Yesterday the subject of Friendster accounts came up when Ynna (now called Tsang Ynna as a sign of respect 😛 ) mentioned that our nearly troglodyte manager opened up an account. The opening of the account itself is a milestone in itself.

When I opened up my gmail account, I saw again some notification from Friendster. My friends, or whom would like to still call me a friend, know that I rarely login to my Friendster account. It was an account that I opened _just because_ and maintains because my wife tells me too. I don’t request for friends but do approve requests that come into my account so my friend count is still way down. I don’t mind, which is why I didn’t open a myspace account since maintaining a single spammer smörgåsbord account is enough.

Occasionally it serves its intended purpose and I get some messages from long lost friends like She , our always-harried college class president. Anyway today I got a message notification from Manny aka spyder aka “si kulot na lapitin ng mga maligno at multo”. I decided to login and see what the message was about and while I was there I decided to do some exploration of what Friendster has to offer since I last looked (maybe a couple of years ago?).

Overall I don’t think my Friendster activity will see any upward surge. I was hoping to update the blog link to point to this blog but I can’t find it anymore. I swear that it had that option before but now I think you can only link blogs from their sister site. No thanks, I am renting this space because I want some degree of control over whatever measly content I am dishing out.

One of the message notifications I got was that a friend has updated her blog. Looking at her account I noticed that she already got married so I got curious and jumped to her profile. Lo and behold, I am denied access because even if I already got her listed as a friend the system does not recognize the link. Crap.

In Friendster’s defense, they have made leaps in terms of increasing the security of their site. It is still a spammer’s smörgåsbord but at least they are doing something in making it harder. I just wish the members understand the options and not select the default option.

And another thing I am not sure if I like or hate is the customization part. I visited some friend’s accounts and was greeted by a blaring audio file that I don’t know how to turn off. I thank the Universe for Adblock plus since it showed me the blockable items and I was able to turn off the script that blares the cheesy sound clips. I don’t know if they have audio controls or the customization skins are just too ghastly.

Will I keep on using Friendster? Yes because friends are still using it. But I don’t like the fact that they are forcing people to use their partner services. People should have a choice so I am making mine not to use their partner services. No skin off my nose.

ciao!

Yesterday another kid has the misfortune to have a parent who thinks I will be a good godparent. Carlos Tristan Corpuz, a 7-month old kid, was helpless when he realized that I intend to honor the agreement I had with his father and show-up in his christening.

Carlos makes number seven after Amboy, Gabe, AG, Ian, Io, and Jayda. Hopefully I can be a godparent to him in the full extent of the word and not just in paper. I dislike the latter because I think being a godparent is a heavy burden since a godparent is like a parent who needs to devote 100% commitment and not just during Christmas season. Except for a few, I actually refuse godparent notification if I cannot see the kid in a regular basis. My parents warned me that when my time came to look for godparents for my kid(s) then I will receive karma and also be refused. I just laughed at it and retorted that if they don’t want to be my kid’s godparent then that is perfectly fine because that means they are honest. I am not after having a doting godparent, I want somebody who can straighten out my kid like I would.

The baptism was held in St. Peter the Apostle church in Malate, Manila. Carlos almost had a baptism that I want for my future kid(s): a solemn rite all of his own with no screaming other babies and chatting attendees that I do not know because they came with the other babies being baptized in bulk. The baptismal “chamber” in the church was nice, complete with a marble pedestal where water will be poured on the baby’s head.

What merited a -1 in my book was the officiating priest. He was so haughty and full of it (or Maangas in Filipino street talk) that I was tempted to flaunt my preferred agnosticism on his face to make him aware that his superiority to me is just in his head. I think the priest was feeling special when he asked what Kit and Tetet was asking the “Iglesia ng Diyos” for Carlos. Tetet replied the usual spiel a proud momma would: good health, good upbringing, etc. The priest asked Kit the same question and Kit replied something similar but added through “occasions like this” referring to the baptism. The priest then launched in a “shame on you” tone about his question not being answered and ranted of a spiel about they should be asking the Church to baptize the kid. What a maroon and thick-headed priest, if you cleaned your ears that morning and went down a few steps on your pedestal you would have realized that your preferred answer was given to you albeit from a father’s heart and own words. If you didn’t get your preferred answer then any good facilitator would have coaxed the answer out by providing guiding questions like “do you want the Church to baptize your child and blah blah blah?”. You, err your church, didn’t actually accepted payment from us so you can embarrass us, didn’t you? And attitudes like that is what keeps me away from returning to being a Catholic.

The priest cannot even remember Carlos’ name and he was the only kid being baptized in the rites. Err, Father the kids name is on the sheet of paper you haughtily asked was attached on the receipt and is under your hand resting on the pulpit. Checking it twice to get the name correctly is alright, but did you have to check it everytime you need to say the kid’s name? If Carlos’s name was very unique then probably yes but “Carlos”? sheesh…

Next time somebody asks me to be a godparent, I will first have them verify if the priest allows non-Catholics to stand in the rite. I am officially changing my religion from NPC (non-Practicing Catholic) to Agnostic.

ciao!