2011: The Good, The Bad and Some Changes

First off, I would like to greet everyone a HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

From the multimedia industry (game development companies and associations) to the academe to the blogosphere to my wonderful colleagues, my readers, professors, classmates, former students, fellow bloggers, friends and family: Thank you all for being part of my 2011. You have made my year very memorable.

You may have noticed that I started updating less and less during the middle part of the year, but the irony was that I was in so many places -- seemingly at once -- and that there were a lot of stories to share. I just hardly had the time to actually sit down and actually savor them all. Hence my online life had been reduced to 150 characters per post on micro-blogging/social networking sites, posting while on the go. (Thank you, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab!)

Anyway, 2011 had been a year of victory for me, even though half of it was spent dealing with a lot of self-esteem issues (for both work and my studies). Let me just be thankful for the following.

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com


The Good

• Bagged two multimedia (web-related) awards. Won at both the 12th Philippine Web Awards in April and the 2011 Philippine Blog Awards in December.
• Held an exhibit (Transitions in February) that had me exploring various traditional and new media techniques.
• Became a Producer for Anino Games Inc. I was also a Communications Director for a short while, but requested to step down because visits to the hospital (due to stress) became a regular thing. Haha!
• Passed my PhD candidacy exam in May.
• Successfully defended my doctoral dissertation proposal in November.
• Meeting some of my readers during the earlier part of the year.
• Collaborating with heads of various CHED and TESDA institutions (DLSU, FEU-EA, UP, DLS-CSB, APC, Informatics, PLM, FEATI), ironically when I have already left the academe.
• My company winning in two categories at the Philippine Game Development Festival 2011. One for Best Browser Game (Lords and Colonies) and another for the Cultural Award (Jan-Jan the Jeepney, a project with CCP & CICT).
• Getting warm feedback from the production teams I have been handling. I have been blessed with developers who are extremely intelligent, talented, industrious and ultra supportive of each other. I want to win awards for our games in 2012 so... Hahahahaha! (Ambisyosa ba?)
• My brother Pau getting married to the kind and beautiful Keng, resulting in a very hectic but productive October - December.
• Traveling to Cebu, Singapore and Hong Kong.
• On mentoring: I consider it a victory that even though I no longer am teaching, there are still students and graduates from various schools that contact/visit me for consultations and they have successfully passed their defenses/presentations/interviews. I am honored by the trust these extremely talented students have bestowed upon me.

Truly, 2011 was so generous to me that even my former boss, Gerard Cadlum, said: "Congratulating you is getting boring =)"

So if I had such a blessed year, how come I had self-esteem issues? Hahaha. Well, it can't be helped. Some of my friends say that I am too hard on myself, but sometimes there are things that are out of your control so...

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

The Bad

• Delayed projects due to forces beyond our control.
• For some reason, I became insecure of my own dissertation. After passing the defense, I suddenly felt like I don't know what I'm doing. Heh.
• Loss of time for myself and my friends. Hence, the lack of blog updates.
• High levels of stress causing me so much physical strain (and weight loss) that I am now on a special diet in order to manage it. (Broke that diet during the holidays and ate everything the doctor forbade and gained back the weight I lost. Hahahaha! Made up for it by drinking lots of Yakult and staying on meds. xD)
• Deaths of people I consider important, both personally and those I idolized from afar. There were just too many of them in 2011.

Changes to Blogging Habits

Since 2011 has been my year of individuality, 2012 is actually going to be the opposite even though my forecasts for the Year of the Dragon indicate that I will be very successful in individual endeavors. (It also says there is a possibility of seeing dead people. Wah!!!! Thank goodness, it's superstition.)

On blog updates: Because I will have lesser time for myself in 2012 -- as I will devote myself to being a Producer (I want to win awards for games I produced this time, di ba? Hehe) -- the content of my blogs will be severely...hm. Let's just say I want to concentrate on posts that have deep significance to me.

