Because I needed something to fill the gap of your absence, I typed your name on the Google search bar and waited for the search results to appear in five…four…three…two…one. Dangerous territory. I half-hoped half-feared that a Google search of your name would yield a blog your goldfish memory might have forgotten about. A blog filled with old pictures of you and entries that might yield more insight on the way you think and view the world (which was exactly what I wanted to find), or a declaration of love for the woman in your life a year or two ago (which was what the eternally irrationally jealous part of me was afraid of finding).
Instead, I find that you are a forty-year old fashion photographer based in Rome. Your Linked In profile says you are a General Financial Supervisor at the Ferrabraz-Becker Group and that you graduated from a university in Brazil. You have also worked with John Malkovich in the 1991 film The Object of Beauty.
I went through pages and pages of search results and kept seeing your name minus the traces of the you that I know.
The internet has it all wrong. You have a film camera in your room somewhere that you haven’t used in years. You’re a linguistics major who graduated from the University of Milan and you wrote a 65-page thesis on the pidgins and creoles of (insert north African country whose name I can’t remember here – but I do remember that if you had had more time, you would have flown over to north Africa yourself to get your sample from the native pidgin speakers instead of interviewing every black immigrant you stopped on the street). You’d sooner become a right wing party member than get a career in finance (or maybe it’s the other way around – either way, I can’t imagine you in a suit and tie). You watch movies with your parents every night but you’ve never expressed the desire to make them. I do know that sometimes, you wish you had gone to med school instead.
My knowledge of you versus the world’s largest repository of information. I’m better off sleeping your absence away.
Technically I’m not 22 yet since I was born at around 6 pm, but that didn’t stop the birfday luff from piling up. I spent the last hours of my 21st year pigging out at Mr. Kabab with Anne, Bim, Fritz, and Ade, then everyone except Ade stayed with me til past midnight. Spent the morning alternating between sleeping and spending time with Ale, and right now I’m alternating between watching him sleep and admiring all the lovely presents I got because I don’t feel like doing anything productive.
Everyone at The Man Blog sent me birthday greetings a day early, but Ade and Baddie win at the most awesome birthday presents ever.
Don Adriano de Maraña y Defibrillator Nom Nom Nom
So yeah, advance happy birthday! For your birthday, I give you:
Señor Unibrow the Turd
Happy birthday, LOLen! I know Ade already gave you an Alodia doll, but I’m giving you another so you can make them kiss each other.
La Puta Madre Hohobag
SQUEEEEEEE! Oh. My. God. How did you know that I was Alodia’s NUMBER ONE FAN? Did it have something to do with this thread I started, which you guys had to lock because the lolz got lamer and lamer? The thread about the ONLY existing Alodia figurine in the world? The one that sold for the absolutely reasonable price of Php 12,000? And you guys got me TWO of them! So sweet! I don’t even want to think about how you guys are probably going to die from the lack of food or beer or both within the month because now you don’t have money left for anything else. But that just shows how much you love me and my frivolous endeavors, rite? You guys are the bestest. Mwahugz.
Ahh, fun tiems at The Man Blog forums.
I was supposed to get a trip to Hong Kong from my parents but my travel buddy couldn’t make it, so I guess I’m not opening presents from them today. But that’s all right when I’m getting free rent, electricity, food, and tuition from them for the next two years. Not to mention a birthday dinner tonight and a party on Saturday!
Yep, I’m feeling teh luff. <3
The other day, a good friend sent me a text message saying that she saw me in the December issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. What shocked me about this text message was not so much that I’m apparently in Cosmopolitan, but that this friend actually reads Cosmo in the first place. You see, she’s a member of the NPA and well, I always stereotyped them to be…you know. NOT readers of Cosmopolitan magazine. I’m no socialist, but I’m iffy about the consumerist notion of the “good life” fed to us by mainstream media. I don’t buy magazines and I most certainly don’t read Cosmo, except when it’s lying there in the salon. Then I only look at the fashion section and wish I was earning more money so I could spend my life spending like an obedient consumer.
Rly?
After class today, I grabbed a copy of the December issue and thrust the magazine into my mom’s face, feeling rather proud of myself. Unfortunately I made the mistake of placing “The Virginity Diaries” article heading at her eye level. I sensed dread in her voice as she asked me about what kind of details about my sex/dating life I just revealed to the whole country. Kind of shows how little she knows about me, doesn’t it? 
I may have a blatant disregard for most societal norms, but I’d never share anything that private to a bunch of strangers. Not only do I find it rather inappropriate; nothing screams “I HAVE NO REAL SEX LIFE!” louder than people who brag about their sexcapades outside their close circle of friends.
So now you’re probably be wondering, “If Lauren isn’t in Cosmopolitan talking about how she gets herself some action, what then has she done that makes her deserve magazine space?” You see, at this point in my life I only have one claim to fame, and that’s being the “first Filipino blogger.”
Click for a larger view
Until now I still find it strange when people treat me any differently because I was once a bored ten-year old with no friends and internet access. I’m not gonna lie – I think it’s kind of cool that I have a title attached to my name, however inaccurate it might be. Nothing’s more flattering than getting stopped on the street by a stranger who apparently enjoys reading my self-centered, socially-irrelevant blog posts. (Well okay, that happened to me around twice when I still had a day job. Both times it was outside the same 7-11. Weird.) On the other hand, being the first blogger is no real achievement. It doesn’t guarantee me success in life. It doesn’t make me some Blogosphere Mafia Princess. It doesn’t even mean that I’m the best writer on the intarwebz. It just means that I decided to become an exhibitionist of sorts at ten years old and kept it up for over a decade. And that’s all there is to it.
Still, I can’t deny that being Teh Furst has its perks. It’s not necessarily the hits, though that’s certainly most welcome too. (I never check how many people read my blog. Some things are best left unknown.) You know what the best part about having a well-known blog really is? It makes meeting people so much easier. And I’m not talking about the kind of people who introduce themselves so that maybe you guys could do a link-ex and fap off to each other on the intarwebz (Which, by the way, is such a huge turn-off. Talk to me because you want get to know me as a person, not because you’re trying to make me link you back.) Most , if not all of the friends I made after college are people I met through my blog or through the blogosphere. Hell, I haven’t known the TMB guys (and girls) six months yet and I love them to death already. I tried to pimp The Man Blog in the interview but the writer didn’t include what I said, which was:
I hang out with the writers of the Man Blog, both in their forums and in real life. Not only are they an group of excellent writers; they’re really great people. It’s funny…I used to be mere lurker in their blog and now I hang out with them almost every week. It feels surreal.
It’s almost Christmas. Shut up.
Ultimately, blogging is it’s own reward. Sure, there’s a lot of money to be made through blogs. If you put in enough effort, you could probably transform yourself into some sort of internet celebrity. Hell, it must be great to win first place at blog awards. For me, however, simply knowing that people read whatever I have out in here is already big enough of a deal. I don’t have any political opinions. I have no cause to fight for. I’m not out to change the world. I’m not even out here to entertain. I’m just a 21-year old girl trying to figure out what life is all about. I don’t know why the stuff I do or the things I’ve learned should be interesting to some people but apparently it is. So…thanks for reading. Seriously.
Kay I’m going to sign off before this gets any more sentimental.
