Facebook decided that I'm a person again

All's well that ends well.
(And to celebrate, I will be having a New Year contest. Details below.)

This was how the email with Facebook went:

When they did not respond to my shameless begging, I thought of creating a new profile and making that the admin of Skysenshi's Hermitage. I just simply wanted my news feed back. And the ability to greet/congratulate my friends, to be able to share FB stories with my family on the breakfast table, and be tagged by my complaining relatives. ("It's not letting us tag you by your real name!")

Just after I added friend #200 on my new profile, I logged out so that I could add the new profile into my FB page's administrators. Lo and behold! FB did not take me to my sad and lonely hermitage, but instead showed me a news feed.

I literally slapped my face, thinking that I must be seeing things. In fact, I went out for the whole day and did my activities before logging back just to check that I was not imagining what I saw that morning. A colleague even texted me that he saw my original profile, so that must mean it's true.

I happily deactivated my new account after that.

And now, to celebrate the return of my identity (I'm still having a rough first week of 2013 but I know things are gonna get fixed), I'm going to hold a New Year 2013 Giveaway.

Share your 10 Goals for 2013 
and win gift certificates of your choice: Starbucks, Powerbooks, National Bookstore, Blade (car accessories), SM or Rustan's.

Mechanics:

• You can simply post your goals as comments on the FB note I've posted at Skysenshi's Hermitage.
• Bonus points for sharing the FB note on your walls.
• Optional: If you want to be more detailed, you can blog about it like I did, and post the link to your entry on the comments section. Sample blog entry could be similar to this. You can be a lot more creative. It's up to you.

The rest of the details can be found here.

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The Near Facebook Suicide

Started the year by nearly killing my Facebook existence. Haha!

Anyway, it's not like I just made a split-second decision when I opted to merge my FB profile and my page. It pondered upon this for three months. Even tried surfing Facebook using my page instead of my profile and I didn't see any visible problems except for the fact that I cannot subscribe to people. I could subscribe to pages and they were appearing in my news feed so it didn't seem all that much of a bother (many of my friends have their own FB pages that I can subscribe to).

My reasons for wanting to convert were relatively simple:

• Promising to be more active online and offline, I was looking at going past the 5,000 mark when it comes to adding contacts. Converting into a page should solve that problem.
• When I'm very stressed, I become very emotional. So when I read negative stuff on my news feed (RH bill debates, bride burnings in India, etc.), I sometimes create volatile status messages that would horrify my mom enough to scold me via PM. No joke! Hahaha! If you're creating a brand via an FB page, you will at least be forced to manage your emotions. For 2013, I wanted a complete "rebirth"...(instead I'm faced with identity suicide).
• I was tired of maintaining a profile AND a page and I find it bothersome to create duplicate content.
• Lastly...I wanted those "robust features" that Facebook promised.

By New Year -- looking forward to starting over with a positive vibe (this is literal, as I knew FB will delete ALL your past posts during the conversion) -- I went ahead and took the plunge, using Social Strand Media as a reference for a very careful step-by-step process. There are many things that Facebook doesn't tell you, so I relied on this source. And it is a very reliable source, I may add, especially since the author seemed very happy with her decision to convert.

Unfortunately, there was a reason why the author was very happy. She did not encounter the problems I encountered. And as I mentioned, there are many things that Facebook doesn't tell you:

• Only HALF of my contacts were converted into the page. Even merging the old page with the newly converted one did not help. Many people who were both my friends AND liked my old page were not transferred on board.
• The search bar is gone and there's no bringing it back, even if I view the page as my profile.
• Oh, and speaking of profiles... I mistakenly thought that my profile should be the same name as my page so that I can merge them properly. Now I can't even use my real name anymore.

So yep. My name is now [firstname:skysenshi's lastname:hermitage] and I can't change that. There is no option to change your profile name. And many of my newer contacts who have actually been converted probably don't know who Skysenshi is. I am still re-establishing the identity (even if I have been skysenshi since 1997). So yup, those contacts probably unsubscribed.

• The worst part? The news feed that I used to see even when I was browsing as a page? Well, it's now completely gone. I can't even view the pages I subscribed to. A former colleague actually joked, "Now your page really is a Hermitage."

So yeah...I have basically killed the only window I have to the outside world.

