Salamat Po!

Salamat po…as we say in the Philippines to express our gratitude.

The full, year-long countdown to a day-to-day blogging– exactly a year of picking out unique Filipino experiences-  has been successfully reached!

Yes, indeed thanks to all of you who have clicked, read on and sometimes commented on 365 Great Pinoy Stuff (GPS). Launched on New Year’s Day in 2010, I didn’t expect that this blog would take me to many insights on Filipino customs, traditions, places, food and clothing, to name a few. Writing or preparing this blog was similar to taking a panoramic flight that brought this blogger to forests, lakes, books, churches, and more importantly, prompt me to re-consider visiting or re-visiting these unique Filipino stuff and experiences.

Some friends ask why not include Filipino figures or celebrities or the Filipino himself. This is exactly the premise of this blog—to once and for all take a step away from the maker or the Filipino and see how his or her nature is reflected, however obliquely, in the environment, traditions, situations he finds himself in or  the objects around him.

And equally interesting are the comments from blog visitors. Thanks to the initial circle of friends who clicked on the first week entries, the blog’s steady stream of visitors slowly moved away in concentric circles to other web surfers from the wide Web world. Comments came not only from the Philippines, but from as far as China, Canada, the US, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Argentina and Iran to name a few.

At one point this blog was registering more than 1,600 hits a day, with the daily visitors climbing to a steady 600 to 700 hits by mid-2010!  A stunning record for me as I did not expect a steady rise in visitors stats.

It has been said that Filipinos are gregarious by nature, but I didn’t realise when creating this blog on New Year’s Eve in 2009 that students would ask me for homework advice and information, housewives would inquire for recipes, non-Filipinos would email and ask about tourist sites and some even automatically presumed that I write from the Philippines. Some  whacky emails would even inquire about street directions or how to acquire city hall permits. Having a full-time job, no way did I assume in January 1, 2010 that 365 GPS would become a sort of ‘listening post.’  Holland, where I blog from,  is 3,000 kilometers way from Manila but the Internet has certainly a way of closing far distances to a mere mouse-click away.

So thanks to Pinoy Transplant, the Three Donna’s (two in Holland, one in the US), Steve, Jen Uy, Jenny, Mavic, Luisa, and to the countless many others who have followed the daily posts. Without you readers, the blog would have become just another sigh in cyberspace.

There is certainly something to look forward to in the Philippines, notwithstanding the apathy of our appointed officials, the political mess and assorted woes that continue to assail the average Pinoy up to this day. I particularly and expressly picked the GPS acronym as it implies a kinship to that very ‘technie’ term GPS or Global Positioning System. It is an intriguing thought that perhaps some of our native and ‘local’ stuff betrays our position in the wider scheme of things.

The 365 Pinoy stuff in this blog, however humble or mundane some of them may be, may yet contain the kernel and truth that indeed it is not the man that counts but what he creates, shares and experiences which binds him to many other countless places and lives.

Mabuhay ang Pinoy!

– By Joel Vega