The biggest irony of 2011 for me, blog-wise, was that I have been receiving a deluge of event and commercial requests when I hardly have time to spare for myself. I was afraid to log into my personal email because there were hundreds of stuff to read. (And many of them are still unread, huhuhuhu!!!) I don't want to break my ties with my favorite PR companies, though, so I have decided that press releases and product endorsements would be relegated to my Facebook page, Skysenshi's Hermitage, where I will also be holding contests from time to time.

From now on, the only time I will actually post a product-related event on any of my blogs is if I have personally attended an event and experienced the product for myself. How's that for compromise?

I hope this turns out to be a win-win situation for all.

Again, happy new year to all and I'm wishing everyone a great 2012. In the meantime, do enjoy a bit of fun with astrological (both Western and Eastern) forecasts. Hehe.

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Why I haven't been blogging lately...

(Offline Blogging: Saturday, 30 July 2011 at 19.14
Because there is no internet and I can't complete my thesis.)

I haven't really been blogging lately and it's been a while since I have written about something on a really personal level (well, my deepest personal stuff I don't post on this blog because those are meant only for my LJ, as they've always been for the last 10 years I've been privately blogging).

Anyway, last week, we had our company management seminar at "Da Farm", this beautiful farm where we ate really great meals. Our CFO (also the wife of the CEO) is such a wonderful vegetarian cook, I thought she should run a healthy canteen. Aaaaaand the farm animals are…amazing.

Before I go to the real meat of this blog entry (I keep getting distracted by thoughts of food and cute little furries), I better post the photos first.

Tilapia pond. We have a tilapia pond at our Tagaytay farm, too, but it isn't nearly this big.

The tilapia pond from afar.

The house situated at the center of the vast land. Its contemporary design is in contrast with the hunter-gatherer feel of the area.

A fun place to read.

You wake up to these fat little puppies.

Kulit, too.

Aaaaaand that's sheep.

It sorta followed me around during my tour of the place.

This is my favorite area, where the goats are.

The huge-ass grandfather goat with a creepy smile. I heard it was imported.

You can touch its horns, but I was too intimidated by it.

Snobby kitteh.

This white cat had one blue eye and one yellow eye. I couldn't take a photo of it up close since it was too paranoid.


Ok, now lemme segue into the real story I wanted to tell as I'm hoping this could help people (especially graduate students who are also working full-time) find their balance. The seminar we took in this place was about loving your job. Fortunately, all of us who were in that training already love our job. What I realized was that -- while being asked about our goals -- I have actually worn myself thin over so many things I wanted to do in so little time.

Let's see. Everyone knows I'm taking my doctorate studies and hoping to finish by the end of this school year. I am also a Game Producer and now also handling the Communications Department. This makes me automatically active in industry organizations such as the Game Development Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and the International Game Development Association (IGDA) and these associations need to coordinate with government bodies like TESDA, CHED, the now defunct CICT (and we're still talking!) and so on and so forth.

So basically I divide my time like this:

Weekday office hours = Work as Producer and work in Communications, including org meetings that may go way beyond office hours
Week nights (or week dawns) = Try to blog, if I get home before 9PM (which is now rare and I can't stay up till midnight because I need to wake up at 4AM)
Saturdays = Work on my Philippine Online Chronicle articles, if something industry-related doesn't come up
Sundays = Work on thesis (the average PhD dissertations here in the country is about 10x as thick as college theses...why so long????)

And whatever free time I squeeze out of that, I try to do some personal art (because I want to compete again this year and hold an exhibit again next year)…which I can barely manage. I barf at my personal works now. They all look and sound so bleh.

Something has to give.

Well. My health did.

So here I am, unplugged, recovering (should have told that nurse that my vein is not a Tetrapak box), and thinking about things I could let go of. Well, that was hard. So, I decided to concentrate on the three goals that we were asked to name during the seminar:

1. To become a doctor by the end of the school year. (This is the key that unlocks a number of other quests, including #3.)
2. To own a museum/gallery.
3. To help the Philippine education system meet industry needs. (This, instead of World Peace, is my Ms. Universe dream.)

