….was a success! The Philippine leg of the much-awaited WordCamp 2008 by all bloggers around the country was held yesterday at CSB. It felt like I was back to school cause during the Breakaway sessions, we went to 3 different classrooms to listen to the guest speakers on their topics. My favorite breakaway session would be the ‘Organizing & Optimizing Your WordPress Blog’. The other sessions we went to were the ‘Creating WordPress Themes & CSS Power’ and ‘Wordpress as a CME/CMS‘. I wished I also went to ‘Video Blogging with WordPress’ and ‘Blogging & Journalism’ sessions, some of my friends got to watch those.

It felt like we (my friends) were the only ‘teenagers’ on yesterday’s WordCamp. I didn’t see anyone around our age, though there were some 18-year old’s (like me) when I saw a list but still, majority of the bloggers are ‘adults’. I had fun and I learned new things about WordPress! That was the point of going to that show, besides spending quality time with my classmates/bloggers and meeting my hostee and meeting Utakgago (okay I only realized right now that HE’s ‘Utakgago’, rofl). A lot of people brought their laptops with them, and have I mentioned that it was FUN looking at their laptops because most of them were at their Plurk sites? I saw one laptop with the Twilight layout on it, lololol. Food was yummy, Chowking!

Matt Mullenweg and I

Meeting Matt Mullenweg was surreal, felt like I met a celebrity. During Matt’s ‘The Future of WordPress’ talk, starting with a presentation called ‘State of the Word’ (COOL!), and on the Future proper, he gave us a preview of what WordPress 2.7 is going to look like. It still looks the same (in terms of COLOR, haha) but there are new features, I like how every WP function can be easily accessed. After the show, Campers got to have a photo-op with Matt Mullenweg and each camper got the chance to have a one-on-one talk with him. I was not supposed to have a photo with him, but my friends almost pushed me infront of him, I’m just lucky I had something to say and it was the truth!

Me: Hi, Matt! I’m Anna of so-stellar.org
Matt: Hi
Me: I’ve been using WordPress for 4 years now (well it IS true, when I started So Stellar I was using WP already.)
Matt: Oh! Really! *says something I can’t remember :(*
Me: Can I have a a photo with you?

And poof, about 2 cameras were infront of us… HAHAHA. After that, I said thanks (of couse) and gave others a chance with the photo op. After 1 guy, I seem to still be infront of him.. my friends were still holding the camera and making gestures that I should have another shot with him and he asked me if I want to have another photo and I’m like ’sure sure, yes’. The 2nd photo turned out better than the first one, phew! I heard him say during the ‘Powwow’ segment to tag his photos that we took using our cameras with his name on it.. how do you do that? Is that even possible? Hahahaha..

It was a very nice experience that I never thought would be even possible. Just thinking that I… got to meet the person who made WordPress! *nerdy moment* I didn’t go the afterparty because it’s too late and I was carrying a lot of stuff already it made me feel tired. I won an umbrella during the raffles. One of my friends won a Google goody bag and I think Utakgago won a domain from .ph! NIIIICEEE!

Some photos from the event. I took a hundred photos, but most of them are just my friends.. who wants to see them except for us right? They’re on my Multiply, lol. It’s time consuming to post photos here the pretty way, haha I have to make thumbnails for each photo. Oh well.

I’m back to school tomorrow! 2nd term of my soph year. After Monday I have 2 days of no classes, haha. I sure hope tomorrow will be fun. My birthday is so so so near, but I don’t know how to celebrate it.. I don’t even have plans of treating anyone. Not that I’m selfish or anything, but I don’t want to stress myself .. hehe. Later days!

I’m being patient for the Eclipse to end so I can witness the Breaking Dawn
Warning: This post might contain spoilers for Eclipse.

Last Tuesday I bought my copy of Breaking Dawn at the bookstore just beside my school’s main building (DLS-CSB). I carried the book, along with my sketchpad and coloring materials all throughout Vito Cruz and the SDA building back and forth ALL day. I never thought the book was THAT heavy until I put it with my other drawing materials and carried it. Also, I went home late because my friends and I had to shoot a top music videos countdown kind of video for our class next day. Imagine how much of a hassle it was to carry around that plastic bag with a heavy book, haha. so the short and short of that experience was .. I should’ve bought Breaking Dawn the day after that, Wednesday.

