ShanghaiExpatLife's BlogRoll

otherwise known as a Blog List, or Links List.

A few months ago I started to link to other blogs for the first time. I resisted doing this for a long time but then I thought, "Why not?"

They are all blogs I have found myself and would read myself and if the quality of them goes down (or it isn't relevant to Shanghai/expat living) then I am likely to take it down.

So, if you see your blog in my blog roll I would LOVE a reciprocal link back to mine (http://shanghaiexpatlife.blogspot.com) but it isn't absolutely necessary.

I am always adding new ones and if you want to be added, just add a comment to any of my posts, or contact me! It's that simple.

There are actually two lists. The first is just a list of links, the second is live updates (but for some reason it doesn't accept all URLs so that's why only some people's blogs are listed in the second list).

Happy reading, everyone!

Loving the Feedjit widget

I love the Feedjit widget (in the right hand column). I love seeing my visitors are coming from all over the world and even though I've been writing less over the past 2 months I've been getting more visitors than ever. Woohoo! Makes me feel popular (even if people are only spending 3 seconds on this blog, haha).

Flickr Fun

Hi to Michelle over at Bleeding Espresso :)

Here is my flickr fun grid. I have omitted some of the questions though.

1. What is your favorite food? Italian
2. What is your favorite color? Light aqua
3. Who is your celebrity crush? Paul Walker
4. Favorite drink? Isotonic drink
5. Dream vacation? Mayan Riviera
6. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
7. What you want to be when you grow up? Librarian
8. What do you love most in life? Photography
9. One Word to describe you. Unique

1. Italian Job Set, 2. light aqua, 3. Paul Walker, 4. No Sweat, 5. Mayan Riviera - Aventura Spa, 6. cheesecake, 7. Librarian, 8. 23.366 I have an eye for photography, 9. pathway to heaven

Turning a child's artwork into a photo

I've been busy lately and have lots of entries in my head, just have to find time to do them all, hopefully in a few days time.

Meanwhile, I found this through one of the fifty billion blogs I read...

It's a Korean artist/photographer's attempt to recreate children's drawings. I am totally amazed. How much effort it would require to style a photoshoot like that? But I love the fun atmosphere, the quirkiness, the whimsicalness (is that a word?), the creativity, the colours, the cuteness, everything!

Women and blogs

Link

An article about women and blogging.

* Women are so passionate about blogging that large percentages of women said they would give something up to keep the blogs they read and/or write:

- 55% would give up alcohol

- 50% would give up their PDAs

- 42% would give up their i-Pod

- 43% would give up reading the newspaper or magazines

BUT, some things are sacred … only 20% would give up chocolate!


Well, personally, I could give up writing a blog, but I don't think I could give up reading a blog (or lots of blogs rather). I could easily give up alcohol (since I don't drink it anyway and can't even stand the smell let alone the taste), don't own a PDA and don't ever plan to, have an ipod but don't use it that much and could give it up however newspapers, magazines or chocolate would be extremely difficult! hahaha. I'm a total 'information junkie' which is why I almost never read fiction and I hardly ever watch tv these days. I couldn't live without newspapers or magazines really, and blogs for that matter. I love to fill my brain with as much crap as possible. I guess that's why (I think) I have a good general knowledge and do reasonably well in trivia quizzes.

Oh jeepers. Shanghaiist is still reporting on the earthquake and now it says that 3000-5000 have died in a certain area. That's just horrible :(

Stop clogging my inbox

You know how there are certain people that love to fwd you all the stuff that they get forwarded? I've told my father a thousand times that 99% of those things are hoaxes but he still doesn't believe me, and forwards me stuff in a panic about how I might get my kidneys harvested or some sh|t like that. I used to get so angry that noone would get the message when I asked them politely to stop sending me this crap but then I had to resort to using more forceful words and even capital letters. So thankfully I don't get many of them anymore ;) On another note - I wanted to see how long I'd last having a funwall or superwall on my Facebook. I think I did quite well.. lasted a few months but took it down recently as it was full of more of this forwarded crap!

Many many years ago I found snopes.com and it was a godsend and my 'bible' to all things forwarded.

Anyway I was just searching google for images and came across this by accident. I wouldn't read it but I find the idea very clever and concept amusing. Someone has blogged about all the stuff they get sent!

stop clogging my inbox

Culture Matters on ICS and blogs

On Friday night I watched a fascinating segment on "Culture Matters" (ICS channel). The host interviewed Kenneth Tan, a Singaporean guy who moved to Shanghai 5 years ago and started up a men's underwear brand and the very successful news website/blog Shanghaiist, a local Shanghainese man with a very succesful self-titled blog Wang Jian Shuo and CEO of Kijiji China and an Asian bureau chief and global technology journalist for Securities Industry News Maria Trombly.

They talked about blogs, what blogs are, can blogs help you make money? etc etc. They also interviewed random people on the street (looked like Raffles/People's Square area to me) both Chinese and Western and asked them their opinions about blogs, do they read them?, do they have one?, etc etc.

It was probably a bit simplistic and basic for me but I still found it interesting and found myself wanting to hear more from the panel of 'experts'.

Culture Matters blog

Double Umbrella and the art of Chindogu (Unuseless Japanese inventions)

I read a lot of design related blogs. For those that don't know I studied visual communication for five, long, painful years. Anyway I am very attracted to beautiful and functional things. I have already poured over every single aisle in every major bookshop in Taipei that features books on design. Any kind of design. Graphics, architecture, product/industrial design, interior design, web design, fashion design... everything.

Anyway I am not sure if this is beautiful but it certainly is practical! It's a double umbrella. Unfortunately they are sold out. Not so unfortunately it's finally stopped raining here! hehe :)

Here



Apart from being attracted to beautiful things, I am also attracted to weird, wacky, and whimsical stuff. Whilst I was studying I actually bought these two books 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu and 99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu

They make great coffee table books as they are sure to interest anyone. You can have hours of side-splitting fun looking at the funny inventions in there! :D

Bloglines

Thanks to the lovely 'Sognatrice' who befriended me and introduced me to Bloglines (I mean really, where have I been? Under a rock?)...

I tend to read blogs in a random fashion, I only really visit them when I think about visiting them - some once a day and some a few times a month. With Bloglines I now have all my favourite blogs listed there and they tell me when they have been updated. Too easy!! So what does one naturally do? Look for more blogs to put of the list of course! ;) My topics of interest are expat blogs (find them very fascinating and insightful), design/craft/photo related blogs, funny blogs, fashion blogs, all sorts, really.. with anything I can relate to or am interested in.

Here is a great site that guides you through it all with screenshots. (I don't even go looking for the RSS or XML URL. I just paste the actual URL (address) of the blog and it goes searching for the RSS or XML links for me).

So go on... what are you waiting for? Get an account with Bloglines :) (the amazing thing - for all you people in China - is that Blogspot blogs load up right in the Bloglines window - without a proxy!!)

Darn diddly arn darn crap!

Aahh it had to happen sooner or later. China has banned blogger/blogspot right now so I cannot even view my own blog. Luckily I was already prepared for this and found out I can use pkblogs.com to view and edit my site. It's a bit of a hassle but better than nothing!

Let's hope the big bad censors hurry up and go away and find better things to worry about than someone's blog. It's a bit unfair to censor a whole blog site (with thousands of blogs on it) just because of a few worrying ones, don't you think? :(