The figures on her Site Meter say it all:  1.66 million hits and growing. On a normal day, her two most popular blogs, houseonahill.net and pinoycook.net, together generate 4,500 visitors and 17,000 page views per day. More than the numbers, The Sassy Lawyer’s success can perhaps be traced to the fact that she fits the profile of the perfect blogger: she writes very well, is technically proficient and has the uncanny knack for analyzing issues in a manner that mainstream columnists probably can’t.

As a result of her  frankness and incisiveness, she sometimes eats threatening emails for breakfast. However,  nothing can stop this spunky lady whose happiness lies in being a full-time blogger and being a loving wife to Speedy and their two daughters. Get to know more about the Blog Queen in the following interview:

Q. Why did you get into blogging?

A. Yung how I started blogging, published story na yata yan eh, haha. Long and short of it is I had a theory that I could make money without  the bullcrap of stupid bosses and dirty law practice. In short, earning on my own terms and doing something I like at my own pace and time. Eh ang big loves ko talaga were writing and photography. Perfect for the internet, di ba? I resigned from my job and bought a domain (an old one). Hindi ko pa alam ang “blog” nun. It was quite by accident when I discovered my first blogging tool (Web Wiz News). I started the food blog and the political blog (collectively called “The Mommy Journals.”)

The Sassy Lawyer (Picture taken in UP Diliman)

I was also contributing to this financial site whose editor encouraged me to push through with the food blog which he called a “goldmine.”

But my alma mater called and I took on another job. Then our househelp ran away and I was forced to resign because there had to be someone at home with the kids. I came across Ploghost which offered cheap web hosting and bought houseonahill.net. I discovered Movable Type and a community of bloggers called wanderlust. com, now defunct. In six months I was earning at my own terms (no kowtowing to anyone), my time (I blog when I feel like it) and my content (no one to edit and censor my work.) Eh hindi pa ba incentive yun?

Q. What was your husband's first reaction to your blogging?

A. My husband loves me. More than that, he believes in me. Even when our daughters were much younger, he has always encouraged me to write regularly. But with toddlers running around and perpetually hungry and demanding attention, I couldn’t. It was only when the girls were older and in school most of the day that I found the time to focus.

My husband was there, cheering me on, when I published my first blog. He gave me the time and the space to develop my ideas and publish them. When success came, I don’t think there is anyone more proud. I guess, I’m lucky. I know that, ordinarily, a husband would complain with the amount of time and effort that a blogger-wife spends online. But not my husband. His only concern is that I get enough sleep and rest. I suppose there is also that inarticulated expectation that I always put my family ahead in my list of priorities but I don’t need to be told that. My family is and will always be my first priority.

Q. What’s a typical day like for The Sassy Lawyer? What are your blogging habits?

A. Schooldays start early, especially after our househelp walked out on us oh so unceremoniously some months ago. After my kids and husband are off for the day, the laundry goes into a huge automatic machine and I start reading. Reading always comes before blogging. And that means the news and all other interesting stuff. Then, I write. If dinner from the previous night was interesting, I post the photo and the recipe on Pinoycook.net. Then, it’s on with the news and other stuff. Interspersed with the reading and writing, the clothes come out of the washing machine, get hung, the dirty dishes get washed and food prepared for the kids when they get home from school. The kids get home around 4.30 so it’s chow and chit-chat time. That’s when I hear about the teachers and the classmates and who sent a love letter to whom. After that is homework time and dinner preparation. After dinner, we usually watch TV. When nothing good is on, I blog some more. And, when bouts of sleeplessness hit me, sometimes, I stay up half the night reading and writing some more. So, how many hours of blogging a day? It varies. If there aren’t too many chores or errands, I spend more time blogging. Of course, it was different when we had househelp. Then I could spend eight straight hours just reading and writing.

Q. Being such a success now, what difficulties did you encounter when you first started blogging? Blogging’s downside which you encounter up to now?

A. The first difficulty was learning the technical side of blogging. One was mastering the HTML language. Knowing the basics wasn’t enough for the way I wanted to customize my pages. Most blogging softwares come with default templates. But unless you want your blog to look like everyone else’s, you need to re-design the pages. How to learn all this? Probably the best way is to install a program like Dreamweaver in your computer to be able to see the HTML version of a web page clearly. That was how I did it.

Downside? Well, as with real life, you meet all kinds on the net. And as with success in any field, the more successful one gets, the more detractors there are. Most of these, I ignore. But there are real nut cases. And I mean psychotics. They stalk you, they harass you, they post comments on other blogs using your screen name and domain name.

Then, there’s the problem of theft. Content theft and bandwidth theft. When you have good content and your blog is successful, there are those benighted souls who think they can reproduce the success by stealing your content. To be more blatant, they want to make money by using your content without your permission. I’ve been tempted to sue a few but the better way is to outwit them. And there are very effective ways.

Q. Among your online accomplishments , what do you consider the most significant and memorable? 

A. With ‘Pinoy Cook’, the Gourmet magazine article is the most memorable. Getting a review that “This is everything an amateur blog should be: intelligent, down-to-earth and chockablock with vivid imagery” by an international food magazine that is like the bible of cooks and gourmets all over the world is titillating, to say the least. With ‘The Sassy Lawyer’s Journal’, ah, there are so many.

