bronze statue of the late great Max Soliven.  I don’t know what is it with statues and inspiration, but burnout ceased for me at that very moment.

I’d be a sycophant if I said that I idolized Mr. Soliven, but I did admire his work.  If there’s anything worth reading in the Philippine STAR at the time, it was the wise words of the man many referred to as “Manong Max.”  Before this pillar of Philippine journalism wrote 30 some four years ago, he was a foremost social critic, political commentator, and writer.  No weekday of mine was complete without the quick wit and solid opinions he made in his STAR column, “By the Way.”  That, a can of Coca-Cola, and a couple of cigarettes was usually enough to make for a fine day of reading a newspaper.

I always thought that the “Opinion” columns in newspapers belonged rightfully to old people, to people wise beyond their years, or to young folk who have good connections with mainstream media.  We young folk who are bent on making our opinions known rely on our blogs.  Even with the so-called “Age of Information” upon us, print media is still the Holy Grail for writers.  Many are called, few are chosen, but only the best would ever make it to a respectable newspaper and write opinion columns.

That’s where I want to be in the next ten years, and while I know that I will never eclipse the profound influence of Max Soliven, I know that if I work hard enough, I could very well belong to that pantheon of writers, journalists, and opinion-formers that Manong Max represents.  I think it’s all a matter of dedication, good timing, and good sense.

Why am I rushing?  I’m enjoying online writing too much to leave it just yet!

Araneta Center, Cubao
6:00 PM

Those discount cards make a lot of sense, but I don’t understand why Gloria Jeans should offer EYP cards instead of free wi-fi.  Nothing against e-Yellowpages, but come on!

I get to see Benj of Atheista.net every once in a while carrying a special Atheista-branded shirt, and Jester with his floppy hat, and almost every blogger these days carrying a calling card.  So in the interest of jumping into the blog branding bandwagon, I decided to narrow down my options into some ways to advertise my blog to the masses during blog get-together’s:

• Corpse paint. I once suggested to Jester that I wear death metal corpse paint.  Scratch that, it’s a bad idea.
• Calling cards. I’ll get around to making a calling card of my own in the future.  Besides, it makes me feel like my dad.
• T-shirt. Which is what this blog entry is all about.

Being too much of a cheapskate to go to CD-R King to buy a proper mouse, I decided to break out my Photoshop skills with the touchpad of the Marocharim Writing Machine.  I came out with a rather nifty design concept for my official blog shirt using some Photoshop brushes sourced from somewhere:

With all that said, my sister’s friends will airbrush a shirt for me (I hope at a reasonable price) and have it ready for me next week come WordCamp Philippines (because they ran out of WordCamp shirts and I don’t have PayPal yet).  Said shirt has a sucky design because I don’t have a proper working mouse.

Great.  I finally have a brand.  I’ll still be cursing on live streaming video.

Over some random instant messages, me and Tonyo both agree that wi-fi is beneficial, if not important, for blogging.  I’m still pretty much an Internet cafe blogger, but I managed to leach 15% wi-fi connectivity with a can of Pringles.  I still find wi-fi blogging to be rather obnoxious, if not irritating; it works for people like me who are on the go (although sometimes I wish I had an ultraportable like an Asus EEE instead of a fullsize laptop), but I can’t help but give myself a kick in the ass every time I’m forced to multi-task.  Right now, I’m eating dinner, checking e-mails, wondering why StatPress doesn’t work, and pissing myself off.

The kick in the ass part is rather simple.  I was against oppressive forms of capitalism and imperialism in my younger days, and here I am doing the following things:

• Eating at McDonald’s
• Using a laptop
• Writing in the English language

I know it’s a narrow-minded way to put things into perspective, but when you’re pissed off and harrassed from a lot of corporate wrist-slashing emoness, well… it sure beats hypocrisy and excuse-making by a long shot.

At least I’m not in a coffee shop.

