I was waiting for rich at the UP Ayala Technohub, eating my sukiyaki (which is the only thing I can eat right now because I accidentally bit my tongue) when I got a little creative with the vegetables.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to fixing/marketing websites to rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. This is often done with link-building (creating links from other respected websites to your site) but code has a specific role to play in SEO.

SEO is something I found is quite ignored in the local scene of websites (specially in college, true the target is college students but alumni as well and most cant even find their way to the sites people publish).

I am absolutely mindblown about all the stuff I didn’t know before (and all the bad code habits I learned in college) just shows you that experiences really is the best teacher.

I’ve been working on making logos for myself and basically my web presence. I’m gonna dump flavor of life sooner or later and get a self named domain soon. Their all still a work in progress, I tried to play around with the MARK name hahaha.

Latest courtroom sketch Lindsey Lohan with a scarf

Lindsey being taken into custody

Another pic of lindsey being arrested

I find the courtroom sketches of her trial really really good. It’s stylized but still has a realistic feel as well as the movement within the sketches

It’s a weird obsession but I’m currently scouring the net for more courtroom sketches

As usual we had our yearly Visita Iglesia, though this time we started earlier as my old grandmother accompanied us this year. We returned to our regularly visited parishes (instead of traveling around manila looking for old churches) to conserve on gasoline as well as not to strain my grandmother’s legs.

Visita Iglesia is a catholic tradition that stemmed from pilgrims who visited the seven pilgrim churches of rome for penance during Maundy Thursday.

I wasn’t able to take a lot of shot’s as we we’re trying to get back home earlier this year but I was able to take a snap shot of the Church of the Gesu from my Iphone. Unfortunately the cross got chopped on at the end.

The Church of the Gesu, Ateneo de Manila University

The Church of the Gesu is one of the church’s I really really like going to during Visita Iglesia. This year the presentation of the blessed sacrifice was simpler than other year’s but the screen showing Mel Gibson’s The Passion was still playing on the side. I haven’t really been back at the Gesu since I graduated (and I’ve rarely visited the Ateneo these last few months) so it was a nice treat to come back.

When I first received my bank account (the account my mom created for me when I was a kid) when I was 18, I was fresh from high school and was probably the stupidest money spenders in the world. It came to a point where during my sophomore year I had probably depleted 70% of my mom’s original investment in that fund and had deposited less than PHP 3000 (69.42 USD) of my own money in that account.

Now that I have a full-time job (besides freelancing) I seriously didn’t want to fall into the same spending habits and actually learn to manage my finances properly.

For many fresh grads and young adults, managing money isn’t such a large priority as most of us can still rely on our parents (this is unless your like me with a dad pressuring you to start paying bills on your first pay check). So we spend money without really much thought.

I wouldn’t call myself a financial guru, but I found these tips I learned to be invaluable after getting my first paycheck.

1. Sit down and Plan your Finances

One of the best but over used cliche’s is “A failure to plan is a plan for failure”. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes young people make with their money including myself when I first got a plastic atm card in my hand. Yes you may think that you are “young” and you don’t need to plan things out yet or that your seriously over planning things but seriously your not.

A failure to plan is a plan for failure

I may have actually overdone this quite a bit as before I started going to job interviews I already made a Numbers spreadsheet and pie chart to plan based on possible monthly salaries but this has somehow given me a guideline to what I can and can’t do (for now).

2. Save first spend later

Saving money should be the first thing to come to one’s mind, not spending it (not even spending it for bills). Remember spending can always be controlled or adjusted (you can always cut back on eating out, choosing Mcdonalds or Jolibee instead of Chelsea or Spirals, using the car, buying inexplainably expensive coffee that just flames evil corporate giants’ pockets). Saving should be treated as a commitment rather than a chore as well, it isn’t really how much you save per month but remembering to actually save every month.

One of the best financial advice I got was from my mom. A lot of people think that saving should be done after spending. You’d get your paycheck, pay your bills, have some fun, then save the left overs. Saving shouldn’t be a “leftover”. The proper way to save is to actually save first, pay your bills then have fun with the left overs (have priorities ). This is also why it’s quite important to plan things ahead so you know how much to save.

Most analyst say you should save at least 10% of your salary. In the case here in the Philippines salaries usually come once a month or twice a month but either way 10% of that is a good target of saving. To be more concrete here is an example.

If you’re a fresh graduate, earning normally around PHP 15000 (almost 350 USD a month) 10% of that would be 1500. If you save 1500 every single month in a year your savings would have increased to 18000 in a short 5 years you would now have a total savings of 90000. This is not even including interest and possible salary increases.

Which leads to a second tip my mom gave me which applies mostly to Filipinos. If you are having trouble committing to saving, BPI has the solution just for you. BPI has what you call automatic Save-up accounts. These are accounts that automatically gets money from your main account and places it in your Save-up account on a specified interval. This way you will never really “forget” to save money as BPI has already done it for you. This is great if you’re finding it hard to control spending.

3. Create a budget

Welcome to the real world my friend and in the real world you won’t always have an unlimited source of income to fund your daily Omakase lunches. When your starting out learn to stick to a budget you can compare this as to having a mission and vision statement for a company, it helps you know what you can and cannot do.

Your budget doesn’t have to stay the same forever, but ten years from now when you find you and your family have more and more expenses you’ll be thankful you chose to drink that bottled water over the Starbucks frappucino years before.

4. It is never too early to start saving for retirement

One of the worst things you can do to your children is give them the financial burden of taking care of your debts and medical bills when your old and retired. Think about it, instead of making careers, saving the world and making their own families their worried about your liver-spotted ass not falling from the stairs.

