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The ASAWA community newsletter The ASAWA forum is a special place. It’s a forum where people from around the world can get together and discuss, in a civil manner, the intricacies of Fil-West relationships. Because it is both invitation-only and highly moderated, the ASAWA forum promotes honest discussion with a minimum of flaming and emotionally charged rhetoric. It’s not perfect – it’s still populated by humans, after all – but as the Internet goes, it’s a virtual oasis. Still, I know that many ASAWA visitors are hesitant to join any forum, which means they cannot access the volumes of useful information the ASAWA forum could provide. In a similar situation are those visitors who do become members but rarely get to visit or participate in the forum due to heavy work or school loads or family commitments. Which means that when these members finally log back into the forum, they have to sift through hundreds or even thousands of posts to find something they’re interested in. Consequently, I decided to issue a weekly newsletter that helps address these issues. It’s called the ASAWA Community Newsletter and will be available to both forum members and non-members. This will allow me to disseminate much of the useful information contained in posts from within the forum to those outside it. What does it look like and how does it work? The newsletter itself is divided into sections that basically mirror the ASAWA forum itself. Sections include Immigration Matters, Adjusting to Filipino Culture, Travel to/from the Philippines, Married Life, Pen Pal Experiences, Calling/Texting & Mailing, and Filipino Food and Entertainment. In addition to these sections, there is a very brief News section, an Announcements section (forum weddings, births, etc.), and a Commentary by yours truly. The content of the sections is derived from forum postings of the previous week. In other words, I pull from the forum what I consider to be the most valuable and pertinent information, then digest that information into a bite-sized pieces suitable for a newsletter. I do not include anyone’s actual names in the newsletter, though I may use a poster’s forum nickname. This is practically a requirement in the Announcements section. For example, “On April 8th, Cebu8myhat was married” might actually mean something to newsletter readers, whereas “On April 8th, someone was married” means nothing at all to anyone. Note, however, that if a member’s nickname also happens to be his or her actual name, that member’s initials are used instead. For example, if my forum nickname was Bob_Lingerfelt, I’d be referred to as Bob_L in the newsletter. For reference purposes, I refer to posts only by their numerical designators. For example, "Post 2601.3, a forum member stated that..."
If you'd like to see a sample copy, click HERE. If you’d like to subscribe to this newsletter, please use the Topic subscribe box below. Thanks!
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All original materials on this website (www.asawa.org, www.filipinawives.com) are copyrighted by the author, Bob Lingerfelt, 1997 -2007 with materials on file at the U.S. Copyright Office. No reproduction is authorized, in any form, without express permission of the author.
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