Shoutouts go to my colleagues at FilipinoVoices.com, the brainchild of Nick, for being voted as one of the top 10 emerging influential blogs of 2008.  My apologies have to go to Jeanette Toral; this writer-freelance-journalist-self-proclaimed-rockstar-self-ascribed-stand-up-comedian has, in a live video stream of the event, said “ass” six times and came this close to saying the F word.

Whatever.  By the way, see you at WordCamp Philippines 2008.

Next on The Marocharim Experiment: a lengthy entry on outsourcing and cigarettes.

Pardon me, but I won’t be doing any linkage for this entry.  It’s just a stream-of-thought thing.

Jester has been taking a lot of flak (OK, crap), from a certain post made by a certain Dennis Relojo on his blog.  The lot of you may already know about the “UP Students = Fake Scholars” controversy, and I think that at least one of you may want to know where I stand, as an exponent of the University of the Philippines.  I’m not going to make any friends with what I’m going to say anyway.  Don’t worry, I’ll try my best to be very, very nice just so that nobody will get offended.

Reading the comments makes me want to challenge the claim that UP students are “likas na magaling at matatalino.” I do not question the intelligence of UP students.  In my long (insert coefficient here) stay in UP, there is no doubt in that assumption.  To doubt “native intelligence” would be to doubt my own intelligence (which I do a lot anyway, so argument is rendered moot).  Yet doubt, ladies and gentlemen, can be raised to the circumstances as to how a UP student got there.  So while we’re in the business of raising doubts, let me raise doubt as to how each and every one of us got to UP anyway:

• Statistics. Some smart-ass invented a thing called an “examination” to determine one’s native intelligence and capacity to enter an institution of higher learning.  In order to evaluate one’s intelligence and mental capacity, a statistical limit to the right of the Bell curve - the cut-off - is set in order to determine if someone “deserves” whatever reward there is.  When you reach this limit set by the examiners of the UPCAT, then you can say you deserve to enter UP.  This cut-off is the bare minimum necessary to determine if you “possess the native intelligence” necessary to make it to UP.  Like many things about UP, everything boils down to numbers.
• Injustice. Some smart-ass decided that for the exam to be profitable, one has to charge a fee in order for someone to take an exam.  A reasonably priced P450 fee was instituted for someone to be able to take the UPCAT.  Now P450 may not seem much, but you can imagine a very bright girl from the provinces who walks barefoot for five kilometers to get to school, with nothing but five pesos to buy fish crackers to go along with her baon of cold rice.  She tops her class and possesses the “native intelligence” necessary for a UP student; but she could not, by any means, afford the fee necessary to take the UPCAT.  Or much less, afford the board, lodging, and other necessities for a college education at UP Diliman.  Thanks to an injustice, we were all able to step on the dreams of this girl to be able to make it to UP.

Is there really anything else that determines one’s place in UP other than statistics and injustice?  Like destiny?  God’s will?  Fate?  Because we drank milk and ate peanuts the day of the UPCAT that we ended up having diarrhea?  Well… not really.

This brings me to the third - and perhaps my favorite - reason why we all got into UP:

• Damn luck. For all this talk about being “entitled” or “owed,” we forget that a lot about this world works around, well, a helluva lot of swerte. It’s so difficult to enter UP; the difficulty of the UPCAT is the least of those reasons.  Chance, that only morality in a cruel world that’s unbiased, unprejudiced and fair (I’m lifting off lines from “The Dark Knight” all of a sudden), made it possible for you to overcome the statistical difficulty of the UPCAT, and also made it possible for P450 to be within the means of your parents.  Yes, for all our collective bravado of “native intelligence,” we all are just… well, lucky people who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Let’s not dunk our heads on the “activist” and “social” part of these circumstances, and let’s just dwell on the epiphany of being “UPians” (sheesh, that’s irritating) on the basis of statistics, injustice, and damn luck.  I don’t want to say that you’re behooved to work for the greatest good of the greatest number, liberate them from oppression, free them from the chains of injustices, yadda yadda yadda.  But then again, that is what makes us different from other schools.

