(ANSA) — L`Aquila, April 7 — A 98-year-old grandmother rescued 30 hours after Monday`s earthquake in Abruzzo said she had whiled away the time "crocheting" amid the rubble. Firemen on Tuesday morning found Maria D`Antuoni waiting in her bed surrounded by fallen plaster in the small village of Tempera. D`Antuoni ate some crackers and told television crews "at least let me comb my hair" as they waited for an interview.
"What did I do all this time? I was working, I was crocheting", she said.
kuE' note: as the matter of fact, as long as you know that the time is gold... this actually makes a lot of sense. because gold is rare, if you have a piece of it you should treasure it. time is gold because every second time is passing and you can't go back to change it so you must treasure every second of life.
i'm ready to weigh in on a very controversial topic: is it ethical and appropriate to pay bloggers to post about your products?
some thinkers savaged the idea. but for me, i would prefer to tell marketers to go ahead — if they obey some very clear rules about the right way to do it.
when you look at Sponsored Conversations (paid blog posts/sponsored posts) in context, you can see it fits into a nice spot in the groundswell between PR and advertising. in PR, you try to get a blogger to talk about you, but your chances of success are hit or miss. in advertising, you can be sure to get a placement, but it's not in the blogger's voice. sponsored conversations — paying a blogger to write about your product — fits in the middle — it guarantees a post, and it's in the blogger's voice.
the challenge, of course, is can bloggers do this and retain any credibility?
they can, if — and only if — they obey two rules.
they must disclose that they are being paid.
they must be able to write whatever they want, positive or negative.
these are requirements, since any blogger or marketer who violates them will not be credible. but for marketers to succeed, there are two other suggestions:
pick blogs that match your products.
build a relationship with these bloggers, so you can extend this connection.
the conversation up to this point in the blogosphere has ranged from rational to polemical (words like sluts and whores are being slung about) but you know, bloggers gotta eat, and marketers gotta market. the forces leading to this spot were inevitable. the highest value in the groundswell was supposed to be authenticity, and acknowledging who paid you and then telling the truth is sufficiently authentic, in my opinion. if you are a blogger in the journalistic mode, it's fine for you to take the pledge and not take this money. but there are lots of ways to blog, and many of them will allows for this type of paid but authentic posting. bloggers who do this too much, or sound too much like company shills, will lose their credibility, but there is room to accept payment and retain your soul.
caution: this is a long blog post with stories and quite a number of pics. don't say that i have never warned you! ;)
i received an email from nuffnang about this party when i was in kl for the "blogging & law" conference. then i thought to myself that maybe ok lor... i would gave it a try. so i came out with this simple entry... nothing special also one. i just used some of my old pics, then voila! i got an official invitation to nuffnang music bash 2009 about a week before the party.
since i could bring a guest, so i brought puteri along. don't get the interpretation wrong ya... i know puteri will be sitting for her pmr exams this year. she has never been out of town since the school started this year, but perhaps maybe to the nearest one ipoh for some weddings or something. other than that, she has been concentrating on her studies. she didn't even go anywhere during the last one week school break last month. so this time i was just like giving her a chance to have a short break to ease her mind. we all need it once in a while ourselves don't we?
we reached jalan yap ah shak around 6pm or so. for a person who-has-never-been to maison, i could say that i am very good at reading a map although i glance thru it at the website once only!
we went straight inside after registered ourselves. we didn't expect to see anyone anyway, just hentam-keromo je pi... :)
when i was sitting at a corner with puteri, i realized that i probably saw someone i maybe knew. like a blogger you see. we bloggers read other blogger's blogs and saw each other's pics then became blogger friends. obviously its not that hard actually for us to recognize ourselves when we meet in reality. so that's roughly how its like if you go to any bloggers' meet. its no different with the nuffnang music bash 2009 recently as well. because she is not living in kl anymore; but still make it a point to go to kl once in a while, i guess i am very good at finding the place by just glance thru at the map on maison's website once only. how kewl was that huh?!! eventually we left mama and megat at my auntie's (mama's sister) place in taman tar, ampang.
so after quite some time i decided to go outside to check-out of what's been happening there. puteri stayed inside because she was a bit shy, that's why you won't see her face in any of the pics.
guess what people when i walked out, i bumped in to the girl that i thought i recognized earlier. we were right in front of each other face-to-face, and oh my god!... she's Diese!!! apparently she was there in UM too for the "blogging & law" conference. besides that we went to the same movie premiere screening in penang some time last year. and finally we met on last saturday hehee...
nicholas of nuffnang also remembered me from many of my facebook updates :)
as you could see from the above pics, outside situation were more havoc. you know... bloggers tend to do what most bloggers always do—camwhore!!! including me of course—
i heard someone asked Robb of who was he impersonating, as soon as he put on his sunglasses. he replied: "dunno lar... probably one of the gay boy band group or something!" *glurp*
we went inside when the party was about to start. we have been entertained by none other than emcee Liang (again?). it was not surprised as no doubt he's very good in handling his job very well.
