nina fuentes

Dear PR Person who sent over the shampoo + conditioner and whitening lotion + candy pink umbrella:

Thank you for sending me these goodies. It flatters my deflated ego that in some universe, I still matter.

Unfortunately, your package arrived just days after I left for a 2-week trip, and just a week after a balikbayan box full of groceries arrived from Australia. Among the relief goods my sisters have thoughtfully sent us was — you got it — several (industrial size) bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

There are now only five of us living in this household, with the four of the most vain in the family leaving the coop earlier this year. My dad is old and his hair is now very thin due to his age. My mother has always sported a short ‘do, same as my sister. My brother has recently shaved his head, while I have decided to keep my hair just up to my shoulder.

Have I mentioned that I also have decided to go organic with the products I’m using on my hair? So while your product may just be the best in the market right now, I’m not exactly willing to go back to that territory because my hair had very little exposure to chemicals for the past 3 months.

As for the whitening lotion… let’s just say I’m not the girliest of the lot. I go to beaches and purposely bake myself under the hot sun. I don’t think I’m the right person to be using or promoting your product. Thank you though for the candy pink brolly, it’s absolutely adorable. I won’t be using it when it’s hot out though, as the card suggested, because I think it’s just too darn silly (even for me) to be walking around during the hottest time of the day under a clear umbrella. But rest assured, it will be getting a lot of mileage when I get to venture out in the rain.

Lots of love,

Nina

P.S. My main blog focuses on travel. It’s hard enough for me to write about non-travel essentials without having this additional pressure to write about your product which you so graciously (and unconsciously) shoved into my face. I honestly do not know what to do with them. What do I do with these beauty products? Is it ethical to give them away without writing about it or is that considered bad form? Should I return them to sender? There wasn’t even any clue in the package who sent it, apart from a name and mobile number in the parcel’s address sticker. I shall be sending a SMS soon, and I hope I get my answers.

P.P.S. PR Person who regularly sends me bottles of olive oil, I really really appreciate the gesture! I was thrilled when I first got them because it was the brand that I always buy, as was the canned mushroom. I’m sorry that it’s taking me a while to write about it, but you’ve been so nice to keep sending them to me even if I’ve been such a bad, negligent blogger. Rest assured that I have cooked plenty of pastas and Macanese seafood rice with it. I do have a (rather neglected) food blog and a hearty (definitely not neglected) appetite after all.

Sometimes when we’re alone, we come across something that stops us in our tracks: a poster that raises your eyebrow, a mug with a funny quote that’s perfect for your bestfriend, or a used condom right in the middle of the street. There’s that feeling of wanting to share this with someone.

Thirty years ago, you’d either wait until you see whoever you want to share it to, or wait until you find a phone.

Twenty years ago, you had the option to send a terse message via a pager.

Ten years ago, you were able to send it instantly from your mobile.

Now, with a couple of taps and clicks, you can send it for all the world to read, see, or even hear.

The way we disseminate information now is almost instantenous and can reach a much wider audience. The question now is — do people really want to know about it?

“Hi, I’m Nina. My passions are travel, dolls and little boys.”

That’s how I introduced myself at the Blog and Soul Visual Storytelling Workshop last week. The words slipped from my lips nonchalantly, knowing that the people in the room will get my humor. If this was a workshop with strangers, I wouldn’t say what I said then, for fear of being branded a pedophile.

We always strive to make a good first impression, and it has to extended to our blogs. It’s not just through the themes or the super awesometastic domain name you got, but it’s also through the entries we post. I may not be the best blogger, but I am a blog reader. I know which blogs capture my interest with just a few words and gets me clicking and clicking through their archive, poring through each article, wondering why I never discovered it sooner.

That’s the kind of reaction you want to get from the visitors that stumble into your blogs. The way I see it, there are two challenges facing the blogger: getting casual browsers to stay and converting them into readers/subscribers, and; getting these readers/subscribers to keep reading the drivel you put out in your blog.

Through the years, I have subscribed to hundreds of blogs: personal blogs to keep track of friend’s lives, industry blogs to keep abreast of what’s happening and blogs that reflect my interests. The number has dwindled as time passed, mainly due to my changing tastes.

If I look at my current RSS subscription list, I can count the number of blogs whose entries I read from beginning to end. I am still a subscriber, but as time pass, their writing fails to enchant me now. It’s not enough to lure people with your catchy titles and pretty pictures; you have to keep them interested with your words.

Blogging is writing. It’s the well thought off blog posts that gets readers, and it’s your personality that gets them to stay (or leave, depending on how despicable you are).