Mandaya Moore-Orlis:Blogged and Reviewed

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There are only rare cases wherein you find a read truly interesting because of the honesty. In most cases, when one is totally honest, without a hint of pretensions, they come out, well, unattractively brutal. In Mandaya Moore’s Mandayamoore-orlis, the sub-title alone, “may hyphen na”, has a controversial and conflict-ridden history you can scrounge for in the archive. It was bluntly placed, forthright, brusque, rough on all the angles, but inexplicably appealing.

The page itself, is just another blogspot site, speckled with pictures of familiar characters within the blog life. The entry topic, the pictures, the colors, and amusingly so, even the frequent visitors point to one solid focus… anything of interest. Anything of interest, developed upon seeing the blog home page. The entries are updated regularly, leaving very limited gaps, with posts all about her adventures and misadventures in Davao Oriental.

Living in the city my entire life, all that I have heard from people about the country are stories of vacations. Thus, the first readings are not very easy to relate to. There are certain times you tire of reading the love story, but, on reading the other content, it opens one’s eyes to the beauty of simplicity, a blow by blow aspect of it at that, twisted with a country appeal. These are evident in all entries, from the difficulties of cooking, the recipes of Kulot, and the “pugon” to gas range transition of Light my fire and other related entries; the farcial adventures of Sister DJ and the only available radio station; the local fruit Langka, and coconut storm phenomenon in Move over, coconuter, with matching modeling from Kaye (you tend to develop a certain affinity with her characters).

To write is to create beautiful things, to reveal the infinity of the piece and hide the limitations of the writer. Criticism is translating something in your own impression of things. These impressions may either be as interesting as the judged, or be distorted without being fascinating.

Given the fact the blog may not put us in character, but situates us in the same locale, and presents through simplicity, the simple life, all, to be beautiful, gives me hope that spectators can finally have a different perspective of Mindanao. One that is unbiased, raw, and beautiful.

This is an entry to the
You Got Blogged!
DigitalFilipino.com / MindanaoBloggers.com Review-a-Blog Competition.

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