It’s called “defining your situation,” ladies and gentlemen.  The fact that we’re “Iskolar ng Bayan” is not a license to be entitled for anything except that imperative to be worth something, to be a cog in the wheel of the improvement of the lives of the people, regardless of whether or not the subsidize you or subsidize you enough.  To say that you’re entitled to this and that is a formality, a technicality, a non-necessity.  The same UP that is capable of being the cradle of this country’s history is capable of unmaking it; the same institution that is capable of fostering excellence is also capable of fostering mediocrity.

That itself is superheroic, and is now usually taken as a suggestion, mainly because being a “UPian” these days means to have the entitlement to be chosen by a company above someone else from a different school.  That’s a bag of bollocks.  The expectation is not that you will get your much-needed slap-in-the-face when you graduate and get a job, but you get it while you’re still in school.  It’s not a matter of learning humility (which is a superhero ability), but a matter of learning perspective before arrogance - which comes from a lack of perspective, not necessarily the right one - sets in and takes you over, and give you that paranoid delusion that yor loyalty lies in UP, not the people.

I’ll treat you to a cheeseburger if you can name me a call center that does not, in one way, shape or form, employ a UP graduate.  I’ll treat you to two cheeseburgers if you can honestly say to yourself that you made it to UP for reasons other than statistics, injustice and damn luck.  That’s a fair enough reward for a challenge.

I hope that my little stream of thought dignifies this controversy, or at least lowers my blood pressure.

I was checking out Original TMX and had one serious laugh trip.  Back then, I used to pay so much attention to the way my blog looks, and even installed a chatterbox.  On the tagboard of my old blog, I found a rather interesting… proposal, which was so funny I just have to blog about it:

For purposes of translation, an apparently “hot girl” named “sexy_katrina4″ is apparently attempting to solicit cybersex from yours truly.  It’s a sickening reminder, but I have zero experience with legitimate sex, much less cybersex.  Hmmm… maybe I should take up the offer of the sexy fourth Katrina without a surname, admit to myself that I’m a pervert, and have at least one thing to brag about to my friends when the topic of sex comes up (so to speak).

I’m not a moralist, but cybersex is wrong.  If you watched “Napoleon Dynamite” before, you would know that the people you get to meet on the Internet - much less “have sex with” - would probably not be who you were really expecting.  Like when Kip met LaFawnduh.  Worse, you may even end up in an online sexual predator sting operation and find yourself condemned, shunned, and ostracized by even by the denizens of McDonaldland because you’re the type of person who would have sexual intercourse with Grimace, doing the “Brokeback Mountain” thing at The Hamburger Patch.

So who says that “I wish I knew how to quit you?” line again… can Grimace even talk?

Of course, if I stumble off my rocker again, I might just take up the offer for cybersex.  The bad thing is, I’m a blogger.  Pardon me while I make a stereotypical comment about bloggers in general, but there is no way I’m going to pass up the chance of telling the entire world how my sexual encounter with sexy fourth Katrina without a surname went.  I’ll do the smut-on-the-Interweb thing myself.  With my virtual 27-inch genetic jackhammer, I ended up virtually ploughing sexy fourth Katrina without a surname’s virtual steaming, juicy virtual love tunnel.  Oh yes, she virtually took all 27 inches of my rock-hard virtual love rod.

Well, so much for bragging rights.  Sorry, sexy fourth Katrina without a surname, this 27-inch anaconda ain’t leaving the jungles of the Amazon.

Don’t get any ideas, pervert.

Allow me to indulge in some self-promotion, ego massage, and to a certain extent, ass-kissing.

Last night, with an invitation from Mr. Carlo Ople, a few bloggers (myself included) had a casual dinner meeting with Senator Mar Roxas, more commonly known as “Mister Palengke.”  Now before you start to accuse me (again) of being a “sellout,” this is not an endorsement for Mar Roxas in 2010.  After all, I just may be crazy enough to run for the Presidency myself.  By then, I’ll be 25 and people will take me seriously.