So all other decisions or activities I'd be doing from now on must be headed towards those three goals. That is still hard. The decision to resign from The Philippine Online Chronicles was difficult enough but I'm now reserving my writing energy for that gargantuan PhD tome I'm supposed to cough up on September 9. (August 2 Edit: Apparently, I'm now chasing after an August 15 deadline.)

I'm also not accepting any commissioned writing or web gigs from now on until I graduate. I will just end up disappointing/angering clients because my brain is all over the place. I've been pretty cranky, too.

Here are the other problems:

• Half of what I'm doing in the Communications Department are related to #3. (In fact it's ironic that I'm doing more high-level education stuff now that I'm in the industry than when I was in the academe. I guess you can move more fluidly when you're not tied down to one school.)
• What I do as a Game Producer is what will help me get #1 (and vice-versa). 
• I shouldn't give up my blogs completely (though they haven't been updated lately). They will help me get #2 because they're related to my personal art.
• Social life is almost completely dead, since having one will not lead me to any of my goals. That's just plain sad.

So…I haven't really totally unloaded much, except maybe my blogs. I feel bad seeing them decline, as I just watch helplessly. I miss replying to my readers and reading everyone else's blogs.

But anyway, once I get #1 off that list, I suppose I'll be able to manage my time more freely so I'm now concentrating on accomplishing that as fast as I can. Until then...I just might need an assistant.

I do promise that I will be back and I will be back with a vengeance. =^.^= In the meantime, maybe you can talk to me about your personal life goals and how you want to reach them? Just drop a comment below so I'd know you guys are still there.

Thanks, y'all!

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2 jobs + studies = sudden death: I miss writing for myself.

This Macross model -- apparently driven by the very first protagonist, Hikaru -- was placed on top of my desk by a fellow producer, Dino, who thought that my work area looked bleary. LOL.

As I write this blog entry, I am actually waiting for some software to install itself into my work laptop so that I could work. Right now, I am trying to find my balance. I've placed so much on my plate, nearly forgetting the fact that I am supposed to be concentrating on what I want to be the last year of my graduate studies.

It's not the first time that I've actually had two jobs while studying at the same time. I did the same thing while I was aiming for a master's degree. Unfortunately, those two previous jobs are nothing compared to one full-time job in a video gaming company. (I'm also considering the fact that I have a higher position now than in my last job. Therefore, handling a much larger scope than before.) And master's studies is a far cry from getting a doctorate. But then I also write for The Philippine Online Chronicles on the side, which is something that I should be enjoying, since it's supposed to be only a once-a-week task...but if one would consider the depth and breadth of all my responsibilities, the only way I can actually write for it is on Saturdays.

On my day job. As I have mentioned before, I am now in an environment where every move you make is part of a larger strategy. I look at it as if it were a game where I have to check all my resources and my time allocation. I am also handling more departments than what I am used to. There's a lot of learning to be done and the consequences are unforgiving. Yup, I always go home feeling like I need to get reacquainted with my bed immediately. I cannot even muster the strength to blog. (Hence the lack of updates you've been witnessing recently.) BUT I am still loving where I am because it has been a while since I have encountered challenges that ultimately drive me to do better. As I have also said before, it's been a while since I'm surrounded by so many workaholic men and this actually motivates me.

On my studies. In a way, I am envious of my prolific friends, Rowena, Jenny and Rod. I cannot believe that Rod can still blog right after writing more than 20,000 words on our comprehensive exam. (I only managed to cough out roughly 12,000++ words but I was already yearning for rest right after that.) When I got home from the exams, it was all I could do to not fall quickly into bed and sleep. The papers I write for school are figuratively rocket science. Just to give you an idea, this is one of the small papers I submit to my professors on a regular basis. It's a short paper, but it took me every brain cell available to process. That's why it zaps me completely of brain power. Imagine that I actually now have to write about a thousand pages worth for my dissertation (there go my Sundays), to be submitted by the end of the school year.

Me and (what's left of) my classmates, right after finishing the comprehensive exam. To our credit, the four of us were among the rare working students who'd take heavy school loads.