One of the best reasons to start saving for retirement early is because the more time you have to save the less you have to initially invest (as compound interest will do its work). If you started saving at 20 or 25 saving 10% now is quite small but from the example above (without even factoring in interest) if you save PHP1500 per month = 18000 per year at age 65 you would have 720000, if you started at 35 you would have less amount of time to spend saving up that money.

5. Talk to your mom not your dad

It’s weird advice to be giving but in my case it’s paying off a lot. This is probably because of traditional gender roles but generally your mom is the manager of the household and therefore also the financial planner and manager of your household budget. Your dad may bring home the bacon but it’s your mom who decides what to spend it on . Your dad may know about all the corporate who-how but when it comes to personal finance your mom has all the experience you can think of.

In my case some of the financial advice I’ve gotten has been from my mom everything from learning to save (as seen from above) to learning about BPI save-up accounts to using the internet for online banking and bills payment (while my dad still insists on going to the Bank, the Phone company and the electric company separately).

It’s actually kind of funny cause when I first asked my mom about saving she taught me about the 10% rule, save-up accounts and looking out for investments while when I asked my dad (who studied accountancy and business administration) said “just spend for what you need and save what’s left”.

… yeap and just last week I had to pay for his dog’s dogfood.

Interestingly no real account of cyber bullying has ever made headlines in the Philippines yet (this is probably because of the socio-economic reasons as majority of the nation’s population accesses the internet through Internet-Cafes). Though there is no precedence, Mirriam isn’t really taking any chances with there are many reports of children committing suicide in other countries due to cyber bullying.

There might not be any real accounted precedence for this but I can attest that it has happened to me before, I just probably have thicker digital-skin than other people but then again I’ve never experienced getting videos of my personal-sexual-relations getting leaked online or having the entire 4chan community flame me.

The quest for equality among persons and the advancement of human rights start from basic education, where children learn the values of cura personalis [the Jesuit principle of caring for the whole person] and being men and women for others from their teachers and apply what they’ve learned to their classmates and friends,- Sen. Mirriam Santiago

Though it doesn’t seem like a big deal right now but with the latest trends in technology, children will only get more and more exposed to the internet and will use it more and more making this more and more probable in the country.

“Jim Paredes (singer, songwriter) attacked me on twitter, Aiza Seguerra, Agot Isidro (recording artist and actress), Lea Salonga (broadway star, singer and tony award winner), Mylene Dizon (Model, Actress), Bianca Gonzales (TV host and model), Tuesday Vargas (singer and actress), what have you done? What have you given to help the Filipino Masses? Did you give millions to Bantay Bata?”

He even goes on to ridicule Aiza Seguerra’s sexuality by saying “kaw magpakalalaki ka” (be a man) as well as Agot Isidro and Tuesday Vargas… Interestingly he couldn’t say anything about Jim Paredes and Lea Salonga

I don’t need to really say much as a lot has already been said about the issue one just needs to search google but I am joining the thousands of bloggers who’ve requested and continuously asked the companies who sponsor and support WIllie Revillame to stop supporting this continuous cycle of stupidity. In terms of corporate social responsibility and integrity, would you really want your company to be connected with a walking-time-bomb of a man who has no talent for singing yet continuous to flush his crap through tv and radio and is evidently disrespectful to women (even his own co-host).

True Willie Revillame is a generous man, no he is not a bad/ “evil” man he is just a stupid man. I think one can confirm this by his statement to call Senators and Congressmen to judge him, oh wait in this country that kind of stupidity is the norm.

Frameworks (whether CSS or something like a WordPress Theme framework) is basically a small set of files/ functions that have been created with general classes and functions to make development faster. How does it do this? By calling on the pre-made theme’s functions or classes there is no need for you to recode things again and again.

It’s only now that my financial future actually depends on the speed I get things online that I have actually started exploring frameworks, partially because my boss required I use a specific one which was SEO optimized. I’ve been using the 960 grid system for quite a while but I’ve never really used it’s css framework till recently as well. They have made my life so much easier/faster in terms of coding layouts and themes to a point that I don’t think I wanna code another wordpress template without a frame work!

The 960 grid system just one of the many css frameworks out there

Problems with using frameworks

Frameworks do have their problems however. Frameworks because they are general may contain classes and functions that you may not need however I don’t find this completely problematic. With the current trends of higher internet speeds and bigger and better hard ware, sizes are getting smaller/ faster.

Some designers and developers see frameworks as cheating or the lazy man’s way out but for me seriously, with all the deadlines you take whatever help you get. One of the best things I learned in college was learning how we filipinos call “dumiskarte” or simply finding ways because in the end time is money (or back in college time was was your college degree). There are so many ways to make your life easier so why not use it.

I spent 16 years of my life in an jesuit academic institution. Yes, people during graduation say “after 4 years”, I say “after 16 years”. 16 years in the Ateneo have passed and I (for the time being) am no longer a student but an active member of the workforce.

I still have a lot of school things to purge from my room and my laptop which I don’t know when I’ll be able to do (when I’m not working, I’m relaxing and I’m don’t want to waste relax time). For now, this might be the last post in the “school” category

It’s freakishly fascinating how fast 16 years came by, I can still somehow vaguely remember my first prep level day. Its quite amazing how much has changed

Thank you so much Ateneo you we’re fun while it lasted

-Mark Lester C. Lacsamana
BS Communication Technology Management
Minor in Japanese Studies