I can read my contacts' pages and profiles but I cannot comment. I couldn't even friggin' greet a colleague a happy birthday! It's like having a crystal ball inside your hermitage, but you can't participate. People need to visit your hermitage to be able to get to you.

So far, I have yet to see where the "more robust" features are (see first image of Facebook's promise).

What do I do now? Well, I will wait till Friday. If I cannot stand the silence anymore (all conversations are inside my wall and only if I start a topic), I will turn this into a social experiment while checking to see if Facebook will give me my identity back.

If not, well...I guess I'll have to make the best of this. Haha!

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Animetric's World Celebrates First Anniversary

Rowena Lim Lei celebrates her first anniversary as a blogger today and she's giving away prizes sponsored by some of the brands I swear by. Ro's  rules say "one entry per prize" but I was in a hurry and I (rather excitedly) posted about all three of the items I wanted in one comment. LOL.

Anyway, I've decided. Here is my first choice.

Celeteque Advanced
It's true! This moisturizer is so light-weight, I could hardly feel like I have anything on. I tend to have oily skin so I really dislike putting on gook that feels like grease. Especially since the SPF I put over moisturizers also tend to be greasy (the higher the SPF, the greasier it gets; and that's a fact). I also love the idea that it can be used as an eye cream so I don't have to buy so many products.

UPDATE (March 13, 2010): I put this to the test when I went on my birthday trip to Boracay recently.  It was my first Bora visit -- yes, I know, I'm such a geeky loser that I have never gone to this Philippine heaven that foreigners keep raving about.  I did not expect the sun to be ultra powerful in Boracay.  It was beyond comparable to a very sunny day in L.A. (the only other place I've experienced heat so strong I thought I would faint from it).

I brought along my Missha Perfect Cover BB Cream with SPF42 (PA+++) for sun protection and coverage. This product tends to grease you out, given the wrong weather conditions, so it was imperative that I choose the right moisturizer to pair it with.  I brought two brands, just in case. Olay Regenerist, even without the Missha BB cream, proved too thick to be comfortable -- and I hadn't even gone under the Boracay Sun yet at that time. As expected of Celeteque Advanced, well, it worked its magic under my BB Cream.  I almost couldn't feel any weight on my face besides the sunscreen and despite the light feeling, I never felt I was drying up.

Here is a picture of me and my dearest friend Cris at the end of our 3-hour morning sail. Loved this little expedition! But...

While we really enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smell of the sea, we were actually being battered by the wind and the sun.  We also encountered a slight mishap, with another boat colliding into ours, causing my hat to fly off into the sea. The only tangible protection I had left after that were my pair of sunglasses. Unfortunately, those weren't enough to keep the onslaught of sea water from splashing into my face.

By lunch time, I was already worried about looking dugyot. Good thing that our next activity was a visit to the market, also known as D'Talipapa, where it shouldn't matter if I looked haggard or not. Quickly got myself a new hat, bought lobsters and prawns at the palengke, and had them cooked. Cris took a snapshot of me and I was surprised at how I didn't seem like I had gone through a 3-hit combo of sun-wind-sea. Again, I secretly thanked Celeteque Advanced. The photo says a lot about its staying power.

I'm also thankful for not needing an extra eye cream since I was on travel mode. I always make it a point to travel light: one backpack and a body bag; no huge luggage-on-wheels for me.

Here's also a little tip for traveling Celeteque fans out there. If you want to maximize your baggage space, you can also look for the "Celeteque 3-Step Skin Care" package. It's a small travel kit that contains mini versions of their facial wash, oil-free toner and their regular water-based oil-free moisturizer.  I took the facial wash and toner with me, along with my Celeteque Advanced. Now isn't that ultra convenient?

My "Runner-Up" Choices:

The Yummy Cookbook Set - Since I live on my own, I super need to learn how to make a variety of dishes. I am tired of eating the same old cardboard-tasting wheat bread for breakfast. This should help me soup up my fridge. I love experimenting with dishes, too, especially when I have the time.

Starbucks Clean and Green Tumbler - I use organic products for my bathing needs and try to eat healthy as much as possible (except for occasional bouts of instant pancit canton cravings), so the idea that having one of these could also help save the planet is very appealing. Whenever I go to Starbucks, I would usually have my drink in their "for here" mug just to lessen the carbon footprints. I heard that bringing your own mug -- and this one would be perfect -- entitles you to a discount? Sounds good to me! It doesn't hurt that it looks very pretty, too.

