Love in the time of blogging, Pinoy-style

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

WHAT if you get a famous British writer, say, Neil Gaiman, to help you propose to your girlfriend during a book-signing event. Wouldn’t that be cool?

A Filipino blogger tried and succeeded.

The story begins with Jason Drilon, a Filipino writer for a local advertising agency who had been blogging for close to five years. Egged on by his friends to make his proposal “creative,” he decided to drop Gaiman an e-mail through his popular blog. It was, as he recalled it, suntok sa buwan, a Filipino phrase which roughly means he had his fingers crossed when he sent a long e-mail to the famous British author.

Narrating his whole experience on a Multiply blog for the world to see, Drilon (and fiancée Maui Reyes) has somehow touched Gaiman himself who in turn blogged about it.

In the blog post “So you know,” Gaiman wrote, “You want to know what my favorite bit of the trip to the Philippines was. It was this,” referring to the individual blog entries of
Maui.

“I wanted this proposal to be something a bit out-of-the-ordinary (understatement) and particularly relevant to Maui’s and my life. We’re both Neil geeks (having lined up for hours at the Fully Booked event(s) last 2005) and are big, big fans of his work. That and I was under pressure from friends to make it a ‘creative’ proposal. But this
wouldn’t have been possible without Neil’s blog and ‘Ask Neil’ section,” Drilon said, when asked how blogging and the Internet played a part in his own love story.

“I mean, I would have exhausted all resources to contact him if there wasn’t any Internet, and even with the Internet, I was pretty sure that Neil wouldn’t have answered me anyway. We have a term, “suntok sa
buwan” — ayun, that was it. I just sent the e-mail and hoped somebody on the other side would pick it up. And when his assistant replied with Neil’s answer, well — you can say that it put a huge smile on my face. It really showed that Neil, while a superstar, still takes time out to answer and establish good relations with his fans. Neil rocks. I can’t say that enough,” Drilon added.

After Gaiman blogged about his extraordinary proposal, Drilon said his blog traffic increased (so did Maui’s, which accumulated a lot of comments).

“It was like a comment bomb,” he added, as he didn’t expect his entry to generate overwhelming “web publicity.”

Asked how blogging played a role in their love story, Reyes said it helped share their story with other people. “It doesn’t really affect much of our relationship as a couple. My boyfriend just proposed marriage like every other husband did — only ours was made more ‘public’ because of the Web,” she said.

A blogger since 2002, Reyes said she was overwhelmed when Gaiman wrote on her book, “Will you marry Jason?”

“The first thing that popped into my head was, ‘How do you know my boyfriend’s name?’ The second was just ‘Omygawd Neil Gaiman is in front of me, omygawd.’ Neil had to force me to open the book in order to read and process it.

“I was only looking forward to saying hi to Neil Gaiman and giving him a peck on the cheek. The proposal was totally unexpected. I call it, ‘How Jason ruined my Neil Gaiman moment.’ [Only] after we left the venue did I remember that my favorite author was right in front of me, and that he only signed one book when we brought two!” she added.

Reyes blogs about anything, but when asked about her thoughts about it, she replied: “It’s a wonderful double-edged sword. Blogging was started by individuals who were not afraid to express their views and opinions,
which made people turn to them for information that they believed the media possibly sugar-coated. Oh, and bloggers should keep in mind that whatever they publish online is fair game. I’ve had my fair share of embarrassing moments online,” she said.

Drilon, for his part, blogs about his hobbies like diving and adventure racing. He also posts photos of his dives in his Multiply account.

“DiveAbout was a repository for my underwater pictures, travel snaps and restaurant reviews,” he said.

“I use blogging as another way to exercise my writing skills. As Maui and I are both advertising writers, we’re more or less confined to keeping our writing short and sweet. For TV commercials, we [have] to write stories that rarely go past 30 seconds, and for print ads, it almost always is capped off at five sentences. So you could say blogging is our catharsis, a venue to rant, rave and share stuff. Anything we experience, discover and pick up,” he said.

Asked if they intend to blog about their wedding, and perhaps invite Gaiman to witness it, Drilon replied, “Though we’re far from planning our wedding, yes, we (at least I) plan to blog (though selectively) about it. I think it would be a good thing as well since not all our friends will be able to attend. At least they can live vicariously
through our blogs. Hah! More so if Neil actually attends. But that’s another story altogether, right?”

Reyes, on the other hand, said Gaiman is definitely invited.

“Although I think I’ll have more luck stopping global warming than have him show up! Maybe if I win the lottery, I can afford his talent fee,” she said.

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