On my part-time writing job. This should have been easier if I were gifted with my sister's stylistics and language use. But hey, I work with what I have and what I know. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed writing for Vibal Publishing immensely. However, I kind of miss writing for me. I have no weekends left and my coherence completely disappears after 6PM on weekdays. T.T

Anyhoo, I will still try to update as often as I can. I owe it to myself as well as to my readers. I'm just thinking about how to manage my time without killing myself in the process.

Thanks for reading! =^.^= Do share your thoughts or maybe tips? Hehe.

(And now that break time's over...)

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The Hermit: Surviving the Pinoy Blogosphere Part 1

I left the Philippine Arts category a few days ago.

Two reasons:
1. There is a crab in my category. Either that or mainstream people are not aware that in the Philippines, there are 7  categories for the arts: music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, cinema, and architecture. Many are of the misconception that art is only visual. Outside the Philippines, there are more than 7 art categories.

2. I realized that I was neglecting the other side of my craft: I am an artist of the code. Which means that I was first known as a geek before I became a designer.

The crab is relentless, constantly waiting for me to take a break from my museum and art gallery visits so that it could sabotage me. "Wait, she's posting about an art fair, let's hope she posts about a movie tomorrow so I can have my opening." And I was unfortunate enough to be in a category where feelingero artists think that cinema is not art. I remained defenseless even if the biggest tags in this blog are about five of its forms: music, literature, visual, cinema and digital interactive.

The moment I deleted my website from that category, I instantly felt relieved. See, I actively began blogging again this year because my brain had been dying from work and school. Blogging, which I nearly stopped doing two years ago, became my outlet. I did not want this to become as toxic as the activities I was escaping from.

I also realized that in the Philippines, there hasn't been a system designed to move out of the Web 1.0 method of categorizations even though we're using Web 2.0 platforms. While I am NOT fond of the tags/labels system for Web 2.0 (my research findings lead me to believe that people are still more accustomed to indexes), I think there has to be a balance somewhere.

All these considered, skysenshi.com will remain a lifestyle blog that focuses on: arts, geekery, education, women's interest and social issues. Until a decent category can cover that, I may have to settle for something that encompasses one or two of the five.

From the 90s to the 10s.
The Otaku Fridge is still my most popular website to date. It has been up since May 18, 1997. My visitors are also predominantly from the USA, Canada and Japan. In fact, mighty Alexa and Technorati couldn't identify where the author's location is, until I claimed the site three days ago. I have never been based in the USA. I had always been in the Philippines, so I had to correct Alexa.

The conditions during The Otaku Fridge's time were a lot simpler. We webmasters built the content and the community, then people came in droves. We called the shots, the trends, and if we were interested in EBs, we chose the time, place and who to invite. When I went into hibernation to concentrate on my geekery, my visitors stopped coming. Oh, they stayed for a while, then eventually went away. The Otaku Fridge's readers are now very passive. According to my Google Analytics, they come whenever I have an update (which is sporadic), but I no longer hear from them.

I tinkered with content-management systems and blogging software but I remained in my own little world, simply doling out blogging advice to those who were interested but keeping away from actual participation. When I decided to come out of my "hermitage", I saw that the world had changed. My lenses witnessed the cultural shift brought about by push-button publishing. Communities are now built by users -- we know them as bloggers -- and they are the ones defining the culture, which used to be the conscious job of the webmaster. There is no single master now because everyone has an input, everyone has a contribution to the organicity of information. In other words, the blogosphere -- as we know it now -- is an organic environment that evolves at a rapid pace.

This is the tricky part. Unlike in the 90s, when webmasters would draft written rules that their community members must comply with, many of the 2010 blogosphere's rules are unwritten. For a hermit like me, who's more adept at the technical (rather than the cultural) side of this sphere, I have no awareness of who's popular, who's not, and when I am actually treading dangerous ground. I only know two members of the community very well, Rowena Lei and my sister Alex -- both of whom had been 90s webmasters like me.

From international to local.
Being a member of the international blogosphere isn't as difficult as its local counterpart. One entity made the transition extra slippery: THE CRAB. The Philippine blogosphere is littered with crabs. In fact, I had been so paranoid of crabs that I veered my content towards whatever category I had been forced to limit myself to.

