Archive for the 'Blogging' Category
Why do you blog? Why are you so free? Eat full nothing to do ah?
I am sure many of you bloggers out there have heard the same questions? Well, I blog because I enjoy writing. I blog as a record of my activities to remind me about them. Afterall, a blog is an online diary so that is what I use it for. Finally, I blog for peanuts. In other words, I try to kill two birds with one stone within a blog post.
How to I get peanuts? Its all about keywords. Heheh.
I just came back from a trip from Genting Highlands. I write a lengthy blog post about “First World Hotel, Genting Highlands.” From there I garnered lots and lots of search engine results from good ole Google. I love to be on the first page of search results. If I had written a blog post about “My year end trip” I would not be appearing in the search engines for those terms. Who would search for “My year end trip?” So you have to be specific. It also helps myself to be specific because I too can search for my “Genting Trip” by typing “Genting Highlands” in my own customised google search box on each of my blogs to recall details about my trip.
Unfortunately, for that particular post, I only managed to get on the first page for the search term “Genting Highlands brochure” I was No. 3 out of 4,770. See? See? Click on the image for a better view.
I am on page 2 or #12 out of 43,600 for the following search terms “Genting Indoor Theme Park Map” and page 2 or #13 out of about 46,200 for the search term “Drive to Genting”
I am on page 3 or #23 out of 217,000 for “What to do in Genting Highlands”
I am on page 5 or #47 out of 37,700 for “First World Hotel, Genting Highlands”
I am on page 7 or #61 out of 174,000,000 for “First World Hotel”
This list is dynamic so if you were to do a search for the terms right now, it may not appear as what I have listed. 
I may move up or down the list. That is why I did not include the links here. If you search for the very same search terms yourself, you may find that the list is not as what I have mentioned. This list is as at the time of writing.
I may also appear for various other computations of search terms related to Genting Highlands or First World Hotel or Genting Theme Indoor theme park. Hehe.
And if you were to search Google blogs for “Genting Highlands” or “First World Hotel” today 16th December, 2009, you will probably find my “First World Hotel, Genting Highlands” post from Parenting Times right there at number 1. (This post is Number 2).
It won’t stay up there for long though. It will be replaced by later blog posts by others later on. I find that you move down the list on blog search faster than web searches.
So if anyone were to ask me, why you eat free nothing to do ah. You write such a long and boooring post about your trip to Genting Highlands. Who would want to read it?
Well, the answer is… its for myself to read. I sometimes use my own google search box to search for things I can’t recall. It is really useful. Apart from reading it myself, and perhaps it being read by a handful of blogger friends, I hope that it will be found by the search engines.
Why do I want my blog post to rank high in the search engines or my blog to be discovered by random seachers? Hopefully that will cause a ripple effect and it will increase my page views, my blog value for advertisers and hopefully those who came will click on a few of my google ads on the way out. In that way, I would have killed two birds with one stone or rather achieved two objectives with one blog post.
And what is the point of this post? Why, to rank high in search engines for ”Genting Highlands” related searches of course. ;) Oh and did you know that apart from placing relevant search terms in your blog post, it matters when you highlight or put those terms in bold. You should also repeat those terms as often as you can without appearing to do so. For example, you can keep on saying “my Genting Highlands trip” instead of “my trip”. Don’t be lazy with your words. Relevant and related links within your blog posts are important too. This is very simple SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Even an aunty like me can tell you this. ;) Try it. It is fun. You can see results within an hour or less after your post is up.
Oh btw, if you got here because you searched for “Genting Highlands” or “First World Hotel”, why not check out my post on my other blog “First World Hotel Genting Highlands”. It will be much more relevant for you than this.
No matter how good you are in your writing, there is nothing like a picture to complete your story. So, for the sake of blogging, I sacrificed my diet, to have a packet of that Maggie Tasty Lite Instant Noodles just so I could post the picture of it in my earlier post. I even climbed onto a chair to reach into the deep recess of my cupboard to get out my chinese tea cup which I had received in some hamper, just so I could put the teacup to complete my picture.
I wanted to make myself a cup of Jasmine tea to wash down the MSG that I had consummed for the sake of blogging but I was too lazy, so the photo was taken without any Jasmine Tea in it. Its empty, only for the sake of a picture for the sake of my blogging. Hahaha.
