Hobbies (dailyprompt-2083)

I need not elaborate on this because all the while since I started blogging, I’ve often wrote about it.

Blogging, reading, gardening, photography, experimenting menu/dish in the kitchen.

Not necessarily in that order. I started reading a lot wayback in high school. I did more serious reading when I worked at the Humanities Section as student librarian at the Univ. Of Santo Tomas Main library while at the same time earning my degree in BSC Economics. You can just imagine my delight encountering all those books on Philosophy, Ethics, Psychology, Literature, History and fiction books. I am still reading until now, collecting a sizable number of books and learning more because of them.

I started blogging here back in May 2009 and its been a long journey of finding myself writing about life, my family, my health, friends, faith and everything that I think are worth-sharing. I have often said that blogging has become a way of life for me. So grateful for meeting friends here who have stayed with me all through these years.

Gardening is something I do to keep myself busy. There is something fulfilling touching the earth, making plants grow, nurturing them through the years. Done cleaning the yard of unwanted grass, pruning and everything, well, except trimming our carabao grass. I cleaned the stepping stones of those creepers that grow when it rains almost every night here. My bottle gourd is bearing tiny fruits now.

I used to experiment doing shots and memes on my Canon Ixus camera but now I am just using my point and shoot cams of my cellphone and tabs. They do the same job but somehow limited. I had this ambitious dream of keeping a journal identifying all the plants in our small garden. I have collected hundreds of photos and maintain them in several albums on FB. I also have a separate blog here on gardening.

I like experimenting in the kitchen. I used to bake simple sweets and loaf bread but since I found out I have diabetes, that has stopped. I cook recipes culled from some Pinoy sites on YouTube but I still prepare those I learned from Dad when I was growing up.

Now that I have so much time in my hands, I am planning to reorganize the books I have collected over the years. Nissa transferred more of her books to their new house. She left the Harry Potter series which Josef read from time to time. He also has a collection of Archie comics, Calvin and Hobbes books and some Science books.

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

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Creating Content

These everyday prompts are helping me create something when I could not think of a content worth-sharing. I don’t answer all of them though, I only write about those I could relate to.

These prompts remind me of those days back in 2011, a new blogger at that ,when I jumped into the bandwagon joining the 2011 Post A Day Challenge. I was not even sure if I could write every day for a year but I did. Hooray😘. I earned a badge but I don’t know where it got to. One advantage back then was that there were many subjects that one could write about and content to explore. I guess the first five years of blogging were my most productive years. Talk about being so enthusiastic to share and one could be lucky if you have at least 10 to 20 views a day. When I started this blog, there was no option of “like”. You can only see how many stars you’ve earned in a particular post. There were only a few blogs I followed and most of my followers before have left the scene. They have these featured blogs though so you can enjoy reading posts of those you don’t even follow.

Writing content? It is not easy unless you have bountiful experiences and topics you could share. Once they play in your head, the writing is easy enough. Until now, I review and edit my blog posts at least three times before hitting “publish”. Sometimes without you knowing, you could still miss words. It’s like when you are reading and commenting on a post you like and miss words and your comment sometimes does not make sense. You can’t correct your comment on someone’s post but you can do it when you are answering them on your wall.

I no longer visit a blogger’s wall because I get updated through the reader feed. Unless of course some new bloggers follow me then I am curious to visit their wall. Some ask how to start and help them with their blog. I always say, write about something you have knowledge of, be sincere in your praise when you visit other blogs, read and read a lot. When you have something to write about, do it.

But always remember, blogging is not a walk in the park. Put your heart to it❤💚💜

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Rainy Saturday

It’s been raining on and off since the start of the week. Typhoon Dodong is being monitored by our weather bureau, PAGASA. It is on the way out up north but it is bringing monsoon rains in Metro Manila. I haven’t stepped out of the garden for three days now.

This morning, I went out for a while at the town proper to transact at the ATM of BPI and to send Nissa a dividend check for deposit on Monday. It is easier for them to make a deposit especially when it is an ‘and/or’ account. The branch here in our place needs the approval of the banking officer when the check is not named ‘solo’ in your name. I wonder why. Sometimes I still have to show my old BPI ID to the teller in charge. Withdrawals though are not a problem because I have the ATM cards.

Gosh, the noise outside! I didn’t take off my hearing aids because it is only for about an hour. Noisy, noisy, noisy. Every sound is magnified. I passed by the supermarket just to buy whole wheat bread (it is the only thing I eat now, white bread is a no, no for diabetics like me ) and chicken breast and it was still noisy inside despite the adjustments on the volume of my hearing aids.

