Anyway, as I was just trying to be emo over there, I realized that aside from the lessons learned and precious momentos that came with 2007, it was also a year of achievements and blessings (material and otherwise) for me. While it’s also the year when my dad passed away (which left me lost and depressed for a couple of months), God still never failed to give me something to be happy and thankful for. So I’m making another list, in the spirit of new beginnings. Yeah. :)

Here’s my 2007 in a nutshell.

:: Launched Pinkseo.info’s first ever wordpress theme, the Pink Kupy WP Theme, released mostly for the purpose of my participation at the SEO Philippine’s ituloy angsulong keyword-ranking contest. This was shortly followed by the Blue Kupy, Green Kupy, and the official Pink SEO WP Theme — kudos to Mr. Ronan Banares, without which all of these wouldn’t be possible. :)

:: My participation at the ituloy angsulong contest paid off as Pinkseo.info gained recognition, ranking number 5 at Google, and achieving its goal to raise the Filipinas’ flag in a man’s world such as this industry that I’m in. Come to think of it, this is the major reason why this blog came to be in the first place. :)

:: Got my first Acer Travelmate back in April, which I bought from Amazon, hand-carried back home by a friend, and my life was never the same. Heh. Also, I realized that Vista is never going to work for me. :P

:: Subscribed a Globe Visibility plan back then when you can still get it at P2,000/month. And there it was.. the beginning of mobile, all-around, wherever-whenever internet connection for me.

:: Scored a blogging stint with Splashpress Media, exposing me to the ins and outs of the web, new media, and blogging. Truly, writing for 901am.com not only brought me more blogging income, but also the prestige of writing for a global audience. Also, it made way for me to connect with an old friend, but well, let’s not go there. :)

:: Purchased my very first DSLR, that Nikon D40 that blogging bought, after weeks of drooling over it, and weighing my options. Hence the beginning of a gunk of dreams that’s connected with digital photography. Also, I started doing album layouts for MyPinoyWedding.com (a US-based, Filipino-owned company providing photography services), something I never really thought I could do. Unsurprisingly, I loved every bit of it, and am hoping (and expecting) more projects this year. You can see my first two projects here and there.

:: Participated in the launch of the “Redefining the Filipina’s image online”, a project spearheaded by Miss Noemi Dado and Miss Dine Racoma, along with a bunch of Filipino bloggers and netrepreneurs.

:: Participated various blogger events including Taste Asia 1, Taste Asia 2, Blogger Bag Launch, and the Mobius-sponsored dinner with my gorjus blogger girlfriends.

:: And then there was my first gig as a speaker at the first-ever Search Engine Marketing Conference in the Philippines where I talked about advanced linkbuilding tactics. And since it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I took the courage to squeeze in some Pink Hat SEO techniques, hehe. But of course. My SEMCON experience was indeed.. WOW. I didn’t think I was cut out to be among the highly respected Internet Marketing gurus in and out of the country, including Teh Aaron Wall and Todd Malicoat, among others, but.. wow, the opportunity was definitely.. wow. (Okay, I stop wow-ing now.) Oh, and I got acquainted with Aaron Wall and his wife, Gio too. :)

:: And then there was me, selling my Acer Travelmate to purchase a Macbook, after some serious contemplation. This year, I became a Mac convert, and I loved it. :)

:: And of course, there were the little advancements in my career, thanks to my boss, and the wonderful wonderful people I work with. I was given an opportunity to train (and sometimes, supervise) a team of very talented internet marketing specialists and copywriters, and budding SEOs, and was able to gain acceptance and build friendships along the way. What can I say? I couldn’t be any luckier to be in the right place, at the right time. My involvement with the SEM industry has also gained me freelance clients and consultancy gigs here and there. God has blessed my career abundantly in 2007, that’s for sure.

I’m excited what 2008 has in store. Will I get everything in my wishlist? :) This 2008, I plan to travel more, do more photography, have more creative outlets (like writing and design), buy a dog (woohoo), invest on more gadgets (hehe!) and other worthwhile financial ventures, and do more stuff beyond the four corners of my office. Let’s see if dreams will come true this 2008. :)

Belated Happy New Year everyone!

