A couple of weeks ago, I purchased the domain manilabarbie.com on a whim. I was at the office and doing my usual pre-actual work internet dilly-dallying (checking Smashing Magazine and other career-related sites) when I, for no reason other than it has a nice ring to it, googled ‘manila mania’. And because my brain works in such a way that random things pop up at the same time, I thought “Hey, Manila Barbie sounds nice”. I plurked about it and people told me to go ahead and get the domain.

And so I— with no clue what to do with it— did.

Setting it up took a week; I got hosting from my e-friend Jon over at kinohost.net (a very affordable $5/year, I get 5gigs of space and unmetered bandwidth) and I modified one of my older pre-widget themes and came up with the very girly and very pink(!!!) design.

I launched Manila Barbie a week ago and until now, people are still asking me what my plans are for it. Truthfully, I still don’t know and what it basically is now is my uncontrollable spending in blog form. A fledgling shopping blog, if you may; eventually, it would also make sense to start blogging about fashion since most my purchases are clothes and such. Except…

I’m no fashion maven, I don’t follow and obsess about what’s trendy or parrot stuff I see in magazines. My taste in clothing and objects in general have remained the same since time immemorial (let’s just pretend my funny t-shirts and YRYS phase never happened): I like pretty things with a bit of an attitude (or a dash or double-dash of funky). I feel most comfortable in a miniskirt and flip-flops which is something the boyfriend has criticized in the past. He says he’s a fan of shoes and I am, too, especially heels. But I do a lot of walking (and I walk fast) and though you can find me in my pink and white Nikes most days, I still hate the goddamn things. I’m a middle-class shopper (a term my friend Sanya used last Saturday when we were making fun of each other’s spending problems) with my 1000-peso jackets from FnH and bought-on-sale tops from Mango. But even if it seems like I’ve been exercising all my best efforts at looking disastrous, I’d still like to think that I’m not a fashion fiasco. Or something like that.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that there’s always room for improvement. Lolz.

Another thing I’d like to put on MB is my love for (Metropolitan) Manila. There is much to hate about the big city (crazy weather, stupid people, traffic, pollution, perverts etc etc) and many days I find myself wanting to pack my bags and move up north to San Juan. Thankfully, Manila’s sub- and cultural diversity is enough to make me stay put (at least for now). I don’t know how I’ll go about doing that, having no decent camera at the moment, but I’ll figure something out.

So, check out Manila Barbie and maybe add it to your Netvibes or Google Reader, ya?