When I was listed under education, everything I posted was about education. When I was listed under the arts, I had to justify my addiction to food photography as art. Well, it is art because I don't really discuss food much. I just loved shooting them. Notice how I talk about what camera settings I used rather than going into detail about how creamy the sauces are? These restrictions had proven to be frustrating and I had to remind myself that hey, you combined all your other domains (other hobbies) into skysenshi.com only to limit yourself again?

Being a member of the Philippine blogosphere also meant that you may have to make yourself visible once in a while. Popular anonymity seems to be a 90s thing, when you were known for your username rather than your real name. Now, if I want to promote my students' or colleagues' exhibits, I have to prove that I was there and that I did not invent my content out of thin air.

Which brings me to my next observation: the existence of cut-and-paste bloggers. I do not understand why some people blog if they cannot provide ORIGINAL CONTENT. I know some artists aren't writers, so they do photoblogging, which I love. But I've seen blogs with personal stories that are actually stolen from other people. If you aren't an artist, you aren't a writer, you aren't someone who can offer something useful to the world or you can't even rant about your REAL personal life, why they heck are you blogging?  In my day, we called this plagiarism. Or have I been a hermit for too long that plagiarism has become an acceptable trend without me knowing it?

Comic strips from http://www.xkcd.com

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Skysenshi's Transitions (and A Tribute to Multimedia Artists)

I have just resigned from my post as the Assistant Director of Asia Pacific College's School of Multimedia Arts, effective at the end of the first term. My work in APC was just as exciting as the last (was a gameplay specialist at Level Up, Inc.); both environments had me doing the job of three people. It was fun, challenging and provided me enough room for growth. But, as with all the other fields I have been through, my journey as an academician must come to an end. It's once again time to reinvent; the fish-snake in me is restless. This end, however, is not an end end. It's the beginning of yet another thrilling adventure.

 My first year as a professor (2006). Good gawd, I looked so young. Hi, Caloi!!

Many of my readers, who have followed me from the Fridge to Turbulence to Coolay to this site that you see now, may notice the blog's transition into a predominantly multimedia arts blog.  The reason is rather simple: I went into the academe with the hopes of finding respite from the rat race of game development AND to train youngsters that I may eventually hire. We artists of the code are not rare; it's just that the bulk of our population had been siphoned off by other countries. I made it my mission to replenish the loss by mentoring young artist-programmers. In the academe, I've encountered many diamonds in the rough and I'm still in touch with them to this day.

 With ABMA43: Human-Computer Interaction Class

Focusing this blog on matters of multimedia arts (among other unrelated topics, some of them silly) is my way of paying tribute to those diamonds in the rough. So that -- in whatever little way I could -- I may be able to help them be recognized for the hardworking talents that they are.  Train them, then put the spotlight on them.

 My Gokusen Class, ABMA76

It is also for this reason that I decided to come out of my Hermitage and try to penetrate the local blogosphere this year.  This is a humbling endeavor, to say the least...so used was I to the millions of pageviews my international websites enjoyed. It was so much easier before; I was in the game long before 1/4th of the population even knew about the internet. I was already in a stable spot when the net population exploded. It was also so much easier to enjoy popularity while I hid behind a pseudonym. Alas, the rules are different locally! It seems that every blogger must have a face and a real name attached to the URL. The communities are also tougher. Crawling in means adjusting to the local cyber culture, something I never had to do when I headed an international community. But if I were to lend credibility to the diamonds I am to polish, I realize that my face, as well as my name must emerge -- even though the real me isn't half as popular as my pseudonym.

ABMA50s graduation

To the people I've met who were surprised at finding out who I am: Opo, Pilipino ako. Hindi po ako Hapon. Pero maraming salamat sa pagtangkilik sa akin kahit noong hindi niyo pa ako nakikita ng harapan. Sana po ay tangkilikin niyo pa rin ako ngayong alam niyo na ako'y naririto lamang sa Pilipinas.