Why am I not born an artist? Ugh. So much frustration in this world. Hehe.

Oh geesh. Am I starting to become domesticated? First, I’m looking at cook books. Now, I’m thinking of learning how to bake. Oh noes.

Check out Naomi’s flickr account to see more of these amazing cupcakes. Take that, Sonja. ;)

Read on. The topic read as: WAITING FOR YOUR URGENT RESPONSE. (Typical!)

Dear Friend,

I know that this mail will come to you as a surprise as we have never met before, but need not to worry as I am using the only secured and confidential medium available to seek for your foreign assistance in a business. I am contacting you independently of my investigation and no one is informed of this communication.

I need your urgent assistance in transferring the sum of $8.3million immediately to your private account. The money has been here in our Bank lying dormant for nine good years now without anybody coming for the claim of it.

I want to release the money to you as the nearest person to our deceased customer (the account owner) who died a long with his supposed NEXT OF KIN since August 1997. The Banking ethics here does not allow such money to stay more than 10 years, because the money will be recalled to the Bank treasury as unclaimed fund.

Upon receipt of your reply, indicating your interest in this transaction, I will send you full details on how the business will be executed.

Please keep this proposal as a top secret and delete if you are not interested.

Regards,

Dr. KA** *******
African development Bank.
Burkina Faso, West Africa

Dear Friend my ass.

BUY.COM is killing me. I ordered an Acer Aspire laptop about three weeks ago (22 days to be exact), hoping to have it shipped to a friend who was at California at the time of the purchase. I even applied for a 2-3 business day shipment, which would cost a few dollars more, hoping it would fly its way to my friend’s hands in a breeze.

Two days after we placed the order, however, their customer support emailed me re: shipment problems, telling me that they needed more information so they can ship the merchandise right away. I complied with their requirement, and waited for a response from their end. I was anxious and was losing time. My friend who was gona bring the laptop home with him to Manila was flying back in a few days time.

Eventually, I lost hope. The night before my friend’s California-to-Manila flight, I emailed them again, cancelling my purchase, because it won’t reach my friend anymore. They still haven’t cancelled (and there wasn’t any shipment in process either). Up to now, I’m still not getting any positive response. Someone from their customer support called (ohhh and they’re calling from a callcenter in Manila, haha), only to tell me/us that we cannot cancel anymore, but when we asked them where exactly was that stated in their Terms and Conditions, the call center agent couldn’t give us a precise answer.

This March, another friend is flying back home to Manila. I couldn’t wait to have my BUY.COM order cancelled, so I can order somewhere else. I saw the same laptop at Amazon.com–a bit more expensive, but with much better specs–and I couldn’t help but regret why I decided to buy at BUY.COM.

Sometimes I wonder if the problem just lies with me, being jinxed. Once, a stolen Adsense cheque. (Which happened again, by the way, just recently, only I was more alert, and was able to place a hold on the cheque before someone else was able to deposit/withdraw the moolah.) And now, a really bad online transaction which is really getting into my nerves already.

Haynakuu! Sayang ang stress tabs. Sana ibinili ko nalang ng beer.

It’s overwhelming to see more and more people using the theme (girls mostly, but heck, some MALES too!!). I’ve been monitoring technorati and found some interesting modifications in some of the sites. Such as this:

and this:

I guess even in ventures such as this, you come to a point where you stop enjoying all the backlinks and traffic and just start loving the fulfillment that comes with providing people something that they can use on their blogs.

Perhaps that’s why girls like her can get away with a PR7 (and gracefully at that) even without having to beg people around to link her. (Maybe she didn’t really care about the backlinks to begin with). And it’s not like she insisted on Matt Cutts to use her theme. Her WP themes are simply.. classic. Which makes girls like moi more… uh, inspired.