In this weather, I am tempted to take a nap. This rain makes me feel so sleepy so I will just drink a cup of decaf coffee, yes, in the middle of the afternoon…haha! Perfect time to read or I’ll just visit some posts at my readerfeed until I get to take off my hearing aids at 5pm today.

I hope everything is okay in your neck of the woods.

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When Blogging Makes You Smile (Part 3)

Time and again, I look at my dashboard and check how I am faring in the blogging world. I have 18% + more of my free allowed limits. That is why I am also limiting posting photos because they eat up my space.

Finally after fourteen years of blogging, I reached 700,084 stats. Compared to the previous years, the content lately is just so, so, if you know what I mean. I started this blog sharing my posts about the ordeal I’ve been through in May 2009 and that has been some sort of my niche over the years, blogging about my health. Of course there were reflections, poems, book reviews, daily happenings about the family, birthday celebrations, Christmas traditions, quotes but still my health blogs are leading the pack so to speak.

I looked at my followers and there was a total of 5,260 broken down into WordPress-5125, e-mail-44 and social-91. I don’t know what the classification ‘social’ actually means. Once in a blue moon, I share my posts on Facebook but I noticed people there are more engrossed posting selfies, places they’ve been to, food and places where they have eaten and not much on reflections and book-sharing. How many photos do you need to post a day, even if you post a hundred, your face is just the same unless one uses those filters that I so hate. Imagine you turned fifty but you look like twenty, unbelievable. I love the daily online masses though that I get to watch every day since the pandemic started three years ago.

I love WordPress even if they keep changing the algorithm. I love it even more when my followers and the bloggers I follow engage in my posts. I have online friends who’ve been here for years. Some are lost in cyberspace abd I miss their presence.

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Yeay, Hobbies of Course

What topics do you like to discuss?

Another prompt from Jetpack.

Reading and books are both in #01. I’d like to meet friends here who are also fond of books – poems, memoirs, historical novels, thrillers and maybe YA books once in a while. I love reading book reviews.

Blogging is a given because for me, blogging is life. Gardening too is one such topic that I like. Exploring others’ gardens.

Ah, preparing simple meals for the family. Experimenting on other ingredients and try to incorporate them in some recipes.

Photography, but of course. I’ve tried macro shots when I had my Canon camera. Now it all comes in digital format. I even bought a book on digital photography but it was destroyed by typhoon Ondoy back in 2009, so I am using the built-in cameras of my two tabs and Samsung CP.

Life in general, exchanging ideas in particular. I want to go back making rosaries and cross-stitching but my fingers are not nimble anymore. I still keep a journal but my handwriting has somehow changed a bit.

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New Followers

Oh, I wonder if I should be glad for having so many followers lately. When I check and look at their sites, either there is only one follower or just one or two with one blog post. Some are even blank.

I don’t want to be choosy but I want someone I could interact with or someone who comments on my blog posts. Come to think of it, they follow you but there is nothing there that would let you know whether they like your posts or not. I always acknowledge those who follow and read their posts too and I click ” follow” when I find their sites interesting.

I click Discover every now and then and I visit the blogs of those who interest me. Lucky to find them following me back.

I’ve used the Jetpack prompts three times already and I earned lots of views on the very first one I wrote about. Not all topics are worth-writing about. I earned sizable views yesterday (439 total) when they looked and read a previous post I wrote back in 2011 entitled Happy Hearts Day. Curious about love day? It does not mean that the V-day is only for lovers, it’s a celebration for everyone who loves life – friends, siblings, grandparents, grandkids and every one in the family.

I started writing daily since the year started. WordPress says I am on my 16th day this month of February. Hooray to blogging❤👨‍💻💐

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Erratic

Our wifi connection has been very unpredictable since last night. All of a sudden, it will be off then about an hour or two, it would be on again. I don’t know what is happening to Globe, our service provider.

The usual thing is, we won’t have internet connection for almost two days when there is a scheduled maintenance. Jovy and Josef have internet on their phones because they don’t rely solely on our subscription here at the house. So when, there is no internet, I am offline too. I am using prepaid plans for my two tabs and cellphone. It is more convenient for me than using a postpaid plan because I usually don ‘t bring my cellphone when I am out. One tab is enough.

