A Laugh a Day: Algorithm March with Ninjas!

Got this from Teacher Serra of Cabanatuan City. Found it quite amusing...



Thanks Teacher Serra for the laugh!

*Oh... and been quite busy to blog... so I got mega-blog backlog! Arggghhh...

Pinoy Ako and Some Important Pinoy Terms

In the past few weeks I've been mistaken so many times to be a Fil-Am - mostly by top executives and foreigners visiting our country. Me? Not homegrown? Noooooo!!! I am very much Pinoy. I love Pinoy food. Pinoy music. Pinoy movies. I love going to Divisoria and I know how to haggle! I was bred and born in the Philippines and I've been living in the same house since I was born. Plus! Plus! I'm a self-confessed dyologs. I'd rather eat at Jollibee and Max's Restaurant rather than those sowsi places at Greenbelt. Simple lang po ang lola niyo.

Anyway, in the past year I've managed to meet a lot of Filipinos born abroad. Most of them do not speak Filipino or any of our local dialects (save for one who managed to force me to string phrases in Bicol together through IM, the powers of the internet!). There are many local words we cannot translate accurately and sometimes you just really hit a wall when trying to explain certain words. Right? As Markku said once when we were entertaining a colleague, "Grabe dinudugo na ilong ko dito ah." That happens to me every single day LOL, but I guess I've managed to pull it off coz some people think I'm an alien, I mean, that I didn't grow up here.

So, I thought of making a list of words that I think our non-Filipino speaking friends should understand:

1. BOLERO (bolero ka!, mambobola, bola yan!) - I encountered this a few weeks ago with ummm, uh, a gentleman. I couldn't find the right words to say, so I said, "Bolero ka!" "Playboy" or "you're pulling my leg" doesn't really capture the essence of the term since bolero may be used negatively and affectionately at the same time. And Pinays never really accept compliments gracefully. Tayo pa, shy. Anyway, apparently he's good at searching for stuff in Google and found this great forum that explains what bolero means.

2. TAMPO (tampo ako, tampururot, nagtatampo) - "I feel bad" "I'm disappointed" "I'm upset". What is not captured in those translation though is the "pa-cute" factor because when you say you are "nagtatampo" you are usually saying this affectionately. So, sweetie, when that's on my status message you should know that something is wrong.

3. LAMBING (lambing tayo, labing-labing, naglalambing) - this word has nothing to do with lambs, sheep or goat heh. Lambing pronounced as lam-Bing, means being affectionate and a tad bit playful. And normally, for married couples they say "labing-labing muna kami"... I'm sure you'll get the drift.

4. DOON - "Doon" is normally said with lips pointed towards the general direction of where you are supposed to go to. Yup, "doon" means "there" and you'd normally get the gist of how far the place is based on the length the person stretches his lips out. Mr. Charlie Kemplin, President of EZ Maps told me an anecdote the other night during the Barangay.ph launch. He said that the first time he was here in the Philippines in the late 1960s he was so amazed by this phenomenon that he actually had shirts printed out with the word "Doon" and "lips" at the bottom of the word. LOL. May I have the rights to print that out again sir?

5. TEXT MO AKO HA - I think it's only in our country that we use "Text" instead of "SMS". I usually look at mobile phone ads whenever I travel and it was a heated debate prior to my launch of LUK4. Well, "Text mo ako ha" means "please SMS me" and, mind you, we should remember that it is considered rude to text or SMS when you're talking with someone in other countries and it's not accepted business practice as well with them. But, then, being the SMS capital of the world, we can trailblaze right? My colleagues were awed when I said that I send an average of 100 SMS' per day and they even took a photo of my old phone coz my keypad didn't have numbers/letters on it already.

Oh well, there are many, many more words I know, can you think of one? Please help me coz dinudugo na ilong ko. LOL. Leave a comment please!

*Photo by my stylist-friend Sasha Manuel.

Barangay.ph

There's a brand new website made specially for Pinoys overseas. Head over to Barangay.ph and see what they've got in store for Pinoys abroad.

My full kwento is at Stitching.

Here are some photos from the launch:

View Album

Get your own

Sweetie... you better check this out!!!

Translation:
Kwento - story

I Love Bags

Ummm... it's my addiction, but I've managed to curb it in the past year because I don't have space anymore! I got crates (those huge plastic boxes) of bags in my closetS (in 3 rooms) much to my Mom's chagrin. Well, her fault since she made me into a bag lover and here's a photo of me as an "angel" when I was 5 (scanned this from our parish magazine)... notice the bag! LOL.


So, what's this with bags? Well, I got invited to a bag event - the launch of Timbuk2's Blogger Bag. And despite the fact that I was really exhausted (and about to dismantle), I went! Because it's a bag event!

Anyway, so the Blogger Bag was designed by a blogger, doesn't look like a laptop bag and there's quite a number of nooks and crannies in it (for all those gadgets). I especially like the fact that it has a special place for an Ipod (or any MP3 player) and that the bottom actually puts your laptop in a certain angle so that when the bag falls it doesn't hit the ground directly (something like that). And I also liked the Marina Computer Handbag (almost brought it home hehe).

I was in a daze already and wasn't able to take that many photos of blogger friends (and dragged along a best friend who was also invited) who were also there: Jay, Juned, Jayvee, Markku (who was our pretend birthday boy for the night), Sasha, Rico, The Macalua, Sharm, MarcVill, Gail, and Mike Abundo (I hope I didn't forget anyone).

But, here are some photos:

View Album

Get your own

And I don't think I'm going to be able to sum up all the stuff that was said about Timbuk2 and the Blogger Bag, so check out their video:



And here's the TGIFriday's crew singing their birthday song for Markku:



Oh, and if you wanna get the bag, you can check it out at stores that sell Bratpacks.

What Kind of Blogger are You?

Got this from Blogthings.com... I hope I'll be more lucid after an hour's more worth of sleep.

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Well, I blog mainly for my amusement anyway and my pet peeve are people with huge, huge egos (online and offline). Sniff.

Zzzzzzzz....

A Laugh a Day...

There's the Pinoy version of Thriller gracing a number of blogs, mailing lists and IMs (a must see!)...

And there's the Indian version -



Isker! Isker!!!

Why I Didn't End Up in the Ad Industry Like My Friends

It's no easy feat to create advertising campaigns. I don't envy the work being done by advertising agencies. What I'm jealous though of is their talent! I can be creative at times, but I can definitely not cal it up anytime to create campaigns, much less ad copy. And that's why I never worked in an advertising agency, but most of my friends (even my best friend!) are now either creative directors or fun, fab copywriters. I fumble a lot with words that's why.

I remember my boss used to lock me up in my room just to create copy (we did a lot of in-house ads before) and I basically abhorred it coz my muse isn't up to the pressure and she usually runs away whenever that happens. I'd say then that I certainly enjoyed being the client and getting cared for during shoots (even though sometimes I got dragged to be an extra!). Creating a tri-media and below-the-line advertising campaign is no mean feat and life is definitely easier when you have a really great ad agency working with you. And the icing on the cake would be winning in the Araw Awards held during the Advertising Congress.

Quite a number of companies are doing online advertising campaigns already. There are quite a number of interesting ones - like the Shrek Youtube videos that HP did to push their laptops (it's somewhere here in my blog) or even Happyslip's video on her love for Mac can be considered an online advertising campaign (I'm not sure if she was paid for it though). It's a good thing that we now have the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) catering to this side of media. A really great and good sign that times are changing.

Have you seen an interesting online or mobile ad campaign? Submit an entry to the Boomerang Awards: the 1st Internet and Mobile Marketing Awards.