I don’t have to shout announcing that I now have a page rank! Three months ago, I blogged about my race for ranks. Here was my starting position:

Alexa = 23,346,775
Google Page Rank = N/A
Technorati = 0
Subscriber = 0

Today, my rank had significantly improved in terms of Alexa, but not in the others. Here’s my new stats:

Alexa = 1,396,303
Google Page Rank = 1
Technorati = 1
Subscriber = 0

I know I’m a bit too slow for this blog. I failed to make it grow in the quickest possible time. But anyway, the blogosphere is still wide, wide open for growth. I have to overhaul this blog bigtime, and I have to do it ASAP.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Long-time rivals in almost everything, the Ateneo Blue Eagles will battle the La Salle Green Archers for the coveted crown of the UAAP 71st Men’s Basketball Finals. It will be the fourth overall Finals confrontation between these two elite teams. The series will commence this Sunday, 4pm at the Big Dome but the tickets were already sold out Monday, according to the Inquirer.

“There were people who camped out overnight, there was already a line by 4 a.m.,” said a TicketNet representative. The ticketing outlet was opened at 9am and closed at 1230nn, because the tickets were sold out within 3 hours. Due to the huge demand, TicketNet decided to sell just two tickets per individual. It sold mostly game passes to free-seating areas in Upper Box A (P220), Upper Box B (P95) and General Admission (P55).

This may sound crazy but we’re a basketball crazy-nation, right? The last time these two met, there was a paying crowd of 22,316. This is far more than the average attendance of a PBA game finals. Some bought tickets even as high as P7,000 from scalpers. Excellent business!

So, who’s your pick for this year’s Finals?

Popularity: 24% [?]

Hurricane Ike

After Gustav and Hanna, here comes Ike. A category 2 Hurricane Ike, with winds up to 105 mph is heading towards Texas and may hit land late Friday or early Saturday. Nearly a million residents along the Texas coast were ordered to leave and evacuate ahead of the storm. Weather forecasters said that the storm was likely to become Category 3, with rampaging winds up to 130mph.

It’s scary to hear that hurricanes like this can cripple even large and advanced cities. I hope that my friends in Texas will all be alright.

Typhoon Ike

Typhoon Ike was the deadliest typhoon that hit the Philippines in 1984. The local weather bureau called that Typhoon Nitang. Its heavy rainfall and winds killed 1,492 people, mostly from the Visayas region. I can remember that day when a mango tree fell and almost hit our house. We lost a few sheets of our roof, and my bed was very wet. Between 200,000 and 480,000 people were left homeless in the wake of the storm. We had few neighbors who lost their homes, too. The typhoon left a damage of over billions of pesos, the costliest typhoon in Philippine history.

I was nine years old then. Days after the typhoon, the water that flooded a rice field nearby did not subside immediately. Kids my age were enjoying a muddy swim, unaware of the damage the typhoon brought somewhere else.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Despite falling off from his lofty pedestal a few weeks ago and the surprising upsets at the tournaments of late, the 12-time grand slam winner, Roger Federer, is still the man to beat at the US open.

At 27, and carrying four US Open titles in his name, he is still the force to reckon with. His 5-set disposal of Igor Andreev may have been his longest game that he played at this stage in the tournament, but it does not mean that his game is deteriorating. He is just picking up.  And I don’t care if Nadal is no.1, or whether he is still in the semis or not.  Roger will beat him the same.

The next opponent for Roger is Gilles Muller, a 130th-ranked qualifier from Luxembourg, who made a name for himself by downing Davydenko. Muller joined Nicolas Escude (1999) as the only other qualifier in the open era to make the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open. His luck may run out anytime soon. Federer will win the US Open and will be back at No.1.

Popularity: 17% [?]