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EDIT: To read the post above, please request for password, as the post may be sensitive to certain people. All requests from regular commenters will be accepted. The rest will be based on my discretion. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I was reading Mr. Javo’s post on why blogs have taken over the internet, and it suddenly provoked many questions… Why is it that I blog? How did I start blogging? Why am I still blogging?

Come to think of it, I started blogging in 1999 with the advent of blogger.com. I joined primarily out of peer pressure. Everyone who owned a domain at that time started this new thing called blogging. I was never comfortable about publishing my life to the public. And I thought…who could possibly care about the adventures of some 13 year old living in Asia. But I gave in. And I have to admit… I really didn’t like it.

Yet, as much as I didn’t like it, I continued to blog, domain after domain, year after year. Then came Mezza-9.net. The blog was mainly an excuse to learn how to design layouts - to design at the caliber of the best cream of blogger-designers of that day. All my posts were about updates I have made. Nothing from my life was ever revealed. I received insane amount of comments - close to 100 comments per post. I received fan mail. Had insane amounts of visitors. And I was the 6th most important Ivy in the world according to Google and the #1 on Yahoo, beating out the band Operation Ivy and even Ivy League. But I wasn’t happy. What started as a road to be a good designer, ended up as a slave to more comments, more fanmail, more everything to please my visitors - at the expense of myself.

So I reluctantly closed Mezza-9.net. And blogged in low-profile until Nanyate.Com.

Even now, I still don’t fully understand why I blog. And much like Mezza-9.Net, I put my entire soul into Nanyate?!. I spend so much time thinking about what to write so that my entries are entertaining enough for you. I spend almost an hour on longer posts sweeping for errors, so that it will be easily understood by most of you.

Then I would smile when I see my subscriber count hit 50, and frown - even if its for a micro-second - when plummets to 30. I would smile when people leave me comments. Not for the number of comments but for the quality of comments. I would get so happy to see that people actually read my entries and notice the insignificant details I add on. Each and every comment means a lot to me, and as such I try to answer to most of them. Some of these great comments even set the precedence for future entries - Melle’s question about me leaving Canada for good and Soyuzno’s request for my Korean kimchee pork recipe. (Both that I will answer next month, btw.)

Not to mention, I would get especially happy when I see my visitors visit each others’ sites and leave comments on each others’ sites. I feel like I’m part of a circle of people.

Maybe that’s precisely why I blog - to be part of a circle of people; people who want to be heard, people who dare to be heard. But most of all - people who yearn to be recognized from the faceless crowd we call society. Because I too want to be heard.

So, why do you blog? How did you start blogging?

Sudden Hiatus until April 10

As much as I love blogging, I have to go to another hiatus. My Chinese professor just told us that the final ‘test’ will include material from all 20 chapters of the textbook, instead the 8 he promised a couple months ago. I can’t believe he changed the exam two weeks before the final exam. So now all my free time is going to be devoted to that stupid exam, as well as a research paper I have due on the same day.

I know I shouldn’t complain, because I will be done with my undergraduate degree in two weeks. But I just can’t wait to see the real world.

Edited: Updated to Wordpress 2.5

I found no errors when I updated my new blog at LanguageDiary.Com (surprise! I released the URL, though there’s nothing there just a placeholding theme), so I updated Nanyate.com. Please let me know if there are any errors as Nanyate uses a lot more plugins. Thanks!

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Prelude: I’M BACK!! I’ve written 4 essays and 2 exams in the past 3 weeks or so. I don’t think I’ve ever been so drained in my life. After I came back from class, I tried to come up an entry that could tie in my crazy academic schedule to my blog…and I wrote a post on chopsticks. My brain cells were clearly killed by all that work. Who said school made people smarter… Anyways, I ended up archiving the post, falling asleep and missed dinner. But after a shower, I’m marginally more awake and I’m going to keep my promise about coming back full speed so, I came up with the perfect post!

I apologize in advance if this post is lackluster. I’m so tired I’m typing with my eyes closed. There’s a surprise for my regular commenters/visitors, though!

Google Docs: Web 2.0 of Microsoft Office!

I absolutely hate editing my own essays for mistakes or major revisions once I put in the last full stop. Maybe it’s because I’m never really proud of my essays, so I get stricken by some sort of fear and embarrassment. So, I always get my boyfriend (who used to write articles for magazines) to check my arguments and grammatical errors.

And here’s where Google Docs comes in. I can upload my essay, add him as a collaborator, and while he makes corrections, I can read them in real time. It’s like an MSN chatroom with Word functions. How freaking cool is that?!

But that wasn’t what I intended to rave about. (See how the lack of brain cells is affecting my post?)

Readability Index and Reading Ease

Google Doc’s most interesting features are the readability indexes, which actually measure the ease and quality of your writing with the audience in mind. It’s a great tool for high school and college students, and even bloggers if you ever want to see how difficult it is to read your own posts.

Flesch Grade Level & Automated Reading Level

Both these indexes tell you how many years of school your reader needs to have attended to be able to fully understand your writing. For this specific essay I wrote (see screenshot), my reader needs to have gone to at least 2-4 years of university.

Flesch Reading Ease

This tells you how complex your writing is. It measures the complexity of your writing according to the amount of syllables in the words you use. The higher the score, the easier to read. So a score of 90 is easily understood by an child, while a score of 30 can only be fully understood by university students.

Clarity is very important for me, so I try to write so that everyone can understand. Usually my essay reading ease is around 40-45. This particular essay is written for a grad school course, so I’m quite happy with my score of 38. As for my blog posts, they have a reading ease of 75 on average, so I’m sure most people can understand what I’m saying.

So what are your reading indexes for blog entries and essays (if you’re a student)?

Actually, scrap that. I’ve done it for my regular commenters. If I missed you out, no hard feelings. I am just far too sleepy. Just let me know and I’ll add you to this list! Those with the asterisk beside their names have English as their second language.

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Prologue: Off to bed for me. And the 30 post ideas I’ve collected will be released all in due time. Come to think of it, that’s enough material for 2 months. Oh, I finally learned how to use Twitter. Add me, if you like.

38 Comments