Some would call this “Chiak Pah Seow Eng”. If you don’t already know this, that means “Eat Full Too Free” literally translated, or simply “Wasting one’s time on frivolous things”. lol. Ah.. but for bloggers, its not true. I am not too free. I have a dozen things to do in my day but I must have that picture taken to complete my post for the sake of blogging.
So tell me, what have you done for the sake of blogging? Taken photos of every morsel of food you are about to consume (if you are a food blogger) or take a photo of your kid in the midst of a tantrum (if you are a parent blogger) “No honey, kick your legs a bit more to the center please, mummy wants to take a photo” or travel, take pictures and write (wouldn’t that be just wonderful, if only I had the time!), or stayed up till 4am to write review after review after review etc etc?
Oh do share with me what you have done for the sake of blogging. I am not “chiak pah seow eng” so I’ve got to go now to put some plaster into the holes on my ceiling but I hope to read what you have to say when I get back. Thanks for sharing.
I found a good online dictionary to help me learn Chinese yesterday and now I’m torn.
I wanted to get a handheld Electronic Dictionary because it is convenient but is it all that good? Some people say you can’t find many words. Now if I invest in one, I will surely feel frustrated if I can’t find the word that I want!
At RM1,500 it is not a cheap investment. Hubby kept on asking me whether it will be worth it. Won’t a printed dictionary be just as good? I don’t have an answer for him.
At RM1,500 I can buy a lot of things. I can even replace this cranky PC with an original Dell by adding another one or two hundred. This PC won’t start up in the morning properly. I have to press restart before Windows will start up. Geeezzz!
Aiyooo how ar? Nevermind, while I go and think about it, I want to share the online dictionary that I found.
All banana parents who only know English but are sending their child to Chinese school should find this online dictionary useful. I don’t want to repeat what I have written on my other blog, so if you don’t mind, please hop over there to read……
My internet connection went from bad to nothing. So I made….
Telephone calls to call centre. (Several days). Went to shop to have modem checked. (1 day) They checked inside the house. (1 day) They went back to change the port. (1 day) They came back to check the cables outside the house. (1 day) And then they came back to check the cables inside the house (1 day) and said “Its your modem, ma’am.” You can imagine how long this process took. They cannot simply check everything in one day right?
And in between all that checking by the technicians, I had to make several calls to the call centre. One call lasted more than 45 minutes with the girl saying the same thing over and over again and asking me to hold the line over and over again for long periods of time as if I have nothing else to do. In the end, I got so fed up, I hung up while holding the line again with no resolution in sight and answering the same questions over and over again.
My internet connection started having problems on 5th December. It finally got resolved on Saturday, the 13th December. Earlier on they had suspected the modem so I had taken it to the shop to have a check. The man at the shop said it was working fine. Then the technician came over and he didn’t think it was the modem as well. So we went one full circle changing everything before coming back to the modem again. Everyone said that if the modem goes it goes right away. It will mati (die) right away and not act half dead the way mine acted, they all insisted.
So on a wet Saturday morning we went to Digital Mall in PJ to search for another modem. We wanted the same one since we were used to it. The first shop we went to had run out of stock. The second one had one at RM99 so we took that. We wanted to check it out but the busy salesman said “No worries, bring it back in 3 days if you have problems.”
We took the modem home, plugged it on and the power light did not come on. So we changed the power adapter but still no light. I called up the shop and asked if they had another one in stock and they said “Yes, bring it here and we will change it for you.”
When I got there in the heavy rain, they had run out of stock so they refunded me the money instead. The guy accidentally gave me a RM100 so I returned RM1 to him. When I got back, I saw that one of the RM5 bill was burnt in one corner where the serial number was. Bleargh. Should have kept that extra RM1. *Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.*
I then went to the first shop and asked for another more expensive modem model which I had saw earlier but the guy said they had sold that and was out of stock. Oh bother! I held it in my hands just that very morning.
So in the afternoon, I called up Low Yat and found that one of the shops there had the stock at RM70. We drove there in the evening and I went to the shop to get it while hubby drove around with the kids since it was so crowded and jammed up with cars on the roads.
The shops at Low Yat was equally crowded and jammed up with people. I went to the shop that we called but the salesperson ignored me because he was so busy. Finally, I found it myself and told him “I want that box”. I requested him to test it out for me because I didn’t want to have a faulty one again. He told me that I had to pay first then go to the service centre to have it tested.
The “service centre” was further in. A long narrow path filled with people and supplies led to it. I found it at last after asking around. The technicians were in a room with a door made of bars like a jail. Anyway, I squeezed my way through several big sized men and manage to get my box to one of the technicians and told him to “Test this, please.”
