Dead Links

While doing some research for a project, I dug up old archives of Ang Aming Katha, and it was interesting, to say the least. I had already sent links to the texts to their respective authors, and apparently, old articles from back in college can be just as cringe-worthy, if not more so, than old pictures from back in college. At least with pictures, you can see how thin you looked way back when.

I did get a kick out of the "About the Author" write-ups:

Mika is in her sophomore year as an English Lit major at the Ateneo. She has books as her constant companions, and she has her head in the clouds, but she manages to keep at least one foot on the ground. She runs http://gossamer.effronte.org/ and you can reach her at flowerchild@edsamail.com.ph.

(Mika is now a junior at the Ateneo Law School, after years of singlehandedly making LiveJournal cool for everyone. Everyone wishes she'd blog more often.)


Jill is a 15 year old senior at the PAREF Woodrose in Alabang. She's an member of the the school's debate team and the editorial staff of her paper. She likes ice cream. You can visit her site at http://dragonfly.effronte.org/

(Jill is Mika's classmate at the Ateneo Law School. She's still part of the Ateneo debate team, which unfortunately doesn't allow her to blog much anymore.)


Frances Ellen is an 18-year old BS Computer Science sophomore at the De La Salle University. Visit her site at http://littleboyblue.org/frances.

(Frances has been part of the IT industry for several years now, and though she doesn't write much, she still takes breathtaking photographs.)


Macy is an 18-year old sophomore at the University of the Philippines at Diliman. You can know more about her, including her other works, at http://luminouz.net/blush/

(Macy is deputy managing editor for CandyMag.com, and runs a brilliant site that combines her fifty-five word fiction pieces and her lomographs that is updated daily.)


Stephie, 18, is an AB Comm Arts freshman at the UST. She has a lot of hobbies, including web design, eating, texting, and shopping. She absolutely loves Harry Potter, and she likes Survivor, green tea, good music, movies and weepy books. You can visit her site at http://koolasa.com/joyride/

(Stephie works alongside Macy for Candy Magazine as its art director, after spending several years with BusinessWorld.)


Katrina,16, has the same surname as the current president and is thinking about entering politics someday. She likes reading tragic love stories while nibbling chocolate chip cookies AND listening to alternative music. She does not think she is a very good writer, but she loves writing anyway. Visit http://katrina.imess.net to learn more about her.

(Katrina, unfortunately, still shares the same surname as the current president. After a very colorful college journey as a campus activist and a writer for the Philippine Collegian, she is now part of the UP Diliman Faculty.)


Angela really likes the real Autumn Tree especially when it's shedding its leaves, because she thinks autumn is the most romantic part of the year, even if there isn't any autumn in the Philippines. And romance, for her, is the fuel of life. More of her romance with life (among other things) at http://angela.unjaded.net.

(Angela moved to Singapore a couple of years ago to be part of Yahoo!'s technical team, but she's still active in various web projects.)


It shows how long we've been around; by September, I will have been blogging for ten years now. That is several lifetimes ago.

Earlier, I was chatting with a couple of them about this, and I was thinking that we came up with were not, well, very good, at least it served as a showcase for everyone's talent. The fact that we found each other and became friends and collaborated online, that was pretty special, isn't it?

Or perhaps is it a case of all these years--since when?--I had been seeing the light of dead links, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the Internet. *



* - with apologies to Paz Marquez Benitez.

Labels: blogs, writing

- posted by jaemark @ 3/23/2009 01:56:00 AM