I don’t really regret anything. Actually, I’m pretty happy that I did bought that book on that day. Who knows, maybe it’ll be sold out as soon as the week ended? And if I didn’t bought Breaking Dawn, I wouldn’t be motivated to get back to reading Eclipse after 2 months! Hahahaha, I am INSANELY a slow reader. I just started reading again Friday night, I was in chapter 3 then.. now I’m at chapter 20! If you must know, yes that is an accomplishment and an improvement on my part.

Oh yeah, Breaking Dawn is still on the plastic with the receipt. I have never opened it nor removed it from the packaging ever since I got it. I promised myself that I’ll only get the right to open it if and only if I finish reading Eclipse. Probably I’m the last person who’s going to read this.. well, not including the group of people who’s yet to read Twilight or the earlier books.

Lemme share you something: I wasn’t anticipating the launch of BD here in the Philippines. I didn’t notice August 4 came in this early and I depended on them to find out how’s the storyline and stuff. I didn’t care. I wasn’t that addicted, hell, I haven’t finished Eclipse in a span of weeks like my friends did. I read spoilers and stuff, it did not bug me, not once. Perfectly fine with spoiling. I’m like “Oh, okay, Breaking Dawn’s finally here, cool.”

Until one of my ‘Twilight Recruits’ (some of my friends who got hooked to Twilight and Edward Cullen cause of ME) asked me if I have the book and I told her I didn’t have it yet.. And I said I’m not that excited about it at all, not because I was discouraged by the outcome (I wasn’t) but ..just not. She then said this:

You’re the one who recommended me this book and you’re the one less excited about the new book? Are you crazy?

That made me laugh.

On with Eclipse.. So far so good, I think I’m past by the boring parts already. No offense to “Team Jacob”, if there is one. Jacob’s point of view really bores me, its like reading New Moon again on that one chapter when one of the seniors of ‘Team Jacob’ was telling a story about their kind. I don’t know if he goes on to my I could care less list or Must read more about this person list. I like him in parts where he and Bella talks, and when Edward has something to do with Jacob.. But when it comes to story telling about Jacob’s kind, it gets really boring which sucks. Well, I’m 8 chapters away from the ending so I’ve yet to finalize my thoughts on Jacob. For now, 50/50! I don’t want to storytell any more, I might spoil you and I’m not really good with sharing stories about books I read. I tend to just visualize and forget about explaining it.

It’s the 2nd week of August and there’s 4 weeks left of schooling for me before the first trimester of my Sophomore year ends! We’ve been insanely busy with ‘activities’ the past weeks. I’m sort of confused why we’re not being dumped with projects, yet we have a lot of activities instead. Methinks ‘activities’ is the new word for ‘projects’.

Schedule encoding was last week. I’m happy that I got the schedule I wanted, and I’m happy that I am sure that I have classmates that I know in all subjects. I’m parting ways with my usual companions in classes in 3 subjects, but I hope I won’t regret it. I mean, I hope I don’t get sucky professors and stuff. What I do know is, I got the ‘bad’ professor for COLREND¹ according to my friend — well thanks for the heads up, man. But I’m with my usual companions on that subject, so we’ll stick together like glue!

I’ve this thing to demonstrate for my ORALCOM² class, it’s for my Speech to Demonstrate, which will be our Finals exam for the said subject. We were to choose skills and/or ideas to demonstrate in class and I chose to demonstrate the different types (kinds?) of table napkin folding. Y’know, the ones used in fancy restaurants, not the tissue napkins, haha! So there, I’ve been looking for semi-complicated to complicated folds online and in YouTube as well but so far I’ve only found intermediate level folding videos. Would you know a better source site for this? Perhaps with video tutorials?

I’m trying my best to learn as fast as possible, I think right now I know around 3-4 already. But the demonstration should go on for 8-10 minutes.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Here’s me hoping for a smooth flow week ahead of me.

1. Color Rendering subject [↩]
2. Oral Communications [↩]