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!

More and more readers! & Blog statistics

Happy Belated Christmas, and New Year 2009!

I'm amazed that although I hardly write in this blog anymore I still get more and more readers and hits. Thanks to all my readers (who seem to come from all over the world!) I also love getting emails and to those who I haven't replied to: I'm not ignoring you, I've just been quite busy and will reply to you really soon.


Top posts:

1. Hello Kitty Cafe, Taipei, Taiwan

2. 2007 World cities - cost of living survey

3. Carrefour shopping complex, Gubei

4. National Wear Red Day

5. Chinese New Year of rat 2008


Top keywords:

1. life in shanghai
2. carrefour shanghai
3. shanghai life
4. hello kitty sweets cafe
5. hello kitty cafe taiwan
6. hello kitty restaurant taipei
7. i dreamt i was pregnant
8. paul bakery shanghai
9. metro city shanghai
10. china birth rate


Some weirder keywords searched for through Google:

* 5rmb bag at zara china
* "sex and the city" + "think they can become"
* band aids that stick to dogs
* bathtub won't drain due to cold weather
* blood tonic for anemia from freshmart
* bound feet 裤子
* customs drug search perth airport 2008 velcro

Engrish and Chinglish blog

Check it out for some laughs

Go to China

I just found this website.
GO TO CHINA

There are some great photos and basic information on there, check it out!

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

Trip to Shanghai

Link

I found a good 'essay' some woman wrote about her trip to Shanghai. I think it's very well written, informative, with lots of nice pictures too. Take a look!

Top 7 posts

Previous stats (March 24)

These are the 7 most popular pages on my blog:

1. World Cities Cost of Living (July 1, 2007)

2. Hello Kitty Cafe, Taipei (March 16, 2008)

3. It's blossom time! (March 26, 2008)

4. Canon Powershot G9 (January 31, 2008)

5. Shanghai Pudong Airport's Terminal 2/3 (February 12, 2008)

6. Carrefour Gubei (March 24, 2008)

7. Massages and Genji Japanese restaurant (March 23, 2008)

Interesting! ;) For anyone interested, I get 40-80 visitors per day with a steady average of around 60 per day.

The top sites on my blog

These are the most popular pages on my blog:

1. World Cities Cost of Living (July 1, 2007)

2. Breeze Center, Taipei (January 31, 2008)

3. Canon Powershot G9 (January 31, 2008)

4. Breadtalk Anpanman (July 17, 2007)

5. Edison Chen scandal (February 22, 2008)

6. Chinese New Year - Year of the earth rat (January 5, 2008)

7. Largest shopping malls in the world (January 18, 2008)

8. Ang Lee's 'Lust, Caution' (December 9, 2007)

9. The rain, the fabric market and Times Square (November 16, 2007)

10. Tetsuya's lookalike in Taipei (March 19, 2008)


Interesting! ;)

Funny and interesting blogs

I read way too many blogs.. I thought I'd share with you some that I like.

Kitty Hell - this is where I found out about the cafe in Taipei. This blog is hilarious and it doesn't matter if you like or hate Hello Kitty. The writer just has such an amusing way of writing! I've been reading this blog for about six months or so and it continues to amuse and inform me!

Photoshop Disasters - just found out about this through another blog last night. I work with and use Photoshop quite a lot and found this site hilarious too!

In other unrelated news.. That Japanese Tetris game show (look it up on YouTube if you don't know what I'm talking about) is coming to America! How cool is that?

Blog changes

You may have noticed some changes. I'm still tweaking it (but it's a bit hard to do anything that requires too much concentration as my head is still stuffy and all that HTML and Javascript... eerrghhhh) but basically now my blog:

* Is green instead of pink! I don't particularly like green, but I don't not like it either. But I felt like a change and it's a calming colour so why not. And the template is pretty snazzy too.

* I've added some RSS links to make it easier to read and subscribe to my blog. Yes yes I know I have crossed over to the 'dark side'.. sort of.

* The best one of all. I've added a search box so you can search for words and in a flash it searches my entire blog for those words. Be sure to click the second option though and not 'web' or else it'll search the entire web for your keywords. I tested it to see if it was actually good at finding the right data and it did a really good job so I'm happy :)

My blog is popular. What the-?

The other day I was asked by a girl online, "Are you that girl that writes that Shanghai expat wife blog?" Shocked I said, "Yeah..." So we got 'chatting' and she tells me that my blog is the highest ranked Shanghai expat blog on Google. So I do a search for the words 'shanghai' 'expat' and 'blog' and sure enough my blog is the 7th on the list. 1st-6th are blog directory sites, not an actual blog URL. So going by this I guess you could say my blog is the most highly ranked Shanghai expat blog on Google?!

Now I admit I like it when people read my blog (even if they don't comment (but I love comments :D), even if I don't know who they are or how many there are...) but I have no idea how my blog is ranked so highly?! I am not one of those people who submit their blog to a billion and one sites in the hopes of becoming 'popular'. In fact, to be honest I had thought about submitting it to some blog sites and places like del.icio.us but really, now, I just couldn't be bothered.

Now, I have only told my sister and about 3 friends about this blog. If I'm not even going to tell people close to me about it I'm highly unlikely going to tell the rest of the world about it - right?

I am writing this blog for two reasons. 1) to get some of my crazy thoughts out. 2) hopefully provide some source of entertainment or help for others. So if you enjoy reading it - great! And if you don't - well what are you doing here? ;)

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? :(