You got to love Smorgasbord of Random Thoughts. It is the blog of Cheryl Daytec Yangot who, if you remember, caught our attention way back at the time when we were just making our first steps in the blogosphere (being encouraged by more established bloggers like Miskina Ano Naisip which I thought was a blog on tennis player Anastasia Myskina, Kayni’s Meanderings, and Gandang Igorota). Anyway, as we were saying, Cheryl caught our (and certainly the nation’s) attention because of her crucial role in exposing the board exam nursing scandal which you can read in our post here.
It’s good that Cheryl now has a blog because we are sure she will be adding valuable insights to our corner of the blogosphere. As we’ve said in the past, the more Igorot/iCordillera bloggers there are, the better it will be for us in terms of increasing our visibility as a people, in correcting the negative stereotypes held by most people about us, in articulating the many concerns that we face, at marami pang ibang bentahe.
Smorgasbord is, for the most part, a poetry blog so Cheryl joins the ranks of Jocelyn Noe and L. Angeleo Padua who publish their poems online for us to read. Yay!
I haven’t read all of Cheryl’s poems yet but I really like the ones I’ve read so far like Love Has a Hand and Invisible II. Here’s a paragraph from Invisible II so you won’t think that I’m just raving for nothing:
We were invisible. They did not see us
when they came with their bulldozers
and made plains of our mountains, our
home and refuge for millions of years
In the sacrosanct name of development,
they erected chateaus for the bourgeois
We looked at our home–
It
was
gone.
If that is not an excellent poem, I don’t know what is. Cheryl’s poems actually reminds me of the prose of Inquirer columnist Conrad de Quiros. I love reading Conrado’s column because it is always beautifully written. I have to admit though that I sometimes avoid said column because it usually makes me sad and mad.
Yup, de Quiros makes me sad and mad (not at him of course) because he has a knack for capturing our tragedy as a nation and our failures as a people and I sometimes don’t want to be reminded of these. But even if I actively try to not read de Quiros, his writing is just too good to miss so I do always end up reading him. And really we can’t run away from the tragic truth, which he often writes about, can we?
So Cheryl’s poems have this “Quiroesque” quality to them: they can be depressing because they speak the truth but they are too good to miss. So if you are in the mood for reading excellent poems about Igorots then visit Cheryl’s blog here. You might get sad a little bit as I was when I was reading them but the poems are good food for the mind and soul.
RELATED POST: In the News: Cheryl Daytec Yangot. PHOTO CREDIT: gerryriskin.com.
maganda talaga mga tula. congrats to cheryl
I’ve actually met Manang Cheryl. Hello, Manang! hehe. I’ll check out her blog.
“Established” ba ako? hehe.
Bill, thanks a lot. Conrado de Quiros is one of my favorite writers. I am humbled by your comparison.
I credit you for giving me the final push to create my blog. Yours remains tops. I opted to create one different and not duplicate or pattern it after yours because only you can do it! I will remain FTB’s visitor.
BTW, I reproduced your post on my blog in my blog. The nice words put in by someone of your stature in the blogosphere is something I will cherish for posterity, among other reasons.
Wil, hello. Where did we meet? I know several Wil’s. Email me at chytdaytec@gmail.com. Please do visit my blog and share.
Anonymous, thanks. Is that your real name? 🙂
Bill, I just love your blog. It reconnected me to a relative.
Wil emailed me. I met him, I suppose, during that time when he came to the Philippines and he experienced being set up with someone (as he related in his blog) but the fireworks just didn’t “fire.” So he went back to the US empty-handed. In the Kankanaey dialect, we say he was “nasaew.”
I told him that if his blog inspired From the Boondocks, then he is my allapo in blogosphere.
So we are a happy family. Let us have a family reunion one time.
Hi Anon,
Told you 🙂 Thanks.
Hi Wil,
Yup, you are. Thanks.
Hi Chyt,
You’re welcome. And thanks for the kind words too :-).
Aha, relative pala kayo ni Wil ha! Ya, it was fun reading his blog about being set up. We have a chance to set him up again when he comes home towards the end of the year hehe. He and the others really helped this blog because they kept commenting kaya siyempre inspired naman tayo to keep on blogging. A reunion/get together would be nice 🙂 Thanks.
Bill, Wil is my husband’s second cousin. His mom and my mom-in-law are first cousins. They are a very close-knit family.
Sapay koma ta maka-anap siya as babassang asnan blog mo. Good material iman na.
Speaking of how sipag Wil et al had been reacting to your posts, maganda kasi format ng blog mo. You deal with everyday issues that everyone can identify with. Kumbaga sa movie, rated GP ang FTB.
I did not even realize your blog is relatively new. I thought it has always been around with the volume of comments your posts generate. How it has tremendously grown in viewership speaks of its popularity and relevance. It is already an Igorot institution. In the future, you should consider reducing (or inflating?) FTB issues into a book. May Part I, Part II pa.
Hi Chyt,
Worth publishing ba? I’m not so sure hehe. Baka kawawa pang mga puno ang mappuputol for a book that no one will read 🙂 Thanks.