I’m sure you’ve heard and read the harrowing tale of death and destruction caused by typhoon Frank in the Philippines.

Iloilo.
M/V Princess.
Sulpicio Lines.

It’s all in the news. But I never heard anything about Aklan. Have you?  Visit this bloglink to learn more. Please help the people of Aklan, details are outlined at Des Mendoza’s blog.

Question.

How does a girl who falls…
no, actually she jumps
eyes wide open, down a rabbit hole
plummeting into chaos
come out unchanged?

She doesn’t.

- Little Black Book

And so I decided to get out of my cave so that I can finally attend my first blogging event for this year - The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s Creativity Workshop (they invited 60 bloggers). What really urge me to check out the said event is the fact that it involves a workshop - meaning, you’ll not just go there to simply meet people, eat, listen to promotional stuff, get freebies and blog about it.

The workshop was divided into 3 categories - photography, short film and creative writing. I chose the latter even though the gadget I brought with me is a camera (which is meant for photography) :d.

It was just a short talk but I have learned and digested a lot of whats and whatnots of Flash Fiction and CNF or Creative Non-Fiction. From what I understand, creative non-fiction is just like a Web 2.0 of non-fiction. It is done by writing a story of fact using a different glow; free verse, adding colorful shades, swirls and other creative elements. And I guess I’ve been doing that since forever.

We were given 20-30 minutes right after the talk to write a sample FF or CNF of What’s your Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf story. Awarding ceremony followed afterwards and 3 best entries was chosen to receive prizes. The entry I made was a very short creative non-fiction, entitled Die to Write. I wrote it with my usual whatever-mode, just spontaneous and not expecting to win.

While writing my article, I had a hidden panic because of the following reasons:

Almost everyone has their laptop
While I, was using a paper and a pen. I can’t even write fast. :d
And my penmanship sucks.

My world turned upside down.

But it was turned downside up when Dean Alfar, a novelist and 10th time Palanca awardee started to read his first selected Best Creative Writing entry. It’s mine. Ako nga ba yun? It’s me!

Yay =)

I forgot to get my paper where I wrote my article though. Now, I’m currently trying to recall so that I can post it online together with the official pictures taken from the event (maybe from Coffee Bean news release)

@ Bonifacio High Street | Meeting Angel | Winners Pics (beside me is Dean Alfar )

I was expecting to be with Joni but she wasn’t able to make it. AJ, a former officemate was there. Met a new blogger, Angel, my seatmate during the talk. There are also some bloggers that I recognized from name tags / said hi / smiled at | Juned, Anton, Benj, Lizz, Markku and some.