MC Liang in action
first things first—ice breaking session, where there were 8 people to a team. the first person of a team need to whisper a song lines to another team member and so on. the last person in the team who could sang the song right won.
more camwhoring: with may from maxis
now what with the chandelier pic? because i lurveee it!...
Tim, the co-founder of nuffnang giving out his speech
there were two sets of this thingy (that i can't seems to know of what was it called) where you can make your own music videos
bloggers music jam! performance by bloggers
by this time i already went upstairs. 6 laptops have been set-up for bloggers to do live blogging. bloggers will get the chance to win a canon digital ixus 870 is.
while i was up there, two more games were going on like celebrity trivia and nuffnang music bash 2009 hall of fame.
grand feast: i was still upstairs. while i was typing away (read my live blog post that night here), a gal blogger next to me wanted to get some food downstairs. she has more to type. so she was asking whether i could help her to watch out for that laptop she was using. you know what people... i told her to click 'save now' from the new post page, so that the blog post will be saved in the draft folder. but when my kinky eyes saw her screen name on top left of the page, i was like: "haaa... BLue? so you are BLue?" see... how happy nye when bloggers met each other lol...
Bryan who was one of my teammates in samsung innov8 run, was there too. hey... i wore high heels but he still looks taller than me hehee...
makan time!!! there were also free flows of beers and soft drinks all night long
after makan, the party continued with more games in show me the spotlights! session.
congratulations to BLue8118 (you can sing very well girl!) and Bryan for winning the first game: they were asked to sing any chorus song then hold-the-last-word-as-long-as-you-can. they received a pair of sunglasses each.
as for the second part of the game, contestants had to dance exactly as per beyoncé' single ladies video—
thank god i didn't join this ya... if not just imagine of how was i supposed to cope with my long dress right *phew* and the best part was when Liang was damn excited to see of how the contestants do 0:53. everyone were laughing like hell i tell you rotfl...
EV@yenniedoll was one of the winners. i am not sure of who was the lucky guy. yes even guys have to do it to win as well! they won an armani belt each.
liang danced too, when he was forced to dance by the crowd lol... click on the above pic to watch the video
i didn't take pics during the nuffnang all stars show, where nuffies entertained us. here's a video of the guys singing that i recorded—
and last but not least was the prize giving session:
the best impersonator overall - bob marley; didn't get the chance to take pics with him though huhuu... btw have you guys done the malaysian blog survey yet? if not please do it before 10 april 2009 by clicking on the above banner or just go here; no matter whether you are a malaysian bloggers or a malaysian blogs readers.
the impersonators: pink of lady marmalade, lady gaga, britney spears, eminem, bob marley and john lennon
there were also prizes given to best blog post and uninspiring blog post(?). ya... you read it right ;) even Liang was stunned when reading "uninspiring blog post" and asked Robb for confirmation lol... well at least the lucky blogger won a gold class tickets!
i would like to thank nuffnang and maxis broadband for the great and wonderful event as usual. i could see that everyone walked home happily. hope to see you all again next time!
to all the bloggers i met: it was nice meeting you all.
we didn't wait any longer when the party ends. i brought my school-going daughter remember? see, i still know my responsibilities as a mother. anyhow i simply drove along jalan bukit bintang, jalan imbi and jalan tun razak before we headed to jalan ampang. aiyaa... its been quite some time since this lady haven't seen kl life on saturday nights you see hehee... of course its so much different now than those times i.e. the yellow guy! and all those shuffle dance lol... madness!
we overnight at my auntie's place that night. mama already text me earlier that my auntie didn't let us drive to denai alam (lil sis' place) in the middle of the night! huhuu... so when we reached my auntie's apartment at around 11.30 pm, mama and megat already in their slumberland.
both puteri and i slept quite late anyway. i took the time to upload the pics and videos; and also some browsing etc. what when i could get online easily from there! without the hassle of finding places with wifi facilities. the best thing was even though my auntie do not have computer or even any internet access, i was damn lucky that someone in the building used wifi weee~
...for an unscheduled maintenance. i am not sure of how long this has been going on. i wrote this blog post as soon as i signed on twitter just to be sure that i got the above message right. they expect to be back in about an hour... kewl!!! from what i understand things like this are always happened for the best!
