How did Discreet Bai started? Prepare for a long story....
I stayed in Cebu for almost 10 years (1990's). While I was there, I was fairly active in gay chatrooms. Cebu's gay community at that time was already in full bloom. I got involved in eyeballs, hook ups, relationships and whatever. My experiences in Cebu made me who I am today. Didto sad ko naka tuon ug mga binuang.
At that time, there were already a few gay chatters in Cagayan de Oro. In fact I already met some of them everytime I went back to CDO for a vacation. So around 1999, I decided to invite chatters from CDO to a so called "grand eyeball" in the former Warehouse Bar. Unfortunately only 2 persons showed up namely Jaycee and Cleric. We discussed the possibilities of setting up a gay chatroom in CDO and the name for the chatroom. Names like Gay CDO or Gay Cagayan de Oro were suggested but I sensed people were a bit "discreet" about their sexuality especially in Cagayan de Oro. After months of exchanging ideas with other CDO chatters, I decided on the name Discreet Bai.
I patterned the name Discreet Bai from a Cebu based gay chatroom named Discreet Dudes. I simply removed the word Dude and replaced it with Bai (actually spelled "Bay"), which also translates to dude or friend. Bai was also the name of a popular club in Cebu located in Cebu Plaza Hotel (now Marco Polo Plaza Cebu).
Since I was still in Cebu and I did not really had any "permanent" email address to register the name Discreet Bai in the MIRC chatroom. I asked my friend who ran an internet cafe to register the name in my behalf. Since my friend was doing all the necessary work to register the Discreet Bai chatroom, I told him that he should become the Manager of the chatroom while I become his Co-Manager/Founder of DiscreetBai. Months passed and my friend kept on failing to register Discreet Bai, until the unthinkable happened. Someone who I did not know registered the Discreet Bai name. I was disappointed and frustrated. Someone stole Discreet Bai from me.
What was done, was done. I told the stranger who registered Discreet Bai about my situation. That Discreet Bai was my creation and I hope he respects it. So he made me somehow Co-Manager of the chatroom. All was well until I found out that he made his newly found boy friend Co-Manager and was ranked higher than me. I felt insulted. Aside from that we were not getting along with my ideas for the chatroom. So I decided to leave the chatroom and formed my own chatroom in a different server. The new chatroom was doing well until the server crashed for several months. After several attempts to relaunch the chatroom, it failed.
Luckily another friend of mine created Discreet Bai Yahoo Groups. He allowed me to push my ideas and manage the Group as I envisioned it. It was a blessing. Discreet Bai Yahoo Group had fun filled years until it was hacked and the Group deleted. It was another set back for me.
However this did not stop me from further promoting Discreet Bai online. Sensing that social media was becoming the trend, I decided to register the name Discreet Bai in Friendster, then Facebook and Twitter. I was also able to create a Forum site for Discreet Bai in Webs.com. The forum site was a success. It gathered gay people all over CDO and gave them a venue to discuss everyday life. However it did not last long. The site was suspended and eventually deleted. Back to square one.
After the suspension of Discreet Bai forum site, I decided enough is enough. I have find a more permanent site for Discreet Bai. So it dawned on me that I should reserve the domain name DiscreetBai.com. So in 2011 I decided to open a blog named Discreet CDO and a few months later renamed it to DiscreetBai.com.
After years of ups and downs, I feel confident Discreet Bai is now here to stay. Hopefully it will be known as a venue for gay and bisexual men of Cagayan de Oro to meet and interact with each other. To all who has supported Discreet Bai through the years.....Salamat! Thank you!
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