In the vast expanse that is the World Wide Web, accessibility is the name of the game—and blogs are the ‘it’ mediums of self-expression and disclosure. Just when it’s beginning to appear like old news, leave it to Ateneo’s own mavericks of the blogosphere to toss in some novelty into the already eclectic array of choices at one’s disposal.
Tricia Gosingtian
When she’s not styling for young designers, modeling for magazines, or shooting celebrities on the side, Tricia Gosingtian marches around campus—rain or shine—to spot some of Ateneo’s fashionistas. Her blog, triciawillgoplaces (formerly called fashionateneo), is Ateneo’s own version of The Sartorialist.
Though her blog was created just last July, her vision of a street style blog had been in progress way back in her sophomore year. Since the blog’s conception, it has already garnered over 500 followers.
It helps that she is no stranger to the online circuit, having owned accounts in DeviantArt, Lookbook, and Twitter. Triciawillgoplaces isn’t even her first hand at blogging. Her first blog has been in business since first year high school.
Impeccable timing coupled with a great opportunity came in the form of an offer to be part of The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s 2BU section. “Now I’m thinking that even without it [2BU], I can still do it in the future. For the love of it, which is what I do mostly in photography,” says Tricia. “It’s not like I get paid for everything.”
This success can be attributed to her being a fashionista and a seasoned photographer herself. Tricia understands the need for aesthetically pleasing photos, and looks at her models from a fashion photographer’s perspective. “I want people to look pretty. I try to find the right light and the right place.”
Tricia’s potential resume can probably boast experience that only professionals have accomplished, having worked for established local magazines and developed a huge network consisting of esteemed people in the field. Yet today, her top priority is her thesis and her plans of publishing it as its own separate book. “I feel like people are going to get sick of me—there’s like Tricia everywhere!” she says.
But with Tricia proving herself to be more than just a pretty face, chances are, the world hasn’t seen enough of her just yet.
Melody Carolino
From the correlation of slipping on the CTC floor with the amount of rainfall, to the range of a quiz’s difficulty in relation to the win of the Blue Eagles—skilled doodler Melody Carolino has the Atenean life calculated in charts and graphs.
Taking its cue from the blog This Is Indexed, which also contains graphs about daily realities, Ateneo, Graphed documents semi-nostalgic accounts of college. Whether it be from class lectures, walks from one classroom to the next, or an occasional UAAP game, Melody proves that anything could be a muse for good material.
Melody may have dubbed her statistical satires as “silly,” but when her yellow-pad doodles started gaining positive responses from friends, she decided to take it online. “I decided to make a blog to share them with other people just because,” she says.
Even though most of her doodles emerge from personal experiences, readers can’t help but feel a shared involvement. “It amuses me when other people comment that they agree or can relate to my graphs,” she says. “It’s just fun to see that people share even the smallest of my sentiments.”
It has not been a long run for Ateneo, Graphed, having been created just last August 12. Yet its witty and quirky approach to the trivialities of Ateneo life has caught the attention of people from neighboring universities to the alumni.
As a plan of expanding this personal blog to a more communal outlet, Melody says she accepts suggestions from friends and anyone who has an insight on Ateneo life. She admits that one of the graphs uploaded is from a blockmate. Melody says, “It’s hard to come up with something to post at times especially when I don’t get the chance to doodle due to hell week.”
While her blog might be a source of entertainment or nostalgia, Melody still sees it as a creative outlet. “I’m all for self-expression,” she says. “But it also doesn’t hurt to hear people saying nice things about my silly outputs.”
Ron Cruz
For Ron Cruz, becoming a film otaku (addict) started with the fellowship of elves, men, hobbits, and dwarves. “Because of The Lord of the Rings, my love for film really grew,” says the professor of Comparative Anatomy and Intact facilitator. “I had an emotional investment. I’m even thinking about taking masters on film.”
His blog Film-otaku was born in 2001, after the first installment of the trilogy came out. “I wanted it (LOTR) to win so badly so I thought [I] might as well start joining the predictions game—like how many Oscar nominations it’s going to get if it’s going to win,” says Ron.
Despite having been in the Oscar-prediction game for only a few years and with no formal film background to boot, Ron has quite a good batting average. Film-otaku has been listed in OscarCentral.com as 23rd among over 80 prognosticators for the 79th Academy Awards.
While Ron does not consider himself a critic, his secret lies in his acquired taste for films. “You have to have knowledge of what’s going to come out for the entire year,” he says. “You won’t really go far unless you have a working knowledge of the history of the Oscars.”
A former Cinemanila Film Festival coordinator, and now a nominee for the Philippine Blog Awards, the list just goes on when it comes to his thriving film credentials. But his plans go beyond fame and recognition. Making their way into his blogs are write-ups on classic Filipino films. “My main goal in that particular feature is to raise the awareness of people on local films because a lot of these have been neglected,” says Ron.
Yet at the end of the day, it still all boils down to the love for the ingrained hobby. “It’s just for the love of it [film], definitely,” he says. “There’s something really fun about predicting the Oscars even though I don’t get anything from it.”
Collegibles Team
Similar to the blog Good Job God, Collegibles features ‘hot’ Ateneans but with a twist—the main qualifier for ‘collegibility’ is their being single.
Created at the beginning of the semester as a project for a Computer Science class, Collegibles involves an almost Gossip Girl approach to scouting collegibles. “We would sit at the cafeteria and spot-and-wait for people,” says Denise Santos, a member of the Collegibles team. “When our friends found out, they started suggesting. Now we haven’t done interviews for a while, because we have stock.”
A joint effort along with the other four members Brian del Rosario, Crystal Callano, Krstyle Lim, and Irma Sy, Denise says the blog will only be kept until October. Their ultimate goal is to get the most number of hits at the end of the project’s time frame. “We know Good Job God was able to get, 23,000 or 27,000,” she says. “We want to reach at least 20,000.”
So far, Collegibles has mostly been featuring people they know, but they’ve gotten several requests. “We feature the more hyped-up ones first,” Denise says. “We’re going to try and entertain everyone, but it’s difficult because the stock is starting to pile up.”
They also try to strike a balance between their features when it comes to gender, keeping an equal number of boys and girls given that they are not rejected by their potential scouts.
While other sites generally give due recognition to Ateneo’s established campus crushes, Collegibles aims to shed some light on new faces that can contend with the best of them. Even with conflicting schedules, the team makes sure to find time to spot potential candidates for the blog.
As far as their 9,500 (and counting) hits are concerned, it hasn’t felt like work for them. They even exceed the number of required number of entries per week. “It’s actually fulfilling!” says Denise, “especially when we find out that people have fun reading it.”