Q. Do you think blogging is a natural inclination or a skill that can be developed through time? What do you think makes a person stay on as a blogger?

A. Blogging is writing and publishing. And both are skills that can be developed through time. But it is passion that makes a person stay on as a blogger. It is the lack of passion that makes bloggers come and go. See, a blog has to have a goal. A genuine message to put across, if you will. Goal plus motivation equals passion. Without that, there is no genuine reason for a blogger to stay on.

Q. Do you have a favorite post? What post have you written that elicited the most reactions from your readers?

A. My favorite post is “Oh, yeah, right you are”. It was a response to an e-mail claiming, among other things, that America liberated the Philippines from its Spanish oppressors. You know, one of those things where attacking Bush’s policies is taken as a personal insult by every American. It was in that post where I wrote what is probably the most important message that I want to relay, so far:

“A man of achievement does not need to bask in the reflective glory of his country. A man of substance will say “I am proud of what I have made of myself” instead of “I am proud to be an American.” A man of substance will not feel pride in an accident of birth because that, by itself, is no personal achievement of his. It is only those who have made nothing of themselves who will claim collective glory because that is all that they can claim. The irony is that the glory is only an illusion. But, being what they are, they do not realize that. If pride in that accident of birth is what you call patriotism, that is really a pity.

It is in that sense that I am not proud to be a Filipino. But neither am I ashamed of it. It just is. A fact. But I am proud of what I am, what I have become and what I have made of myself. Just as I am happy and proud of the achievements and ideals of other Filipinos. But I make a distinction between a political abstract and a physical reality. A country exists only as a name attached to a territory. What makes it great or otherwise is its people.”

It generated 73 comments after which I had to turn off commenting because comments were getting nasty in a personal way. That’s not the most-commented entry, though. There was another that went beyond 90 but I can’t recall right now which one. To be sure, it also had to do with the Iraq war and American imperialism.

Q. Can you enlighten us on Expression Engine, the CMS you are currently using? What are its advantages re:  other systems?

A. Blogger is too limiting. It does not even allow categorization. Movable Type was okay except that because it is a PERL script, rebuilding pages can be really slow. The version of pMachine I used was the free version and it wouldn’t allow the creation of multiple blogs (pMachine Pro, which allows multiple blogs, is now free). Currently, I am using Expression Engine which was made by the same people behind pMachine.

I love Expression Engine. The downside is that it isn’t free. I got a licensed version for free, however. Last year, when there was this huge exodus from Movable Type after the revision of the software licensing, the EE people offered free licensed versions to switchers. I applied and I got mine. So, what can EE do? Well, it can create as many blogs as you want. It can create multiple levels of categories. It also has modules for photo galleries and mobile blogging. You can make two or more blogs appear on any given page. You can even combine a photo gallery, mobile blog and blog on any page. It also has a very good filtering system that allows blacklisting of porn and the like so that spammers can’t easily post comments or send trackbacks to your blogs. It is good for a personal blog or a group blog. There is an internal mailing system for members. And because it is PHP and MySQL-driven, there are no page rebuilds. Everything is fast. All that may sound too geeky and I don’t want the readers to think I’m a geek, so let’s just say that for my purposes, EE has everything I need and want. It allows me to customize the appearance of my pages as much as I like and it allows me to organize my content in any manner that I like.

Q. In your opinion, how are Pinoy bloggers different from, say, American bloggers? What still needs to be done in terms of strengthening blogging in RP?

A. Difference? My unbiased opinion is that the average Filipino blog in English has better spelling and grammatical construction. Average. So, that observation is not true for those falling below and rising above the average.

As to strengthening blogging in the Philippines, well… that depends on what the goal is. If blogging is to become a alternative medium in the Philippines, in much the same way American bloggers were, to a some extent, able to influence the dissemination of information during the last U.S. presidential elections, I think we should start with providing the average household with a PC and internet connection. Given the standard of living in the country, well…

Q. What’s your favorite quote or guiding principle in life?

A. My favorite quote is from the film ‘Die Hard’: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Q. What are your future plans? Blogging-related dreams you would like to achieve?

A. I want to go full blast with the photo blog. I have always wanted to document the Philippines through photos. (Note: Her husband had just gifted her with a Canon EOS 350D) I want to travel all over—by land—and experience and document regional cuisines and industries and the pristine beauty of the countrysides. Combined with how I can write about them, well, that would be a pretty interesting photo blog. Of course, what I need is time which, as it is, there seems to be too little of. Time to travel, explore and feel Filipino culture in its most fundamental essence. Go beyond the beaches and resorts. You know, like enjoy bulalo from a roadside eatery in Batangas or the smell of freshly-dug ube. I can’t explain it but just think of The Little Prince when he said that the water is sweeter because of the walk under the stars. In short, documenting a travel can be something ordinary or it can be something extraordinary depending on how much you saw beyond the scenery and how much you tasted and smelled beyond the food.  As with everything else, I love reading between the lines. That, I think, is the essence of my blogs.