On Little Blessings

When I woke up this morning and heard the rain tapping on our roof, I groaned. Don't get me wrong, I like the rain because it cools down our otherwise scorching hot city, but I don't like it on the days I have to commute.

Anyway, I got up, ate breakfast, surfed some and prepared myself for the day ahead. When I was about to leave the house, the rain had already stopped. Hallelujah. On my way to the place where Jeepneys passed (they don't have stands/stops here, they just stop in the middle of everywhere) I prayed the rosary. The walk from my house to that place took around 15 minutes and I was amazed that I was able to finish the whole five decades.

Eventually, I spotted the right jeepney and quickly flagged it. I rode the jeepney paid the fare and sat quietly on my spot. (I didn't want to attract much attention to myself lest I be a target for hold-up or something, I'm paranoid like that. Hahaha) Anyway, a few minutes into the ride, it started to drizzle again. I groaned (again). I didn't want to use my umbrella, even if I brought it, because keeping it after usage would be messy (read: wet folded umbrella inside my cloth bag). Finally, the jeepney reached my destination, I shouted a quick para to the driver and got off the vehicle. Lo and behold, the rain had stopped, again.

I just wanted to share this because we sometimes tend to ignore God's little blessings for us. I didn't even remember to blog about this until a few moments ago. I think I need to focus more on the little things, small reminders from God that He remembers me. We often focus on the big things that we want to get. We forget to see the little things God grants us to make our life a little less difficult. Heck, I didn't even pray for the rain to stop, I just thought life would be less messy if it did. (Don't get me wrong again, praying is IMPORTANT.) Still, God answered my unsaid prayer. And just like a doting Dad (who knows what His daughter really wants) towards His beloved daughter, He lets me have my way too. Sometimes. :)

On blog advertisements and earning extra

As an online entrepreneur, I find advertising on blogs an excellent way to keep a business thriving. For one, it caters to your intended market: the online community. Letting your market know what your products or services are becomes easier because (1) the blog post is related to it, and (2) links within the blog post increase the chances of the reader clicking on them and be directed to the advertiser's site. Moreover, more and more people are leaning towards online shopping beacuse of its convenience and thus, the market of online buyers is continuously expanding.

I have recently discovered PayingPost, a site which facilitates blog advertising. It caters to two sets of people: first, the advertisers who want to explore the online blog community as a means of marketing their products and services and second, the bloggers who want to make extra money via paid posts.

Joining PayingPost as a blogger is easy. You just have to go to their website and sign-up. Then, you can submit your website(s) or blog(s) for review. Once your blog is approved, you can now scout for available opportunities from companies who want to advertise. This is made extra easy by the new layout that PayingPost has come up with. With the tabs on top, navigating within their site is no problem at all.PayingPost has an additional feature which allows you to post paid advertisements without having to wait for your blog's approval. PayingPost Direct is a means of getting advertisers without the intervention of PayingPost itself. Just by placing the PayingPost Direct badge on your site, advertisers can easily contact you if they want you to write a post about them. This gives you (the blogger) additional freedom because it allows you to negotiate the terms you will be working with. So even if PayingPost has not yet approved your blog, once an advertiser has contacted you, you can start earning money by blogging.

I have just joined PayingPost and I like it. It allows me to earn extra money at my own leisure. It's not as time consuming as other money-generating schemes where you have to really focus and spend much of your time with. Hopefully, I can find more opportunities to get paid just by blogging. :)

The search is ON!

While I was blog-hopping the other day, I came across a post from Iris' blog with the title Stranger #3 blah blah blah. Being the curious cat that I was, I read the whole post. Turns out it's an entry for a group in Flickr, 100 strangers.

It's actually a group for people who want to hone their skills in taking portraits of people, and in the course of doing so, improve their social skills. The task is to take portraits of strangers (yes, strangers only, you can't take photos of people you know) and post them in the groups with a brief story to accompany it. (For the full mechanics, visit the group in Flickr.)

My interest was immediately captured by this idea/project because it was not your usual photomeme (or whatever these things were called, I'm still new to this community) because it involved interacting with other people, and strangers at that. :)

Anyway, I was afraid to try this on my own so I introduced the concept to Missy. She readily agreed to try it too. :) Now we're project buddies. Hehe. We hope we can keep this up. *Let's go Missy!*

There you go. Now all I have to do is make up a spiel (well, Missy is starting on it) for the strangers I'll approach. I hope I don't get kidnapped or holdapped in the process. Hehe. The search is on for my first stranger! :D

Pimping Multiply

....is difficult.

Buti sana kung simpleng HTML lang eh. Jusko, CSS kasi. Whatever Cascading Style Sheets.

Buuuuuut, I have successfully added links on my right siderail (in my Multiply)! YES! Well, I didn't actually twiddle with the CSS, I found a nice tutorial on how to add the icons/pictures on the right side rail using HTML, it's just a little tedious. As for making these icons links, well, I used my own coconut for that. Hehe. Icons and Links now, whole theme revamp later! (MUCH MUCH LATER!)

So, new year, new theme, new siderail links! Bwahahaha.

What's next? Oh yeah, studying. Tsss.




PS
It's difficult adjusting my writing style now that I am cross posting. sheesh.

New Year, New Theme

Just goes to show how much I dislike studying. I've played with my blogs for the whole vacation. :))

For the new Multiply theme, click here.