look at this new car shades from maxis broadband people—
cute huh?!!... we got that as one of our door gifts, at nuffnang music bash 2009. i snapped this pic when i was waiting for mama, who went to a local mini market to buy some groceries this morning. and what a co-incidence i parked the car right in front of the mini maxis centre.
so ya... its "show off" time! i bet that you can't get this item here. for an example, when people saw the 'wild live' maxis usb modem keychain that i got last year, they were like: "eh where did you get that cute keychain?" haa... only special people can get those special thingy! hehee... fyi i have been using it still to keep my house keys.
while for the car shades, of course the most important thing it is very useful to protect us from the sun lights; besides for showing it off instead *glurp*
yes people! this is my 888th blog post'. please do not get me wrong, as this is all really happened by co-incidence only. what when i wrote this last night, i can assured you that i didn't realize it at all that this gonna happened hah! i guess that i was too busy to think of other thingy that time hehee...
so for my 888th post, i wanna share a miracle that occurred today!
it was 8+ pm when we have just reached home. i signed on to my sitemeter to check on my blog' statistics. then i was like: holy crap! i really can't believe my eyes when i found that my blog had the tremendous number of visits of all today—
and without putting on the thinking cap, i could just guess that these were all because of the live blog post i did from maison!
on the other hand the blog post also was listed in innit's #2 popular posts for the first time everweee~
i really dunno of what to say, just thank you so much to all especially the nuffnangers who nang! me. ♥U! and guess what people. the numbers are still increasing by the time i am typing this post. but since i am actually too tired already now to blog more for today to cover yesterday's event that i attended, here's something that you can peek through for the time being...
i hoped that you enjoyed the above video. so make sure to watch this space soon for more updates!
till then... nite-nite to all! i need my rest now, so that everything would be fine for a better tomorrow :)
how are you all doing? this is halle berry here blogging live from maison for nuffnang music bash 2009 hah! i know i know... everyone knows that i am not a musician *glurp* so maybe i am just here as a guest of the parrr-tayyyyy!!! weee~
i am so sorry that i can't show you all the pics of me at the moment, so later ha? i just dun have the time to upload the pics yet. well to tell you the truth the thing is i dunno of what to blog right now actually, as there are so many thingy to enjoy here at this great party. and the best thing is i dun wanna miss them all!
these days really make me think a lot. you know why people? i think i can't be as beyoncé for god's sake dammit! beyoncé's hair is long and as far as i can remember i have never seen her with short hair.
as you could see from some of the sample pics above, halle berry has been appeared in so many hairstyles, like me(?) *glurp* especially the centre pic, its really so like me, and also those with ponytails i.e. top left and right, and bottom right except the boobs! ya... one thing for sure... i am petite, meaning that my sizes are mainly small. believe it or not for some people i bump in public thought that i am still in school hah!
i almost cried reading this news on this day, first day of april—
Mo. mom accused of giving alcohol to young teens
AP - Wednesday, 1 April, 2009 9:43:26 AM
A mother and another woman face felony child-endangerment charges after a 14-year-old's birthday party that ended with two young teens being taken to a hospital. Karen Christine Downs, 43, of Kansas City, and Kelsee Guest, 25, are accused of providing liquor and beer to six 13- and 14-year-olds at a February birthday party for Downs' daughter. Two girls, one 13 and the other 14, passed out and were later taken to a hospital, according to court documents.
Downs allegedly offered $10 to whoever could chug a glass of vodka the fastest. Guest is accused of pouring the shots.
"We continue to work to educate teenagers and adults about the dangerous effects of teen drinking," Platte County prosecutor Eric Zahnd in a news release. read on here...
ain't that sooooo sickening people. i think down's attitude was very unconsiderate especially towards other people's child. she should treat them nice, but offered them $10 instead to whoever could chug a glass of vodka the fastest. how dare she did that to children. i really hope that this won't be happened to my kids and also my loved ones.
we merely know the dangers of teen drinking. teens don't just drink. they drink to excess. underage drinking is linked to injury and risky behavior. reducing underage drinking can reduce drinking-related harm. teens who drink alcohol are more likely than non-drinkers to smoke marijuana, use inhalants, or carry a weapon. binge drinking substantially increases the likelihood of these activities. besides that this is very much involved in the academic performance as well.
for further information on the risks of adolescent alcohol use, visit FamilyDoctor.org . don't serve alcohol to teens. it's unsafe. it's illegal. it's irresponsible.
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