Leyte Blog Network - Everything and anything about the southern Philippine province of Leyte

Don't be alarmed! The MMOsh Pit is my latest blog and its joining the Leyte Blog Network comes at a very critical time as my contract with international blog network b5media has just expired.

Now armed with the free time I didn't have while I was writing for b5media's MMOtaku blog and a company that specializes in search engine optimization, I am confident that I would be able to bring Leyte Blog Network and all its attached blogs to new heights.



You may be asking what The MMOsh Pit is all about and what it has to do with Leyte. The answer to the first question lies in my "About Us" entry for the new blog:

My name is Joel Tan. Many of you probably know me from MMOtaku, a blog I handled for b5media's EveryJoe for almost three years, from the last quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2010. Recently, I've decided to write for my own blog, The MMOsh Pit, that focuses on very much the same theme of my former network-based blog—massively multiplayer online games.

Why call it The MMOsh Pit? Because MMOGs and the virtual worlds that they spawn are like concerts where some people are at the fringes, content in listening to the music from afar and apart from everyone else, while others are drawn to the center, in the mosh pit where the real action happens.

In my latest posting on the blog Pinoy Journeylist, I talk about my struggle with insomnia and what I do to either cope with it or ride it out. Are you also experiencing insomnia? What do you do whenever you find yourself rolling around on the bed for hours on end?

The posting entitled Sleepless In Leyte enumerates the different ways a person can alleviate the stress of sleeplessness or simply stay awake and away from boredom until exhaustion claims him or her.

So what does a regular Joe/Juan do on nights when he can't sleep? Here's a lit of activities that I engage in whenever I can't seem to pull ol' Morpheus down to earth ...

If you've visited this blog before, I'm sure you are now noticing the sudden change in its theme. The transformation, from Falcon Hive's Blogger adaptation of the Wordpress theme Magasin Cuatro to the Monezine Blogger Template designed by Jinsona Design and coded by CahayaBiru, is actually still ongoing as I make adjustments to the new theme to accommodate the old content.

The new theme, otherwise known as Zinmag Monezine, is a brown stylist template suitable for the money-making blog niche. Equipped with 728-pixel width ad spaces, Monezine supposedly can increase earning potential of any blogger blog—not that I have purely selfish intention of just earning from Leyte Blog Network.

As everyone in the blogosphere, Philippine or otherwise, know, content is king when it comes to drawing web surfers to your blog and keep them coming back.

This doesn't mean, however, that other aspects of blogging should be ignored. This is where the change in theme of Leyte Blog Network comes in. In my eyes, blog design plays a critical role in capturing a blog's intended audience. I'm sure no one wants to look at a blog or website devoid of design or images.

If you want to try out the theme for yourself, on your blog, here's the download link to Zinmag Monezine.

I've been having this daily discussions with my mother-in-law, a head teacher at the Sagkahan National High School in Tacloban City, about the readiness of Leyte province for the May 2010 automated elections in the Philippines, and the conclusion is almost always the same—that we will just have to make do with whatever we have.

Being a teacher, dear old MommyLa, known to friends and family as Imelda, Mel or Imee, she is bound by law to help administer elections in this little tropical country. This is the reason why I keep asking her about the upcoming elections. We have an election insider in the family!

Like I told her in one of our "sessions," Leyte would probably end up having partial automation for the elections, with Tacloban City getting full automation. True enough, when I loaded several local news websites this morning, the headlines pointed to the fact that Leyte is one of provinces that doesn't have reliable cellular phone signal through which election returns will be transmitted.



Here are the headlines and appropriate links:

30% of RP has no reliable cellphone signal—Comelec

6 provinces lack telecom facilities - Comelec

Unwired for electronic election

No CP sites? No problem, says Comelec

Although the Commission on Elections has already clarified that the lack of telecommunications facilities in some Philippine provinces, including Leyte, would not be a problem for automation, the specter of a possible failure of elections still looms.

Should we take the chance or go back to the way things were? Share you thoughts.

[Image: USAID]

If your answer to the above question is "Yes," you should not take the first symptom of infection for granted, says the blog Ceskypooh's World.

Here's an excerpt from the latest posting on Ceskypooh's World:

When we checked Cesky's temperature with our trusty mercury thermometer, we found out that her fever wasn't common as it had already hit 40 degrees Celsius. Adding to our worry was the fact that she had been coughing the entire morning and that she claimed she felt pain in her head.

Now here's a bit of news that Leyteños can be proud of: Two of the Top 10 passers of the November 2009 licensure examination for nurses are from Region 8, one of whom is from Dulag, Leyte.

Mary Kristine Teraza Labanta of Dulag, Leyte, a graduate of St. Scholastica's College - Tacloban, placed 10th in the nursing board exams, while Samareño Dickson Arasa Laude of Talolora placed 3rd.

According to Dr. Antonio Lim, dean of the St. Scholastica's College in Tacloban, the institution's passing rate for the nursing licensure examinations is 96 percent.

St. Scholastica's College may have produced topnotchers but Remedios Trinidad Romualdez Medical Foundation College of Nursing probably produced more passers.

RTR College Dean Cora Gasco said 236 of the 243 nursing board exam takers from the college passed. That's a 97.12-percent passing rate.

"This is already a big honor to our school, as only seven did not make it," Gasco told the Philippine Information Agency.

If you want to check out the rest of the story, hie off to the PIA website.

[Image: Breckenridge ISD Nurses Space]

The blog Pinoy Journeylist has just been updated. The latest posting tackles, albeit superficially, the topic of social networking and its importance to websites and blogs in today's world.

Here's an excerpt from the blog post:

I have discovered that most news sites that carry information about Leyte, even those owned and managed by large media organizations or the Philippine government, do not present ways on how to share content. What gives?

In today's fast-paced, information-driven world, websites and blogs should be equipped with social bookmarking tools, like AddThis and delicious, if they are to compete for the people's attention. Sure, some content may be up for sale, but this shouldn't be a hindrance. Instead, it should be viewed as the ultimate marketing tool for this day and age.