Speckles n Spectrum

Hey lovies, I'm freakin back and I'm gonna blog and blog and blog haha

Here is how I look now...

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
--- Benjamin Franklin

See ya!

I've been away for much too long from blogging for almost 5 months now and alas... I'm like a newbie again I can't find my way. Haha I feel so dumb not knowing how to open my blog but it's a good thing that I've saved everything in my laptop so one click and I don't need any password or anything like that to get here.

Blogger has a new look and I'm kinda awkward posting this because I'm not used to the set up. But anyways I'm back again into blogging. I just had an invite from Nuffnang for AyosDito.ph Iball so I decided to power on my thinking caps again.

Wee I'm in Manila now so more happenings and things to blog. A lot of things happened already I hope I can write more here from now.  And I need to get my alexa ranking back I'm just in 27 million now so far from the previous 600 000... shame.

I still don't write for the sake of traffic but still it's not bad as a side dish hehe.

I woke up yesterday at about 4am and decided to go online to send a quick chikka message to anyone from my organization who's going with the nature trip and clean-up drive to inform that I'll be there right at 6am. Then when I checked my email I was surprised that it's full of notifications from bloggers.com. I was used to receiving friend requests or follow notifications but only up to 5 a day or one at a time for most days but not like this one that it came like my mail was hit by storm. (Ok, I'm exaggerating... haha) But well what can I do, I'm just a nobody, blogging about my life's nonsense therefore I was all wondering about how too many people (more than 10 is too many already for me) all of a sudden were noticing my blog. 


It turns out I was one of the three featured bloggers, listed in the Editors' Picks of the Day on Bloggers.com. I was totally floored. I didn't know how it happened. But then one of the email says "Congratulation! You are have been Featured on Bloggers." 

Honestly while I was hiking and enjoying the falls I kept on thinking about it. I already thank the site on twitter before I went hiking because it was just the right words that I can say at the moment. I was totally speechless. I wasn't expecting for this. People may say I'm overreacting on this one for there are already a lot of bloggers that are being featured everyday. But if you came to think of it there are millions of bloggers out there and it's one in a million that you'll get a chance on this one. Especially that I joined the site on April 23, 2011 and never really been active. I mean I only answer friend request and say hi to people that talk to me first which is another great thing about the site. 

Bloggers - Meet Millions of Bloggersbloggers.comBloggers Community: Know the best bloggers around the world, discover them and connect yourself with this friendly bloggers community.

I really don't know how people discover my blog but since I joined there's always one or two almost a day that say hi to me either through comments or pm. People are really that friendly which is another plus if you're a little shy or not just the type who initiate conversations which I am half of the time =)


I've been featured so what now? Dunno. Someone said he expect more and better from me... uh, oh. How am I be able to do such as that? This is pressure but I won't promise anything. I'm just going to continue being myself and discover life as it is while trying to do better each day. I'm still praying so hard about the last one for my stubborn head. 


Anyways, I'm already happy just blogging but more so when someone lurks in my blog or simply take their time to say hi so even though this may comes out like bragging but I'm humbly posting this to say thank you for the time considering wasting a minute or two in this blog. 


And before I totally forget July 15 was my blog's monthsary. I started this blog on March 15, 2011 so being featured has been a great way to celebrate this plus I already have a Google page rank. I have a lot of things to be thankful for yesterday was such a very blessed Friday indeed. 


How about you? What are the things you're thankful and grateful for the last Friday or anything for these past few days? 

This is weird but with all my blog categories I actually find it most difficult writing about myself. To think this is my first week of blog programming and I'm already having a hard time coming up for today's personal post... darn.

It's really hard to write especially if I'm so darn happy. Happiness blurs my thinking caps. Although I wanted to avoid negativities in my blog and I like to write about happy thoughts but writing in a state of bliss is not much too ideal for coming up a sensible post. But I have to stick to my rules and I'm going to try and brake barriers on my writer's block today.