Hence, my goals hereforth (not necessarily connected to the WP theme study/discovery):

• Learn CSS. Oddly, I know the principles (from wayback five years ago when I was making all those crappy layouts for my previous blogs, on personal initiative). Sadly, I’m too stubborn and lethargic to actually sit down and work on a table-less layout. My knowledge of webdesign is too uh, table-ish, if you know what I mean.
• Be more SEO Philippines active. Er, let see what I can do about this.
• Work on the domain. Uh, let see what I can do about this TOO.
• Manage my budget responsibly. With The Laptop coming in next month (yay, I’m excitement!! LOL), hence an additional expense worth several hundred dollars on the credit card bill by March, I’ve gota stop all the unnecessary spending (i.e. shopping) and be more responsible with my resources from here on.

Ok. That’s it. I shall stop my list at that coz the longer a list like this goes, the less feasible (or, using my boss’ term, “scalable”) it becomes.

Spread more pink love. Ituloy Angsulong! :)

All these in just a day. I mean, hello? It’s bad enough that I have 119 comments to tag as spam, I have to clean up my mailbox because of the annoying flood of email alerts too.

Warning: This wishlist is screaming pink.

1. Pink Nokia 7373. My trusty N6630 is still in perfect condition, but the moment I laid eyes on the pinkness of this Barbie-fashionable phone, I knew I’d love to get my hands on it (I only saw the pictures, I’ve not touched the real thing). And no, I don’t care if most of the reviews are negative, thankyouverymuch. :P

There are gazillions of things happening at once, and I’ve somehow managed to unconsciously drown myself into the rush that Christmas is. This week, I did what everyone normally would at a time such as this: I obligingly went to work in the mornings, shopped for gifts after work; shared the excitement of them last minute Christmas shoppers; spent the night cutting red and green wrappers and ribbons; sighed a little as I watched those twinkling lights we happened to pass by along the way; and, when the lights were all out, whispered words of thanks to Him who puts meaning to the word CHRISTmas with His very name.

She’s got the looks, the star quality; plus, her playing the guitar and composing songs as if she breathes them is what (IMHO) made her shine the brightest among the rest. While some people struggle to succeed in showbizness, and in the music industry, Yeng got there on top so gracefully–young as she is.

Oh, and she bested the other two guys too, Ronnie and Jay-R, who made it to Top3. Makes me wana scream girl power. Ituloy Angsulong, girl. c”,)

Meanwhile, this pink site’s currently at number 9 again (yay), and time is ticking. I should be doing more linkbuilding if I want to keep the rank. Soon, soon. Meanwhile, I’m off Christmas shopping :P

Know more about Yeng Constantino here.

For now, let me do some cross-posting.

My mind is gona explode. I’ve never been loaded with this much work-related stuff to study in my entire professional existence (but duh, what do you expect, the only OTHER company I ever was with has got PETIKS written all over its logo). I’ve not much time to do rakets and other stuff I used to do online (blog, surf, bloghop, shop, window shop, freelance, etc); I practically live in the office; I breathe SEO/SEM/Internet Marketing every day; sometimes I dream about work too. But I’m loving every bit of it. :P

Times like this, you get by with a little help from your
friendly neighborhood balls. Uh, whatever :P

Speaking of stress balls, why don’t you get yourself some balls (pun NOT intended) here? Bulk orders only. They’re perfect Christmas gifts for stressed bosses and officemates. Squish them, take pictures of them (er yeah), or throw them at your irritating officemate’s face, however suits you.

* * *

Barely two weeks to Christmas, would you believe? Yay. I have to admit though, I wouldn’t have noticed it if not for my jumpy officemates and their nonstop planning (and annoucements) for this coming Friday’s company Christmas party; and the lovely, lovely, low-budget-but-still-lovely Christmas decorations that adorn our entire floor. Christmas is definitely in the air. :)

However preoccupied I am, Christmas spirit CANNOT wait. There’s no point not to feel it, breathe it, and savor each moment. ♥ c”,)

Here’s to remind us that there’s still such a thing as happy ever after; that Christmas is a time to spread the luuurve; and Pink is the ‘in’ thing, even in SEM. ♥ Click away. ;)