Then I had to wait outside the door made of bars together with the several big sized men. I tried to peer my head inside to have a look at what the technician was doing. He requested for my username and password and I gave it to him reluctantly, not trusting them. I couldn’t see what he was doing but at least I saw the power light of the modem light up from where I was peering.
Finally he came out and said, its ok. I couldn’t see him testing him and I was just to take his word that it was ok. Sigh. So I checked the box to make sure that he hadn’t left anything behind. I saw that the a cable and a stand was missing so I asked him for it. He said “I’m sorry, its not included.” The stand was listed as optional and a piece of white paper was stuck over the place where the word “cable” used to be on the place where they listed the items included with the package. “If you want the cable you have to buy separately.” said the technician. When I asked for the stand and the instruction booklets, he got tired of me and asked me to ask the salesman, the busy salesman who ignored me earlier.
Hubby called to ask me to hurry up as the kids were restless and he had been waiting a long time at the side of the road. So I packed the rest of the things back into the box and left. In the car, I told hubby, “No, wonder its so cheap lah. They took out a few things!”
We drove off and hubby then asked me whether the installation CD was there. It wasn’t! Fortunately I have one at home so I didn’t have to turn around and drive back there in the Saturday night jam. Later at home when we tried to install it, I found that there was no guarantee card, nothing. Geez. I won’t go to Low Yat to get my supplies again unless I can’t find it anywhere else like in this case. Sigh!
So I finally installed the new modem and here I am online again after more than a week of bad and no internet connection. Hopefully the modem that I got from Low Yat was not an imitation and won’t die again soon. Sigh.
Right, finished ranting. If you finished reading up to here, thank you for listening to my rant. lol. I had wanted to blog about Christmas shopping and post up pictures of the malls but here I am ranting instead. One week of no connection sure gets to me but hubby said “You know hon, when you are not online, I noticed you can get many things around the house done, the way it should be.” 
Peek-A-Boo! Just testing my online connection. My internet connection has been giving me problems since the 5th of December. Its driving me crazy!
Have called up the call centre so many times. Have you checked your cables? It must be your modem. Maybe its the splitter. Aarrrgh! I even brought the modem to the shop to have it checked but they said it was fine so will you just get your technician down here prompto instead of asking me the same questions each time I call?
Have you checked your cables Miss? Did you try to connect direct? Can you press Start, Accessories then go to Command Prompt. Blah blah blah. Well, it can’t be my modem or cables or splitter right or not, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get online now. The man at the shop told me that if my modem is about to go it will die right away and won’t act half dead so its not the modem.
My phone line was out before but its working fine now. But that darned internet connection…. So better quickly reply to all my comments, answer my email etc etc before it goes off again. So now you see me but next you won’t.
Oh, btw, this contest closes on 20th December. So hurry up, support and join lah. There is only one contestant at the moment, so the chances of winning is very high. Less man, more chances. Thats the way with contests. 
Right, better publish this before I lose my internet connection again. The internet light is blinking weakly again.
I couldn’t access this blog this morning. So I updated my other blogger blogs instead:
Its Easier Now that the kids are 4 & 6
Aaaaahhhh…. the beauty of having more than one blog.
If you don’t already have more than one blog, its time you start another. Oh, but make sure its on different accounts and servers. For example not all on blogger or wordpress etc. Spread them out so that you always have a backup to satisfy your blog craving. Hahaha.
Yesterday, I got the girl’s piano class time mixed up. I was trying to get her into the shower when *ding dong* the teacher had arrived. So I hurriedly pulled her back out and headed for the door.
After piano class, it was too late to bathe the kids so I sent them off to nap. It was rather late by then so they didn’t nap, after all. Then it was dinner time.
After dinner, I was doing some things for hubby and by the time I was done it was almost 9pm. I decided to bathe the kids and get them straight into their pyjamas since they missed their afternoon naps. Then I gave them their milk. (BTW, my late mum would probably have given me a good and proper scolding for bathing the kids after 7pm).
The room was in a total disarray. The bed was still unmade because I didn’t have time to do it after the kids had their “nap”. Toys and cards were everywhere. So I said ….”Children (much like the way, Maria from The Sound of Music would), remember you said you wanted to play the memory matching game? Well, its rather late now, so if you still want to have the time to play a bit before we sleep, you have to help mummy pack ok? Mummy is going to have a bath now and going to wash your bottles. By the time, I’m up, I want to see all of these toys gone and the pillows and blankets put nicely in the right place. Remember to pick up the cards too so that we have all the cards we need to play the memory game.”