I slept it through and now what? Still struggling for this post. I'm thinking of just posting a Osama Bin Laden is Dead entry but I don't really like posting things in my blog just for the sake of ramping up my blog traffic. I admit there are things I copy and pasted from other websites for the sake of establishing a reference and I don't write things that isn't in my interest or I haven't carefully analyze. It's nice to increase your page views but I won't really stoop down to that level of degrading myself on just riding on with the hype. Besides there are no elaborated facts to prove this for now and the news said President Obama will give a statement later today about the matter.

(photo credit)

With all my topics piling up I kinda decided I need to get organize and be systematic from now on so that I can fill-out all the categories of my blog evenly. Since I reformatted my blog's design I have categories that are empty as of the moment so I hope this new approach will work in filling-in the gaps.

So for my food section I'll start posting my very own recipes or my improvised/budget-friendly version  every first Sunday of each month. I figured it will be just timely since May is the Philippines' fiesta month therefore my first recipe post will fall on a Sunday of May 1.  I'm also thinking of a food feature every Sunday of a week. Good luck about this.

Monday will be a random week. I think something under personal categories. I don't know maybe it's weird but as of the moment after a food post I'd like to kick-off and start my week with a little about me just to check if I'm still alive... eh? Ha ha.

Tuesday would be my artsy day. Expect poetry, sketches (uhm, I have few problems with this now), photography or maybe feature artists works. Let's see about these.

Wednesday will be anything about fashion. Every 3rd Wednesday of the month I'll share something about my personal look. I can't have this a weekly post since it's difficult to find things for plus-size people and I don't really get out and dress-up much now.

Thursday is music day. I'll feature something relevant today or the latest songs and every 2nd Thursday of the week I'll highlight from my favorite music playlist.

Friday is supposed to be gimmick night but I know some are actually choosing to stay home to relax and take a break from the busy weekdays of work and I feel more into watching a movie so I'll have a movie review every Friday of the week. I actually have tons of new movies waiting for me to watch them stuck in my hard drive... tsk.tsk. This way I'll be able to encourage myself to watch them one by one now since I have to stick with this sched.

Saturday is free-spirit day. Anything goes so to speak whatever that comes out of my mind.

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So here's my blog programming done mainly for me... hehe Yeah, to personally challenge and inform me on what to blog and to keep on blogging. But this doesn't mean I have to blog only once a day maybe more so we'll see.

Days of the Week	Post Categories	Special
Sunday	Food	1st Sunday: original/reinvented recipe
Monday	Personal	3rd Monday: 101 Truths About Me
Tuesday	Artsy	2nd Tues: Featured Artist 4th Tues: My Photography (attempts)
Wednesday	Fashion	3rd Wed: Personal Look as a Plus-size
Thursday	Music	2nd Thurs: Favorite Music
Friday	Movies	1st Friday: My Favorite Movies
Saturday	Anything goes	4th Saturday: Something Funny or Trivial

It's Holy Week and I don't know but "Banal na Aso, Santong Kabayo" is always the first song that comes to mind. From what's happening nowadays it seems this is the perfect theme song for Lenten Season.

101 Truths About Me: #2 I laugh easily.

My personality may come strong and complicated but my source of happiness is plain and simple. Little things can make me laugh and smile. A good sometimes corny joke will do.

Here I list the things that can brighten my day:

• Food (of course)

* lasagna, any pasta and pizza (Italian Food)
* Adobo, lechon, sisig, palabok, goto, dinuguan (Filipino Food)
* butchi and fresh or fried lumpia, tofu, siopao (Chinese Food)
* Tacos and burritos (Mexican Food)
* Ramen and shabu-shabu (Japanese Food)
* Filipino Street Food (fishballs, barbecue, kwek kwek, isaw, betamax, taho, puto)
* Mc Donald's pancake and french fries
* burgers especially Stackers
* any salad will do especially Caesar salad and fruit salad
* Shawarma
* mushroom soup or any soup with garlic bread
* cakes especially Blue-berry Cheesecake
* ice creams (double dutch, Häagen-Dazs, Dairy Queen Blizzard)
* chocolates (Ferrero Rocher, Hershey's Symphony or Kisses with almonds and Macadamia Nuts)
* some junk foods (Marty's Cracklin Vegetarian Chicharon, Doritos, Pringles, Bread Pan)
* Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino, Mango Shake, Pineapple Juice and Zagu
* big fluffy white marshmallows toasted in a bonfire :)

• Family

Even though we clash and argue still seeing them makes me happy and thankful for having them as my family.