The rest of the prizes can be seen in this picture:

If you want to win these fabulous items, all you have to do is pay tribute to Animetric...and of course, read the contest rules, which could be found here:
http://animetric.blogspot.com/2010/02/animetrics-favorite-things-year-1.html

Happy Anniversary, Ro! So very glad that you went blogging. You've actually embarked on a very exciting adventure. Hope this keeps up. Best of luck and more power to you! Mwah!

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A Lot Like Love

I made a check list of the features I want in a husband. I never realized that I could use a check list of what I want in a job until my mom and I discussed about what I really want to do. She could see that I'm completely happy and fulfilled about my sites, but there are also other needs that I wanted to address so that I wouldn't be so restless. I wish I had talked to my mom this way 5 years ago, at the height of my career, so that I didn't have to choose between marriage and the job that I had found ideal.

Of course, past is past. All I can do now is look to my future and see what could be fixed, starting with my career path. I learned something like this in my SOCDIM class, the diagram of organizational components a.k.a. Information Ecology. It was only after talking to my mom that I realized I could use this diagram in my personal life also.

Another thing I realized is this: Even though I have designed many pages (around 32 as of this writing...I think) and still doing many projects, my strength isn't really in design. Sure, I can whip up a neat, pretty website when I am in my "Design Mode" but I notice that I'm more like an outline-organize-design-build-market-maintain-market-maintain type of person. That's how it is with my babies, my network, that I've never grown tired of: The Otaku Fridge.

My mom said, now that I have established that the Otaku Fridge Network is an important aspect of my life (hey, it's one of the projects that pay my masteral tuition), I should find a job that lets me have time for this. Sure, I do want to have my own business, and I might go after a job solely for the purpose of finding capital, but I still have to have an outline as to what I really want to do. That way, I could retain the job, as well as the Fridge and the business.

Hm. Is it any wonder that my mom was VP for HR in San Miguel Brewing Group's Greater China Operations?



My Career Check List:

• Must meet my financial requirements. While this wasn't the case when I went back to the corporate world last year (because I was forcing my way out of "Housewife Mode" and needed a job pronto), I realize that I'm not getting any younger and life can't all be just about fun. Survival isn't enough. I have to LIVE.



• Must let me be a mentor so that I can train and educate people. I get fulfillment out of this, based on past experience.



• Must allow me to travel and experience worlds beyond where I'm standing.



• Must allow me to have enough time for The Otaku Fridge. Meaning, I should have enough time for myself so that I don't end up taking maintenance tablets come age 30.



• Must allow me to grow and learn, like letting me study a new language or discover a new marketing strategy.



• Must inspire me to be more creative in my pursuits.



• Must make my strengths flourish. I just observed that while I'm not as good as many witty, grammatically perfect and overly creative writers out there -- nor am I a design machine like Leki, Virna, Elly and Diwa -- I am good at branding and finding my niche. Writing and designing are just basic tools of the trade, which is, in essence, information management. I think the job I should take would be able to help me hone that further.

Now, I'm tying this up with my personal goals, which include my Husband Check List, so that I would have an overview as to how I want to direct my life. I realize also that career choices are a lot like love. "Until you love like this, never settle for anything less," LeAnne Rimes said. LOL! If I have to use a gantt chart and a master diagram to accomplish this, so be it. =^.^=

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Site Revamp: Skysenshi V.2.0

Just had to revamp the site. It had become outdated and had needed dusting. Lots of changes going on, although my current style hadn't really deviated from my previous ones. The site needed a personality makeover, much like its owner. Hehe. Cheers to being happy! =^.^=

I know! I know! I still haven't gotten to updating the client links. I just got too busy with work and all, and am now taking up my masters. Sorry about that! Hm. Maybe I should try to make at least one update a week, just to make sure I won't get stagnant. Anyhoo, after my resignation pulls through next month (July 2005), I'll be on the lookout for a part-time job, which I'll be busy with as I go through my masters, other short courses (updating purposes), and mini-projects. Huhuhu! I actually liked my job at Level Up! but I just had to re-direct my path. Like I mentioned, lots of life-altering events going on. ^_-

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