 With the ABMA61 at one of the seniors' exhibits

I also fervently wish that you support our emerging multimedia artists, many of whom I've already posted about in this blog. I may no longer be "Mother Superior" to them, but this blog is the least I can leave as a legacy.

With the ABMA31, three years after their graduation and
before Angela Bentigan left for Singapore.

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About Skysenshi

All this talk about blogs and bloggers just reminded me that I have not explained what this site is all about and that I need to find my category. Thing is...what category do I specifically fall into??

I began blogging via LiveJournal in 2001. October 28, 2001 to be exact.  It was a very angry post that I kept private, sort of like a diary entry. I was too angry to write my feelings down with pen and paper. I needed an outlet and I needed it fast.  That was how I became a blogger.

Before that, I had so many anime and video-game related hobbies and I would write about these on The Otaku Fridge, which I built on May 18, 1997.  I was a college student then.  I also happened to be a GeoCities Community Leader and Co-Liaison before it got bought by Yahoo! My friend, Rowena Lei, was my mentor back then. She taught me basic HTML. (After Yahoo! bought GeoCities, we CLs were given rewards and shares. Lovely!)  We were also active members of an online Sailor Moon community. Laugh all you want, but even the Father of Mozilla Firefox Ben Goodger's popularity began with Sailormoon (and I wrote about that HERE. Update: My sister left a comment on that old entry that Ben Goodger is with Google Chrome now). Being exposed to so many sites, I could not stop writing about my numerous interests, including music, literature and food.  Which ended up in different websites that I could not even maintain.

I've merged, separated, merged and separated websites several times because of updating issues. I've also tried every free hosting community available.  My love for music eventually ended up in Coolay.com (my very first domain, 2001), which I couldn't update regularly. Skysenshi.com became my career blog...before Multiply came into the picture and Skysenshi.com became yet another site that I couldn't update.  So I decided to merge Coolay and Skysenshi and it became...well, what you're seeing now.  Whoever invented tags really made my life easier. Now I can just tag my posts so I don't have to maintain so many different sites while worrying if I'm spending money on white elephants. (Plus I'm now slowly transferring all my hobby-related posts from Multiply to this blog.)

The problem with having all your hobbies in one interface -- especially for a multidisciplinarian like me -- is how to categorize the blog. That still boggles me.  I just thought that I'd put it in a framework by using the tagline: "A kikay geek's hobby blog."  I love looking for girly stuff, even if I am not so much into fashion, and my geeky interests span two seemingly different worlds: technology and the arts.

This blog is a mishmash of all the things that I am, and all those things are confusing because I reinvent myself every two to three years.  I've worked in industries and taken up degrees that a lot of people think are waaaaaay unrelated. I never stop studying because many things fascinate me. I'm all over the place. Hence, the geekery.

(There was one time when the former president of the Animation Council of the Philippines, Ms. Grace, and I crossed paths at a Commission on Higher Education technical panel meeting and she went, "Aren't you one of my voice actresses? What are you doing here?" LOL. I had to tell her that I was actually the Assistant Director of Asia Pacific College's School of Multimedia Arts. Dubbing was just...one of the things I wanted to try.)

I think it's the geek in me that researches about ingredients and chemicals that we put on our skin when we bathe, what we eat and how these things are produced.  There was even a time when I obsessed about organic stuff, only to find out that the more I dig up about these ingredients, the more paranoid I get. Not to mention, more destitute (organic stuff ain't cheap, girls!).  So I loosened up a little and learned to relax when it comes to health and beauty stuff. Oh, and...well, female geeks have a nasty reputation for not caring about looks.  I mean to correct that impression...many of us are vain!  Especially cosplayers and those who are extremely OC about their gadgets (in relation to what they wear).  Hence, the kikayness.

So there, the recipe for a Kikay Geek's Hobbby Blog.

Oh, and...why "skysenshi"?
This has been my username since 1997. It was loosely based on my favorite anime character SailorUranus' title, "Warrior of the Sky" (tenkuunosenshi). All my cousins (and my sisters) used to have similar usernames, based on their favorite sailor senshi, too.

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