Here is one China blog that I've started following recently. The blogger (the stupid pig, if you must) is an American of Cantonese-Chinese descent, and he mainly writes about his life in China where he works now as an English trainer at Microsoft Beijing’s Advanced Technology Center.

I love the tongue-in-cheek humor in his posts, and the way he manages to present a different argument to anything from normal everyday situations to issues of national, or even international, concern. Plus he never takes himself seriously, which is fun. And he makes a lot of sense too.

So yes, I recommend that you read him. Go to his page. Now.

Now it can be told.

I applied for and got a job at the abovementioned company. I’ll be a researcher/analyst which is basically a writer and I’ll be starting with them on the 16th of the month. My focus will be on Chinese affairs and after being on training and being comfortable with the job while based in Manila for about a year, I will have the option to be transferred to Shanghai. While in Manila, I will hold office at the Enterprise, Tower I, a stone’s throw away—if you throw it hard enough—from my present office.

To answer anticipated questions, here is the series of events that led to this seemingly sudden development in my life:

I think it was on my birthday when Evonne suddenly sent me a message asking how I was. You may remember Evonne as my grade school classmate whom I lost touch with then met up with again while I was in Shanghai. She then told me of an opening in their company. Because I was fairly happy with my present employment, I was a bit hesitant about applying. We agreed that I was to send my resume and take it from there.

Turned out that my resume was interesting enough for them to want to schedule me for a preliminary interview. Flashback: Remember that there was a birthday date, which went pretty well. Fast forward to two days after when the date and I first agreed to stop seeing each other. The depression led me to be excited about the job prospect. I then started to seriously pursue it. And because I now wanted it, I had to evaluate my chances of getting it. My issues were fluency in Mandarin and inadequate knowledge of Chinese politics, economics, etc. But I was on fighting stance. Pity anyone who dared get in my way.

First interview went well. I was pretty confident about the writing test before and while taking it, but had praning thoughts after. You see I had a lot of time left but being the confident prick that I was, I said, "ok I’m done," without rereading and revising until the end of the one-hour test. Naturally, I had to pay for that cockiness while I was on my way home. Thankfully, my article wasn’t really as bad as my praning mind tortured itself to believe.

Next step was an interview with the big boss and a phone conversation in Mandarin with a local Chinese. Vowing to charm the boss into hiring me, I psyched myself up to be Ms. Personality days before the interview. I think I was successful despite Murphy's Law coming into play: it was the first day of my period. The conversation in Mandarin was a different story. It went smoothly during the first three-quarters, but hit a roadblock when the voice on the other end said something long and complicated. I had it repeated a number of times but I still couldn’t understand most of what it was saying. Sensing annoyance from the voice after having repeated itself so many times, I just said yes in the end. I wanted to hit my head on the wall after that.

I was, however, comforted by the fact that the boss said he did not expect my Chinese to be on the same level as his staff in Shanghai and said the same to the voice before he gave me the phone. In effect he was telling the voice to go easy on me and that boosted my fighting spirit.

The hardest part was the waiting. They were still interviewing other candidates so I waited more than a week. I finally found out that I was in while in the hospital.

I already filed for my resignation and am scheduled to be here until the end of the month. You may have noticed an overlapping period. I must let you know that I will be relying mostly on my Superwoman abilities to do two or more things simultaneously. To let you in on the secret, it's actually an illusion. I do things so fast that normal people think I'm in two places, doing two things at the same time. It's really just the speed, just the speed.

(But the mosquito is faster.)

Approximately a year from now, do visit me in Shanghai. There are direct flights from Manila. No excuses this time.

I did my biggest splurge of the year last night. I was hoping to find gifts for my friends but I ended up buying myself a super-expensive one--keep in mind that I practically never buy anything over P300, espcially not for myself. Which is good because I can justify this purchase. And one more thing, it's going to be paid at 0% interest over a period of six (6) months.

I can never write a review good enough for a scent and I don't really have to because there's the Internet and Ms. Google anyway. So clickety-click!

I'm so bangoooo! ;)

I am posting this link for no other reason than because she quoted a part of my story, "Kawil" in her profile. No, I have no idea who she is. And no, I never denied being vain.

I've mentioned quite a few times that I do parttime language teaching at The Bridge Language Center. It's being run by a group of young and talented individuals. You might want to check it out.

For inquiries, you may call 8563585.

Because I'm a closet movie-star-wannabe and my sister works in production, I sometimes get bit roles in commercials or AVPs. Here's one of those. This was done maybe more than two years ago.

