Mid-afternoon Snack with the LunchBreakBlogger

LunchBreakBlogger is not the only blogger I know in real life. I know three others, two who were former classmates in college and one who was a former officemate. One of these three bloggers is famous in the Philippine blogosphere. As a freelancer with lesser contact with people on a daily basis than in a typical office setting, this meetup was seriously meaningful to me.

One fine sunny day, a blogger named Jhong, the LunchBreakBlogger, left me a Facebook comment, asking to meet me. He’s coming up to Baguio and wanted to meet me in person. Alright, I said. I hope this meetup pushes through but I did not take this one too seriously. I had been through dozens of planned meetups with other bloggers that never happened.

Frankly, I’ve never been to any of his blogs but he’s one of the bloggers who had been regularly commenting on my Facebook posts at one point or another.

This month of December marks my second year in blogging, and so far I had never been to blogging events which were often held in Manila. Although Manila is just 5 hours away by midnight bus trip and full 8 hours on a daytime bus trip, for various important reasons I just could not easily drop off things here. I am usually contented and happy to watch notable blogger events via online live streams.

During those two years I met a lot of blogging friends online. There are a few who are not blogging anymore but have kept in touch as friends in social networks. Some of them had been witnesses to the transition of this blog from that little blogspot.com domain to custom domain in the blogger platform, then from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress.

But this time, I met this gentleman for real. He’s a tall burly good-looking man in his early 30′s.We hadn’t planned about the meetup but we met anyway. I had him waiting for 30 minutes after the agreed time but I guess he understood what Filipino time is. I worried about what to wear and how I’d look like for the first impression. Shucks! I didn’t have my hair and nails done this time! I decided to meet him dressed up like any other typical Baguio local here (one of the great things here in Baguio is that you can just wear anything without worrying much about what other people think) – and yes, I was consciously aware that I’d get myself a picture published in this blog and on this guy’s blog. I happened to be with my kid who’s enjoying a one-day school vacation so I had to bring her along.

I eventually learned along from the conversation that this guy happened to be the IT manager of one of those famous hair salon franchises in the country, and at same time, manages an internet cafe business.

That’s me, my kid and LunchBreakBlogger (the image stolen from his blog without permission, because I like what he did with the picture than the raw images he sent me, hehehe)! Anyway, he got me featured on his blog a few days after we met. He was supposed to carry an interview script which he forgot in his hotel room, so I answered the questions via email.

I’ve deliberately disabled comments in this post. Please visit his post titled The Lunch Break Blogger meets The Lady Programmer, read the interesting interview and join in the comment conversation.

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