The Construct

My first attempt at “pro” blogging (as in trying to make money with blogging) isn’t with this website or with Bloggy Network. It’s with this blog – Sugoi Stuff. It was December of 2006 when I proposed the idea to a couple of friends of mine from back in college. Being the anime heads that we were, we decided on putting up a Philippines-Japan blogzine.

As with many virginal attempts, it had been quite the disappointment. We started with much vigor, even sponsoring a couple of events, but eventually, real work got in the way and Stugoi Stuff took the back seat. There were a couple of attempts to finally get it back on track but it proved to be tough to squeeze in posting on the blog when all of us needed to do work that actually pays.

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When I started out this blog, I searched the cheapest web hosting package available. Like most newbies on a budget, I was led to Philhosting who claims to be the number 1 hosting company in the country or something. I didn’t bother with that since everyone claims that they’re number 1 anyway. What caught my eye was the price they charge for what other hosts provide (domain, storage, and bandwidth) at twice the cost.

For nearly two years I endured constant downtimes and horrible technical support. For you guys hosted by Philhosting, I’m sure you know the horror stories of finding your site down without any prior notice when you most wanted to blog. Try contacting their technical support and they’d reply with technobabble that wouldn’t fix your problem. Try calling their number and they basically don’t answer. This list can just go on and on. I have another story about them but I’ll reserve that for another time.

Getting tired of their horrible service, I finally decided early this year to move this blog to a new host (MSWeb). They might charge around Php 500 more in a year for what I was getting with Philhosting but having great people to talk to and get warned days before server maintenance and downtime is enough for that added price, I believe. Amazingly, my uptime meter almost always at 100%. And by God, MSWeb did apologize once for not being able to fix thing on time even if it’s just a spillover of an hour or so! I remember Philhosting always acting high and mighty for failing to deliver just about every time. Good thing I now have the luxury of spending that additional Php 500 a year.

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My friends are a bunch of smart people. You can mess with the permutations but to sum it up, we have four cum laude, two magna cum laude, and one summa cum laude graduates (of UP Diliman at that). We have a math professor, two discourse analysts, a software engineer, an EC engineer, a web developer, an award-winning digital artist, a painter, two law students (soon to earn their LLBs), a med student (soon to be an MD), two published writers, a systems analyst, a project coordinator, and two people who can speak Nihonggo fluently. An impressive roster, indeed.

However, we, as a barkada, have one basic flaw. We tend to be brainless when together. Give us a spot where we can congregate, whether it’s over iced coffee or bottles of beer, and every hint of intellect would then slowly fade into obscurity. Then out come the evil monsters spawned by repressing lifestyles and demented childhoods. Next thing you know, you’d think that you’re not seeing what’s supposed to be a bunch of decent young professionals who have respectable careers. Pretty much like how Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk, only with less physical mutation but pretty much the same level of insanity.

So is the tale of our trip to Bolinao.

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