Then I went to have a shower. By the time I came out, the toys had disappeared! The bed was made, the pillows were where they should be, the bedspread was nicely pulled out. The bed looked very inviting. I wish I could jump into it. Haha.
How to Stay Sane Rule #1: Be innovative! Instead of yelling at the kids to pick up the toys and then swearing under your breath while you make the bed. Give the kids a reason to pack up themselves. It’ll be done faster than you can do it yourself. Haha.
So I sat down and played the memory match game with the kids for a while. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to get them to brush their teeth during their shower. Normally, I get them to brush their teeth BEFORE they change into their pyjamas because they almost always get half their top and bottoms wet when they brush. You might think that getting the kids to brush their teeth is such and easy task but really, it can be quite stressful and time consumming. Haha.
How to stay Sane Rule #2: When you realise that you’ve messed up. Give yourself a break. Don’t sweat it. And so I sent the kids off to bed with their milk stained teeth. Pssst. I don’t always do this. Sometimes when I forget to get them to brush BEFORE changing into pyjamas, I would roll up their sleeves, then stand holding a towel between them and the sink to make sure they don’t get their pyjamas wet. Really siao!
Well, so we’re done and in bed reading 10 stories which they had picked. 5 each! Fortunately they were rather short stories. When we were almost ready to turn off the lights, I heard a voice. It said….
“Hon, you long time never massage my feet for me already hoh?”
The kids were happy to hear that as it means they can stay awake longer. So we all jumped into the bed in the adjoining room to wait for daddy to get ready for bed. After the massage and the tv watched daddy instead of the other way around, I took the kids to bed.
Soon enough, I heard soft heavy breathing from the two of them and then I stared into the darkened ceiling wide awake! I was sleepy before but after making sure everyone goes to sleep I can’t sleep anymore!
How to stay Sane Rule #3: When you can’t sleep, don’t sweat it. Think about your next blog post. And that my friend was how this blog post came into fruition. Hahaha. No, I was just kidding. When you can’t sleep, don’t think about your blog, its bound to keep you awake even more! So don’t blog in your head if you want to sleep.
In another unrelated incident, we were shopping when the boy suddenly announced that he had to poo. He said “No” when we asked him “Can you wait?” (Bad parents. Hehe.) So I had to trudge 2 floors down the department store to find a toilet. When I finally did, I decided to take him to a squatting toilet as I was worried that the sitting ones would be dirty. Well, the toilets weren’t child friendly. I had to squat down in front of him to support him because with his little jeans, he could barely stretch to open his legs to reach the sides.
Finally, we found a workable position, so there I was squatting and supporting him and holding a pile of tissue papers which I had retrieved from my handbag with one hand while holding him. And there he was looking up at me, smiling broadly and singing the Christmas songs that was playing in the background! “Aiyah, baby, don’t sing lah. Concentrate” to which he smiled even more and said “Singlah, mummy, sing.” And so I smiled back at him and sang. This is as good a moment of bonding as any, I suppose. (His father and sister were waiting impatiently at another level of the department store and here he was taking his own sweet time but I suppose you can’t really rush your poo. Hahaha.)
How to stay sane Rule #4: When in an unusual situation, don’t sweat it. Hum Christmas hymms instead. lol. (And as a mother of young kids, you are bound to be caught in lots and lots of unusual situations, you can be sure of that!). So stay cool. (Psssst. I’m not always cool. Quite often I raise my voice and throw a tantrum. Hahaha. So I must remember this rule myself.)
Well, after squatting there singing Christmas hymms for a while, I stood him up and pulled up his jeans. “But mummy, I not yet ummm mmmm.” he protested. “Nevermind, we try again next door.” And we tried the sitting WC in the next cubicle because he wasn’t used to squatting. One more Chrismas song and we were done. Hahaha. Cursing under my breath and asking him to hurry up is not going to make the poo come out any sooner so might as well sing instead. lol!
How to stay Sane Rule #5: Ask your maid to do it. Well, thats what I’ve been told but sorry, this is NOT ONE OF MY STAYING SANE RULES.
