Waddapak

Sibin Sigbin, signing in…

You know how in bookstores, newspaper and magazine stands you see signs saying “Reading is NOT Allowed” or “Please Refrain From Reading”?

Well this post isn’t about people who can’t seem to read those signs but able to read anything else on the shelves. Today, Waddapak features a local mini-magazine that’s angay butangan ug (suitable to place a) “Please Refrain from Reading” sign.

When this mini-magazine sprouted in the coffee shops of the City a couple of years back, I was first impressed with the concept. The mini-mag’s more like a pamphlet, a program of events, gigs, bargain sales et cetera for the month. Helpful information for anyone who wants to make the most of Life in the City.

Plus, it’s all for FREE! Buy a cup of Bo’s and pick up one of these nuggets of info to review while you sit and sip. Leave it or take it with you. All’s the same. Back then, I really thought that this was OK pa sa OK.

I can’t exactly pinpoint WHEN things started to change for this helpful, neat mini-magazine. It became messy with feature articles that are too big for the mini-mag to chew and for a constant browser like myself who reads just as much as he eats, these articles were just plain-hard to swallow.

Usa, what’s with the half-baked, half-hearted writing? It just seems to me that the mini-mag’s got some local people who have cool professions and backgrounds but know nothing about writing.

There was this one feature about a local musician’s question on the future of the local music scene in the island. The piece ended without a conclusion, giving the impression that the musician is still looking for the solution. Okay, what the musician actually wrote was a ramble, written out for the simple pleasure of putting out something to be printed out and read but was my reading pleasure ever in consideration?

Ikaduha, other than the ramblings by neophyte writers, I wonder if the mini-mag also has neophyte editors to manage the content and layout. Check out this page from the mini-mag’s past issue.

Ever heard of "Cropping"?

The editors do not seem to be aware or even care for the properties of space. Like in these scanned pages:

This does not lead favorably to "balanced" reading

And how about this big miss on the front page of the mini-mag’s current issue (as of this post)?

Strike One

What or, it could be a name,  who is Mother Toung? Could she be an nun leading a convent in Barcelona? Let’s flip through the page where the article is and see…

Strike Two!

Now it’s Tounge.. mother toung… mother tounge… ah you mean, mother T-O-N-G-U-E eh?

*Roll eyes to white* WADDAPAK!

I haven’t seen this much carelessness since my high-school organ and back then the carelessness was a given, to be clumsy was cute. This, this is just plain clumsy and eeewww!

To the Powers-that-be of the mini-mag, if it’s too costly to get good writers to write some good pieces, then better ask for shorter pieces from your neophyte writers or best yet, don’t put in any articles at all. What was so wrong about the original format?

I just hope that it’s not too much to ask for the powers-that-be to stop playing around and put a sincere effort in the product. I’m only considering the number of trees that were sacrificed to produce the amount of paper on which this mini-mag copies are printed on.

Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it has to be sub-standard right? Don’t people say that the “Best things in Life are Free”?

Yet I’m thinking that this can be one exception.

Plant a tree, Sibin Sigbin, signing out…

this is a very common mistake from humans, same thing with “dont step on the grass” but mo step lang japon. In short they don’t care about what it says and are jst being selfish to satisfy oneself or they jst dont know the word respect maybe and are playing dumb. With the Mother toung part, whats the use of having editors in a company? Even the editors themselves needs to be edited LMAO =)))

this is a very common mistake from humans, same thing with “dont step on the grass” but mo step lang japon. In short they don’t care about what it says and are jst being selfish to satisfy oneself or they jst dont know the word respect maybe and are playing dumb. With the Mother toung part, whats the use of having editors in a company? Even the editors themselves needs to be edited LMAO =)))
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