* seeing my mom arrived home safe and sound from her daily commute to work. 
Now I get too understand why parents always require their kids to go home and impose a curfew because they worry about them a lot and I am experiencing that now especially if my mom didn't arrive on time... such a state of paranoia.
* seeing everyone in one room all noisy and chaotic
* exploring and trying new things with them
* seeing my mom lighten up her face while asking if her nail polish color is pretty or a new blouse, shoes or bags fit her well
* seeing her happy watching teleserye, some show irritates me but I enjoy sitting with her in the living room and teasing her that she should stop watching anything on TV because it is making her upset be it a news or a stupid character in a certain soap opera.
* eating her home-cooked meal until I am full and she would proudly say her dish is too delicious that I was able to eat it all and I'll just say "It was fine but I'm just too hungry that I can eat anything disgusting at that moment." Of course she knew that no one can make me eat anything that I don't like even if I'm that hungry I would rather sleep than eat and vomit it all in the end.

There are tons of things that I can list here but my blog cannot accommodate all so I think this had given you a sort of a preview to the whole picture.

• Writing

Yes, obviously this is my solace, my bliss something that I hold on to besides my faith when everything seems out of control.

• Reading

It spells adventures and fun and nothing like that couldn't make me smile.

http://nymagirl.deviantart.com/art/Photography-love-VI-109772893

• Pictures

Another medium that takes me away.

• Music and Movies

Need I say more?

• Nature

God's gift to mankind, one of the masterpieces. A proof that we are love. Seeing the moon in its horizon is happiness already. Silence and tranquility with the wind breezing in an ocean and the waves splashing into the shore, it's noise and flapping feathers of birds... it's priceless.

• Friends

They are angels sent from heaven. A hello would do wonders.

• Babies

I always love kids and seeing one brightens my day in an instant.

Well, it's really impossible to have it all in this entry. Happiness for me is everywhere and I can say that it isn't about money for I don't have that but I am in my happiest state these days. It isn't about material things, having this or that and honestly the only luxury I can consider right now in my life would be having a laptop and a 24/7 net connection (in our present time this is already a necessity and it is true for me since my job is online) and a few trips in a restaurant once in a while.

As I was able to take some time browsing for a few blogs I happened to notice that my blog compared to others  seem like a kindergarten's scrapbook. Mostly the blog designs are simple and the color palette is neutral and most use white as a background color, professional looking for professional bloggers. But I don't claim myself as one, I am just a blogger period. I just happened to like writing and expressing my thoughts in details with accompanying photos some of the time but still I know I needed to modify my blog designs to make it a little decent looking. Something that would say that the writer is on her mid-twenties and not a punky teen although I act more like a seven-year old according to them (OK fine, I do) modifying the design is the best I could do for now and about the picture quality... it kinda frustrates me that I still don't have a  DSLR up to now while I've been such an addict to photography since childhood. Well, that's something my family considers as luxury for I am the only creative soul in this area among us. So, I'll have one someday and I'm going to save for it, I shouldn't have waited this long to realize that huh?

And I just discovered recently how photo blogging is too tedious. It suck up my patience all down the drain but still all that process is rewarding after you see the final layout but still some of the photos are as stubborn like me, they don't want to stick to the rules and keep popping out in the wrong directions... aarghh!