For example, where was my maid when I was squatting down in the toilet with the kid? She was right outside the toilet door chatting with the toilet janitor who was also and Indonesian. I told her to wait for us outside. Some friends think I am “crazy”. “Why don’t you ask your maid to do it?” However, I strongly believe that all this moments in parenting, the good and the not so fun is what makes you bond with your child, so I prefer to do it on my own.
I remember my friends commented to me that “Wuah, now you got maid, you free already lah. When you eat outside you can eat without being disturbed as your maid can help you feed the kids.” However, whenever we eat out, I continue to stuff myself and the kids all at the same time like I used to do, while the maid enjoys her meal uninterrupted. When I told them that feeding the kids should be the mother’s job they think I am quite mad.
Well, taking care of young kids can really drive you mad. This is how I sometimes stay sane. (accept for Rule #5 which is my exception to the rules.)Â How do you stay sane?
I love to personalize my pages. One of the pages that loads whenever I switch on my PC is my personalized iGoogle Homepage. My husband doesn’t bother with personalization. Maybe he doesn’t have the time. Hehe.
My personalized iGoogle Homepage contains the RSS to all the local news. I read the foreign news from Google News so I don’t add it here. I have The Malaysian Insider, MySinchew News, The Star Online, NST Current, Malay Mail, Bernama, EMedia News, Malaysiakini. Everything also sapu for a balanced view. Hehe.
Then I have Inspirational Quotes because I like to look at beautiful pictures and read positive words. I have the KL weather, a dictionary and a translator. And of course I have a link to my Gmail and Google Reader plus all the RSS to all my blogs so that dear Google bot would not miss it. Hahaha. I read this tip somewhere.
Sometimes I add new gadgets to my personalized page and sometimes I remove it when I am bored with it. The above is what I have currently.
And at the moment I am using this really beautiful theme on the header. Its called Winter Village. It has a lovely snow scene with the sun that rises and sets in real time and a sky that brightens and darkens with it. Thats just so cool and the headers are all in a nice calming blue. I like it. I think the theme is just nice to put me in a Chrismasy mood. Hehe. I’m too lazy to do a screenshot but you can check out the link if you are interested. And no, this is not a sponsored post. Hehe. I just wanted to share the link to this theme because I love it!
Do you personalize your Yahoo, MSN, Google pages? What do you have on it?
I never thought it would happen but it finally did.
I started blogging in November 2004. Now after 4 years of blogging, I finally ran out of things to say. I remember at one time, in my peak, I could post several blog posts in a day. Now, I can’t even publish a post in a week.
I’ve become lazy to blog. I even forgot my 4th year blog anniversary till I wrote this. And I wrote this in desperation…… before my blog MATI! lol.
Well, I’ve got to go and update the rest of my blogs now, before they all MATI too. And hopefully, I will get my momentum back after that.
Its coming towards the last quarter of the year. A very busy time. The girl has all sorts of activities. She is going to be one of the emcees in her kindy concert and its a tough act. There are 5 pages to memorise and she’s got to speak in English, Malay and Chinese together with the other little emcees. The words they are using are big big bombastic words. Some of them are really hard to pronounce. I think they would sound more natural using plain simple language but no, I suppose the kindy wants to show off what a great vocabulary the kids have trilingually. So its tough.
Then theres the piano concert. I’ve got a solo piece and a duet piece with the girl. More practise. Plus theres her year end assessment at the kindy too but I’ll leave that to the teachers.
Oh and I must not forget about the poor boy. He feels left out in all our practises. The other day when I went to see the paed because we were all sick again, she wanted to refer us to a psychologist (to find out if he is dyslexic) because of his mirror image writing and because he can’t read very well yet. We decided that we should wait for another 6 months to see his progress.
That means I must spend more time with him now. He’s been sorely neglected. Its only 2 months to the year end school holidays. That means I can only have 2 months of one to one time with him in the mornings. I better utilise that time to teach him.
I’ve been meaning to do that for the whole year now but it hasn’t materialised. Bad momma. How quickly the time has passed.
Next year the girl will be entering primary school and the boy entering kindy. Gotta prepare them both for it and myself too. Again the girl has extra practise learning to read Chinese at home with me. I’ve got to spend more time with the boy!
And then I’ve got to work on losing those 5 pounds I gained and more.
What does that mean? Less time for momma of course. Less time blog hopping. So if you don’t see me on your blogs, its because I have to force myself to press “Mark all as read” on my feedreader. Sob. Sob. Thats very hard to do. (for a self confessed blogaholic).