PS,
I got the theme from the Multiply Customized Themes Group.

LP 01.01.2009: Freestyle

Maligayang bagong taon sa inyong lahat! Dahil sa Freestyle ang tema ng Litratong Pinoy ngayong linggo, naisipan kong ito ang ilahok. hehe.

Unang araw ng isang panibagong taon, sana nama'y mas madali ito kaysa sa nakaraang taon.

Unang lahok ko ito sa Litratong Pinoy, sana naman mapanindigan ko. Ahahaha. Muli, Happy New Year!

Para sa mga ibang lahok, pumunta sa

On parking.

Last Monday, some friends and I went to MOA to buy a basket of goodies. Well, the original plan was to go to S&R only, but we ended up going to Greenbelt (to have lunch), to S&R (to see if they have the basket, but they didn't so we just ate ice cream, tsk, choir pa man din kami) and finally to MOA to buy a goody basket in the Hypermarket.

Well, as the title suggests, this post has something to do with parking - parking in MOA anyway. I've recently discovered the newest feature of the covered parking lots in MOA.

Looking for free slots is made a lot easier by the lights above the spaces. if the slot is free, the light si green but if it's occupied, the light turns red. Amazing, diba? Before, I used to spend a lot of time driving in circles in parking lots just to find a free spot. Now, one look and you'll easily know where you can park. Amaaaaaayzing. I hope other parking lots follow suit. hehe.

On tests.

On our way home from Tagaytay, my girl best friend and I were discussing the things that happened to us this year. So many obstacles have popped up into our lives (separately) that we have always wanted 2008 to end. Anyway, while we were discussing it, I pointed out that the problems that we were experiencing were just a test from God. She, on the other hand, contradicted me and said:

I don't want to think of God as a God who gives tests. What happens when you don't pass the test? Rather, I'd like to think of Him as a loving God. He gives us these problems no to test us, but rather to teach us a lesson.

I like the way she put it that God doesn't test people. Oo nga naman, what will happen to us if we don't pass the test? Do we get red marks and fail?I like it better that He only gives us these challenges to make us learn valuable lessons in life. As she said, the bigger the problem gets, the bigger the lesson that God wants to teach us. And yes, our God is a loving God who has always wanted us His children to return to His flock.

Merry Christmas!

On the L word. (LOVE, that is.)

Repost from Multiply (03.09.08)

Anyway, while I was at the Manila Polo Club last Saturday waiting for my breakfast to arrive, I was reading the newspaper, particularly the Philippine Star. I was intrigued by the column of Fr. Reuter, because of its title i think (but i can't remember the title now.) haha. He was relating this story in his column:

There was a girl who wanted to enter the convent. However, she was not accepted by the Mother Superior because of an unknown reason.

There was a boy who wanted to enter the seminary. He was declined by the rector because of his health. He was too frail to be able to accomplish his task well when he became a priest.

The two people were so unhappy with the outcome of their, um endeavors. (Forgive me, I am just re-telling, rather, re-writing the story from memory.) Anyway, to cut it short, they saw each other one day and fell in love. It was love at first sight but the girl did not view it that way. Rather, she wrote in her diary that she was"divinely illuminated" that this was the man she was supposed to marry (even without meeting him first!). So they met, got married and after their wedding, they, uh.. made vows of celibacy. You read right. They vowed to be virgins.

Anyway nine months later, (no she did not give birth - yet) they realized that they would "glorify God more" if they had children. And so they went to a priest, had their vows removed and had err, 9 children. Five of them were girls while the other four were men. All five became nuns (out of their own will might I add, not coerced by their parents) and the four men, well, I don't know what happened to them. One of their five daughters is St. Therese of Lisieux (whose relics are incidentally here, it will remain at the Manila Cathedral until tomorrow, as Ate Rose had said. This was why Fr. Reuter wrote about her parents' love story).

What inspires me the most about this story is that the love of this two people are centered in God. Loving with Love as the center (God = Love) diba? It is so inspiring to read about this love story. Wala lang, ako nainspire, sana ikaw din.

I'd like to add something else. My brother always relates this story to me. It's about Therese's (of Lisieux) father. He had said (in his lifetime): If I had one more daughter to give, I'd gladly give her to the Lord. What a very very devout man. I hope he becomes a Saint (with the capital S) if he is not yet one (along with his wife and his whole family). He is truly an inspiration of whole-hearted giving for the glory of God.

One more love story. In our Humanities class, we were asked y our teacher to read the book Man's Search for Meaning. Of the entire collection of Victor Frankl's (the author) experiences in the concentration camp during Hitler's Regime, there was one account that struck me the most. And I quote: (this is a bit lengthy but I think it will help illustrate my point further.)

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

It is sad to know that he never saw his wife again. I think that about a year after they were hauled into separate concentration camps, his wife died.

I think i have mentioned this in a previous blog (if not, well, read on): we have been created because of love, in love, to love. In Mark 12:30, Jesus, when asked about the commandments, rephrased it saying "love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. In the next verse He says: Love your neighbors as yourself. There is no greater than these.

You see, in the end, it's all about love, not just romantic love, but love love. It really is hard to explain what love is all about. Most of the time, our notion of love is just the romantic type of love, but as Fr. Manny had said in his interview, there are many kinds of love...and love is not just an overnight affair, it is built throughout the years. (for the whole article, access it here.)


PS, bravo to the new look of stpeteronline.com!