Back to my blog designing: Considering all aspects, functionality, sleekness, quality, simplicity and uniqueness I opted for this new color palette. Everybody seems to have white so I like mine in black, it is simple enough yet  striking and intriguing. I was thinking of purple at first but it was to loud almost like a banner that's screaming my personality and I don't want that I want something that will still be me but in a subtle way and won't strike so much as a punky, melancholic college girl not that I am still in that stage.

Professional looking but with attitude so it is now. Well, that's just my personal view of the new design.

I wanted to try the neutral scheme too, basic white background and black ink but maybe some other day for redesigning a blog page is too much of a hassle. It takes too much time with all the color combinations, layouts, fonts and sizes preferences, plus adjusting the gadgets to have the same color scheme and yes the worst HTML.

I'm not the super techie person and my knowledge of some sort of computer stuff is just based from research and non-stop reading on the subject and I haven't had any basic tutorial or classes attended to learn them. I just do it all on my own. If there's something I wanted to do I just Google it and my patience and ever attention to details had paid off now I had removed the Blogger navigation bar on top of my site and it looks like just an ordinary website and not just a blog. And if you are going to click the colored words in every entry in this blog (they are called hyper-links) and I was able to made them in such a way that if you click it a new tab will open, that would be less hassle for readers since it'll be able to let them open another page but it won't navigate them away from my blog.

So what do you think of this new design? Pretty sleek or still crappy?

(photo credit)

What comes into your mind when you first read my blog title? I want to know if it actually makes the impression I intended it to convey. Take a look beyond the words of my blog title...


Let's Talk About the Basic 
What I mean is how Dictionaries define the words of my blog title. I'll state the obvious even though I know people knew it but just to have the right foundation for my explanation a little later at the end of this entry.

•  Speckle - a small mark of color.  From speck meaning a small discoloration or spot especially from stain or decay.

           Ex. a ripe banana with lots of brown speckles

•  "n" - could be IN or AND

•  Spectrum -  a continuum of color formed when a beam of white light is dispersed (as by passage through a prism) so that its component wavelengths are arranged in order. 

           Ex. beautiful scarves in all the colors of the spectrum


Whew... I feel like an English Teacher again. Doing this makes me nostalgic about my teaching job in a State College a few years back :)


Why Speckles n Spectrum?
This is how I actually view my life. A "tabula rasa" a blank space, a white canvas where each day I paint and  add a new color. It is a series of colorful and exciting events, some sad, some boring, some dark and yes some are wonderful that I cherish every moment of it.

Our life started plain and simple and as the days go it becomes complicated like a spectrum... colorful, so many facets and yet speckled by misfortunes and unexpected events. Nothing is really perfect in this world and trials are there to test all aspects of our being like a gem needed to be polished in order to achieve its beauty.

My life and my being is like that not perfect no matter how I struggle to splash beautiful colors in my canvas  I am insistent on accomplishing a beautiful painting, a masterpiece of a life that only I can paint. It's not about wealth or getting all the mundane things, nothing fancy or superficial. It's just just about having the freedom of being me, enjoying simple stuff in life and being better as a person and doing my part in the world through little act of kindness and reaching out to others. After all I describe myself as a dreamer of a better world and a dreamer for a better world but I don't stop right there just dreaming I take and act my part though there are some lapses on my end but I hope things are doing well most of the time.

And yes if all else fail I know I have Him to pick me up out of my misery.

So here it is... my final blog... my white light (faith & life), different experiences (spectrum), trials and mistakes (speckles)... a collection of everything about me, opinions, truths, interests, hopes and dreams... my past, present and future... a life that i proudly claim my own.

A canvas painted with different colors sometimes dark with stains not to ruin it but to add individuality.

Curious about the blog title? Well I always am whenever I read a blog. I wonder what makes the blogger choose that main title for their blogs or their pseudonyms, some are obvious but some are deeper than I can fathom and of course there's a big reason behind every catchy blog titles and strange usernames right? And mine is no exception to that. Fret no more because I let you in on a secret... shh :)