The shindig was held at Annabel’s Tomas Morato where, over french fries, crackers, and a fantabulous dinner (for free… and hey, it was Annabel’s), the following bloggers and myself met with Sen. Roxas:

• Toots Ople
• Noemi Dado
• Lester Cavestany
• The Jester-in-Exile
• Arbet Bernardo
• Juned Sonido
• Sonnie Santos
• Abe Olandres
• Paolo Florenda
• Ding Gagelonia
• Gail Villanueva
• Marc Villanueva
• Ellen Tordesillas
• Manolo Quezon
• Ricky Carandang

Mr. Gagelonia writes a cool summary of the meeting at his entry at Filipino Voices, so please do check it out there.  It was also the launch of VirtualRally.net, which is a virtual form of EDSA where you can speak your mind about issues like VAT.

I’m not a very political blogger (and if that was a lie, let lightning strike me), and I sort of got confused with all that had to do with my question about E-VAT.  My theory is that a lot of politicians can answer a VAT question unfazed.  So I decided to ask the Senator a “cute” question (as Ma’am Noemi puts it)…

Sir, you watched The Dark Knight, right?  Who would you want to have dinner with: Joker, Two-Face, or Batman?

Now let me just say that this is not a profound philosophical question, I just wanted to know his answer…

I’d really like to talk to Two-Face and ask… “What happened to you?”

I leave you to make up your minds about it.

Anyway, here’s a picture of me and the Senator… I told you this was a shameless post!

Again, I’m not photogenic.  My camera phone sucks.  I had a fever.  I was chewing on gum.  And I don’t use glutathione.

I must say that I’m very impressed with the Senator’s geniality and attention to detail, although I was waiting for that one phrase when we discussed VAT: “taxation without representation.”  Didn’t happen, but oh well.  Another impression was that he was very articulate, and had a keen attention to detail (the guy takes down notes).

Is Mar Roxas Presidential timber?  Let’s wait and see.  How about Marocharim?  He’s dictator material.  Do you actually want to see my face in posters at EDSA?

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Side notes: I am suffering from flu.  Note to self: no more tequila shots on fever.

Last night I frantically packed up my laptop and headed off to some wi-fi hotspot - I could care less where - to download iTunes. Ever the ignoramus when it comes to personal gadgetry (you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t know how to use unlimited texting), I forgot that for an iPod to work, it has to be synced in a suitable program (i.e., iTunes). Now I can listen to the guilty pleasures of the Dixie Chicks and Utada Hikaru.

Uh… whatever. I don’t know what “Itsuka darekato mata koi ni ochitemo” means, either.

Since I got the feeling that I’m stuck here, I decided to register for WordCamp Philippines, sponsored by MindanaoBloggers. I think that much about a blogger is defined by how much he or she knows about a blogging platform. While much about WordPress can be self-taught (hey, that’s how I survived almost one year of Marocharim.com), I think I need to know more about this platform before I can give you cool themes in black-and-red. More than that, WordCamp gives me a great opportunity to meet with other bloggers with similar interests in blogging, writing, and politics.

Heck, it gives me a much, much needed break from the humdrum of making a living.

WordCamp Philippines is sponsored by the good people of:

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes
• Lane Systems Inc.
• RedMedia
• Orange County Business Lawyer

After years of Internet shop writing, I finally have a notebook computer.  Strangely enough, I’m in an Internet shop paying ten bucks an hour for wi-fi… some things never change.

Now before you go after me with flaming torches and rusty pitchforks, let me explain.  Every job requires a tool.  Carpenters need hammers.  Plumbers need wrenches.  While a writer like myself would do well with typewriters, there’s much more prudence and relevance in having a notebook computer.  I didn’t ask for a notebook on the basis of pecuniary canons of taste.  I need a convenient way to write, and so here I am with the 21st century equivalent to quills and parchment rolls.

The Marocharim Writing Machine is one made by Lenovo Corporation, powered by a 1.73 GHz Intel Dual-Core processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 160 GB of hard disk space.  Yes, it’s an overpowered typewriter… well, it gets the job done.