Ladies and gentlemen, this is my 500th post! And to celebrate, allow me to be vain for a moment and feature my 10 favorite entries on this blog.

I’ve been blogging for over five years. I was so passionate about my first blog but a year later as I was backreading, it dawned on me that I was full of crap and so was my blog. All I posted was my immature ramblings so I decided to just kill the blog.

A few months later, I started another blog on Blogdrive. Although I couldn’t say it wasn’t immature, it was a teeny bit more sensible. The next year, I moved to Wordpress and purchased yoshke.com domain name. That’s when I took blogging seriously.

This blog is called The Mind, Times, and Life of Yoshke Dimen because I want this to reflect my handwritten journal, which i still keep. (My handwritten journal has more detailed, more scandalous, more personal entries. LOL. I’d be dead if somebody stole it.) So why the title?

“Mind” because this blog documents what’s on my mind, what I think about. I write about what’s going on in my head from my European cable provider to Pinoy Big Brother to Oli Pettigrew to traveling the world to lawn tennis.

“Times” because decades from now, when I look back to this era, this blog should reflect the environment I am in and what’s going on in the world. I’d love to revisit the blockbuster movies of this time, the hit TV shows, the political climate, and even global warming.

“Life” because this is still my personal blog and it should chronicle what I do and feel and how I live my life. That when I became famous, there’s a convenient resource for researchers and biographers to poke into my past. Haha. Kidding.

Enough intro, here are the upper 2% of Yoshke.com posts that I really enjoyed writing.

10. MY TOP 50 ALL-TIME FAVORITE FILMS

I never take writing movie reviews seriously. Being a Film graduate and having directed and written a few films, I thought writing movie reviews would make my life too film-saturated. Thus, I only write random thoughts about the flicks I see. Compiling my top 50 most well-loved movies of all time was an enjoyable ride. It was a great experience looking back and ranking all the films I have seen and picking the 50 that I’d watch over and over again.

Another movie entry I had a damn good time writing was a rundown of all the Batman movies. This post is special because I’m a huge Batman fan and to prepare for this entry, I had to see all Batman films again — from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan, from Michael Keaton to Christian Bale, from Joker to Poison Ivy back to Joker.

Some of the movies I enjoyed writing a short review of include Doubt (2008), the Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and The Reader (2008).

9. TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOUR BOYFRIEND IS GAY

This post gave this blog its first traffic boost. I used to not care about traffic; I just wanted to write, just write. But this post made me realize it actually felt good that something I write get to be read by people around the globe and it’s nice to interact with those who comment.

This list was originally published in December 2006 but I gave it a makeover and reposted it in April 2008.

Other lists I had a great time writing are the most awful things to say during sex, the top ways to break-up with your partner, the places to find your true love. More lists here.

8. I UNDERSTAND NOW WHY PEOPLE DON’T VOLUNTEER

In a nutshell, it was traumatic.

Doing a stint as a PPCRV volunteer last elections almost squeezed the sanity out of me. Mind-blowing. Action-packed. Absolutely cinematic.

But I’ll do it again next year.

I also particularly liked writing an article about gag shows in the Philippines wherein I enumerated what’s wrong with them and how they might affect its viewers.

7. HAHADA LAANG

Anyone who knows me knows I’m proud of  being a Filipino. But anyone who knows me well knows I am proudest of being a Batangueno. I go back to my Batangan roots from time to time and talk about the sides of Batangas that are worth writing about — our diction, our coffee industry, our political situation, our local beaches.

And there’s more to come.

6. TOP 10 MOST NOTORIOUS SERIAL KILLERS OF ALL TIME

This post is still the most visited up to now. Thanks to Ted Bundy.

History and current affairs also fascinate me ergo the several posts on the past, present and future of humanity. Lists proved to be a good tool to organize my thoughts on the various topics that catch my interest — the most ridiculous laws, the most tragic accidents, the craziest leaders, the most popular national stereotypes.

Also, as a CNN-addict, there are news that always gets me shocked or at least stirred and I sometimes find myself blogging after. Remember the Aussie guy who got stuck on top of a tree for seven days because crocodiles were waiting for him below? And the Israeli government having their female soldiers take off their clothes for Maxim magazine? And my heartbreak when Germany lost to Italy in 2006 World Cup? And Tinky Winky being gay?