If you want to see me, then you are not allowed to blink.

I found out about Christine and Happy Slip Productions from a Multiply contact, TheTrueasiatic. Just this afternoon, Nuna and I watched her videos one after the other and giggled to our hearts' content. Christine's smart and pretty and funny and does not hesitate about making fun of herself. She gives a distinctive Pinoy flavor to her videos. The mere reason for her production's name is a taste of the Pinoy humor in her videos.

She almost reminds me of Rex Navarete. Almost.

It's a good passing-time read. Be sure to check out the Arts page, especially their movies. I particularly found this so "fucking funny": http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=5&subID=213

Tsinoy, the suggested politically correct term to refer to Filipinos of Chinese descent, comes from the words Tsino and Pinoy. As the URL suggests, this site contains all things Tsinoy, and then some.

On a slightly related note, my googling has extended to baiduing. Baidu.com is the preferred search engine by most of my Chinese friends. Once, Xiao Ding was trying to find my website by searching it through Baidu. He didn't find it. The search result had something very interesting though. Interesting to me at least. I found this: http://bbs1.beiwaionline.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=3;t=000870;go=older

I wrote "The Language of My Dreams" when I was 21 and it was published in Tulay, a magazine funded by Kaisa Foundation with Chinese Filipinos as its target readers. It was also translated into Chinese (traditional Chinese as that is what's more common in the Philippines) and published in the Chinese newspaper World News (which my mom reads, by the way). It's nice to find it again after all these years.

Because I'm a blog-whore, I recently submitted my blog to Dashmedia Network. Dashmedia Network is co-founded by Mikey Villar (of the Atrocities of Friendster and The Man Blog fame). This is what it says about itself:

Greetings,
Thank you for your interest in the Dash Media Project. First, I want to give you an idea of what we envision Dash Media to become: You may or may not agree that, much like high school, the blogosphere is dominated by the "popular" mainstream blogs. We've realized that with the recent proliferation of blogs, it's becoming harder and harder to find decent content. We also realized that "popular" doesn't necessarily mean "interesting".

In the Philippines alone, we believe that there's a multitude of underappreciated, well-written blogs just waiting to be discovered. I, along with the other co-founders of Dash Media aim to provide such blogs with a channel that would give them the exposure they deserve. We also envision a tightly-knit community that would present itself as the best the Philippine blogosphere can offer.

What are we looking for?
Decent content. We really don't care about your site's traffic or influence. Of course, you have to realize that content goes hand in hand with decent site design in the sense that your content needs to be presented in a way which can easily be read.

Constant googling of my name has led me to this site. PhD, or Piled High and Deeper (a grad student comic strip), is maintained by Jorge Cham who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. It pokes fun at grad school life and everything that goes with it. Me, I just want to graduate. But then so do all grad students...

Some of my favorite strips are:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=3
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=13
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=19

These date back to 1997 (that was the year I started college!). Thus, I have almost 10 years of comic strips to read at leisure.

How can I describe it? Everything's in Chinese. Is that enough description? Andy is the guy that I'm dating. His Chinese name is NianJian, thus the url. This site contains some of his essays and pictures. But you'll have to know what to click. Good luck!

A friend sent me this site. My only complaint is there's nothing on Philippine lit. I feel unrepresented. Pffft!

From the makers of "The Atrocities of Friendster," comes "The Man Blog." If you want to read something polite, politically-correct or proper, don't visit this site. Enough said.

Being away from home does not have to mean being out of touch. Thank god, and the inventor of the Internet, for the what else but the Internet! This is where I read about the entertaining circus, also known as news, in my country.

This site is nominated in the Best of the Blogs' Best Journalistic Blog category. Here is the blurb from BOBs' site (now that's too much alliteration right there):
This journal is one of five blogs from "Sassy," a self-described Filipina attorney, wife and mother. She regularly applies her legal scholarship and incisive logic to demands for fairness and accuracy in the media -- among many other things. She's an unflinching fact checker who reviles propaganda and innuendo masquerading as facts.

Take this quiz and find out how well you know me.

This is my friendster public profile. Do add me if you have an account there too.

Warning: everything's in Chinese. But if you scroll down a little, you'll see a moving set of pictures, and I'm there. Which is why I'm linking it to my site. Hehe. But they spelled my name wrong. Sigh, you can't have everything.

This one sounds like me. Except for the rich part. I wish that were true. But it does say I'll be rewarded with financial fortune at some later point in life. I'm waiting...