Would have wanted to write a post early. I clearly forgot what was playing in my head a few hours ago. Getting old☺

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My 700th Blog After 29 Months Of Blogging

Reposting this blog I wrote back in November 3, 2011. Most of you here were not yet my friends then but I had a few followers I lost touch with over the years.

When I look back at the times that I felt so down, writing my thoughts on paper helped me to cope, a sort of  catharsis for me since I found out I had Stage 3 colon cancer. It was not a walk in the park  but faith , prayers and love of friends and family made me realize  that when you have all these, you have enough. When you believe that you will get well, you will. And when you believe that God is by your side, He is.

So this is my 700th blog according to WordPress. Since they have introduced letting bloggers know which post was magnificent, grand, dandy, splendid, sensational, fabulous,far-out, groovy, slick, superb, super, wohoo, way-out and all the other positive words they say about a current blog post, I’ve recorded every word count and which post describes all those words. It’s kind of fun to know what word they will use to describe what you have just posted. At the start of the year, I was in a quandary whether to take part in the Post A Day Challenge 2011. I asked myself, “will I be able to do that, write and blog everyday the whole year of 2011? “ Two more months to go and I will be able to say, “I did it.” And George S. Patton was right when he said and I quote: Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

I was reviewing my earlier blogs this morning and I was smiling like crazy thinking, I was a little emotional in some of them but who cares, it’s the process of writing that heals you. And I would like to share a list of at least twenty-five top-rated blogs that I wrote in a span of twenty-nine months. They are not exactly my favorites since there are other blogs which I like better than some of them,  echoing what I feel and describing the true “me”. But the following are my most read, obviously for the simple reason that they frequently appear even if I wrote them a year or almost two years ago. You are welcome to read through my search box since I don’t exactly remember  when they were published here.

1. Homepage
2. The Early Bird Catches The Worm But the Second Mouse Gets The Cheese
3. UAAP Season 73 (University of Santo Tomas)
4. Friendship Quotes
5. Soulmates, Karma, Reincarnation
6. Unang Taon, Ulat Sa Bayan Ni PNoy (June 30, 2011)
7. Happy Birthday MAMA MARY
8. Dapitan Arcade (A Shopper’s Delight)
9. It’s Why I Love It
10. University of Santo Tomas at 400
11. On Meeting Dr. Samuel Ang Again
12. The Aquino Grandchildren And My Own Memories of Ninoy
13. Bank Of The Philippine Islands, Let’s Make It Easy
14. Suha,Lukban, Grapefruit, Pomelo
15. The Famous Transfiguration Chapel – Caleruega, Philippines
16. Oh, Oh!
17. Quotes To Live By
18. It’s Kung Pao Chicken Pasta For Dinner
19. Some Tidbits On Pres. Noynoy’s Inauguration
20. Moringa Juice
21. Sioma-making, A Great Feat For A Six-Year Old
22. Celebrating 400th Year (University of Santo Tomas)
23. Meeting Manuel Baldemor, A World-Renowned Artist
24. New Life, New Hope, New Beginning
25. Special Palabok

Thank you all for visiting my blog and leaving lovely comments. Hooray to blogging! And WordPress says, this blog is wonderful😀

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Tuesday Comes

6:30 am is still dark and cold. It ‘s only Noki who is outside in the garden. Waiting for the water to boil for my morning fix of either coffee or tea. I don ‘t use sugar anymore with my morning cup of coffee, I use a small packet of green Stevia instead. Just perfect for two pieces of rich tea biscuits. I wanna learn to drink coffee without sweetening it. Nissa says it is easy to adjust.

I blogged about my Insulin plant a couple of days ago and posted a photo at my garden blog. Would you believe, it produced two more flowers and another is about to show its face. For three consecutive days now, I eat the leaves raw. Just need to wash it well. I don’t even use fertilizer, chemical or otherwise so it is safe to eat fresh. Some people boil the leaves for tea. I haven’t tried it yet.

Saw some previous posts years ago that were visited by some viewers. I clicked the comments button and there appeared my online friends here on WordPress who have stopped blogging, many as long as three or two years ago. They have vanished and simply stopped blogging.

I agree that creating content is hard enough especially when you haven’t written anything for a long time. Although you have lots to write about, you don’t know how to start. That happens to me most of the time when I am hooked reading and blogging goes to the back seat. Now that I am blogging every day, it is somehow easier to write.

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Blogging

What’s happening WordPress? I could not see uploaded photos and cannot even comment? Why?

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