5. HOW MY FRIENDS SEE ME

Conversations with friends have always been a best-seller in this blog but what makes this post remarkable is that it was able to make me take a step back and see myself through my friends eyes. Self-reflection, anyone?

My officemates also give me funny bloggable materials — the bananas we talk about over lunch, the metaphors we use for the things around us, and the distractions.

Most of them are still not aware that I had actually blogged some of our conversations. Bad me.

One of the most memorable to me was We Crash Like Planes Do which was written on the day a good friend left for the UK.

Yes, my friends have been giving me good materials for this blog but no one is more bloggable than my friend Andre whose antics are so funny, not blogging about them could be a criminal offense.

Andre and I have been friends since college and his witty remarks and crazy stunts always blow me away. He wanted to live in Gerald Anderson’s underarms. He thinks Folded & Hung is a gay brand. He downs a cup of Astring-a-Sol Concentrated without mixing it with water.

4. UNUSUAL BREAKFAST

People have always claimed the flash fiction works I post on this blog are NOT really fiction but what the hell. Haha. Whatever. Yes, I admit that there is some truth in them but they are fiction.

Unusual Breakfast was based on a breakfast I had with someone I should not name. Just Did was written after a friend left for a foreign land. 7 Missed Calls was, nah, never mind. The First Day of December was a scenario that I feared at the time of writing.

Paper Planes was a pseudo-poem I wrote while scribbling someone’s name at Ayn’s house. I Would Watch a Movie first appeared in my head on the way to Batangas, while waiting for a shuttle.

3. THE PROMIL KID SERIES

Of all the living things created by God, I love my nephew the most. He’s the cutest thing. I’ve always written about him and he has won the love of the people around me even before they met him. I’m starting to think he could be my mascot for this blog. Yoshke.com won’t be Yoshke.com without the Promil Kid series, they may even be my flagship posts. Someday when he’s old enough to discover what I’ve been doing to him, he’ll insist he get paid for every entry I wrote about him. Darn, that’d be costly!

We fight over a bar of snickers. I reprimanded him for calling a salesman “hideous”. He kicked his school principal for not letting him take home a Sto. Nino displayed inside the church. He almost dropped the bomb that I’m gay in a family dinner. He believed the Virgin Mary was Our Lady of Enchanted Kingdom. But he’s someone I can give my life to, and I will if I have to.

He was recently diagnosed with a bone cyst on his left hand and he’d undergone biopsy last week. But he’s gonna be okay. After all, he’s a Promil kid.

2. FIREWORKS, HORMONES, AND THIS BLOG POST

Of all the things about me, my love life is that one thing I’d rather keep private so I seldom blog about it. Besides, I don’t think anyone would really want to know more about it. Haha. So why bother?

But a few posts were exceptions. Especially this one. This is my greatest love. And I don’t think I’d feel like this for anyone else.

I wrote this post while we were at the living area of our condo unit. He was busy Facebook-ing on his laptop, and I was writing this on mine. He kept on aksing me what I was doing and I answered him with “Just scanning Desperate Housewives forums.” When I was done, I walked to my room and left him at the living area. Soon after, he approached me and gave me the tightest, most sincere hug I have ever got.

This post is special simply because I wrote it for the only man I am willing to write a blog post for.

1. DO THEY READ BLOGS IN HEAVEN?

My family is also something I avoid writing about. Not that there’s not worth writing about them, it’s just that I’m not very comfortable with it. I only publish family-related posts when there’s a sudden surge of emotions in me like when my mom’s health is involved or when I envy my siblings occasionally.

Do They Read Blogs in Heaven is my most treasured post here on this blog because it took me a lot of guts and pride-swallowing to finally publish this. I had written this long before I first posted it. It stayed in my Drafts folder for a while. I was supposed to post this for my dad’s 4th death anniversary but I couldn’t hit the Publish button. I finally mustered all the courage to make it public a month later, October 2008.

I guess the remorse I was feeling for myself was difficult to bear but more difficult to let the whole world know about. There are things that are too hard to accept and one of them was the fact that I was wrong and it was too late to turn things around. Upon publishing it, let’s just say that I felt some sort of redemption. And boy did I need that so badly.

…

There you go. The 10 posts on this blog that are my personal favorites. :)

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