just minishorts.

Gosh, the number of posts related to blogs these days. Well it seems as if we're running out of topics, but experience tells me this is but a recurring cycle. Anyway, I'm jumping on the bandwagon and going to show you why I'm still one of the grand-old-dames of the Malaysian blogosphere. (Perasan sikit here, don't mind me.) Am too lazy to compose a new piece so I'm recycling one that I wrote two years ago.

You know how you have your regular blog-visits to this and that homey-domains? How you walk in eager to find out what's happening in this and that person's life at the moment? How you are greeted with exuberance, anger, joy, excitement… cascades of emotional outbursts, page after page, day after day that you walk into that very private yet so public, almost oxymoronic site that reveals so much, yet so little about that person who chooses to be the entire real self, or not-so-real self… depending on how you really want to look at it?

You get addicted to these people. You read about their lives and you laugh, sometimes you cry. You form an affinity with strangers who are no longer strangers, as the more you read, the more you seem to know these people. You read the excerpts that seem to spill blood, sweat and sometimes, yes, even vomit, and you think, 'Good Lord, what on earth is this person talking about?' but most of the time you go, 'He/she's amazing,' as you see the words flow, line after line, the liquidity of the fluency.

If you own a blog, like I do, you'll get the racy fan-comments. Like 'I love your site!', or 'This is amazing!' and your heart flips happily… you get frequent visitors who come back day after day to read what's going on in your life. Soon you'll find that writing that blog does not become something that you do for yourself entirely, no matter how much you convince yourself that it is. It becomes a kind of a duty to yourself, and your readers… you want people to know you're okay. Or if you write pseudo-fictitious posts, you make it a point to drag your ass to the computer and start typing some crap.

And then there are the bad times, for all the good times. You get spammed! By bots promoting porn sites. By people who come in leaving private guestbook messages tell you, 'I'm glad you're fine now,' but not having the guts to tell you in person even though they possess knowledge of how to contact you in real life in all manners possible. You get insulted by people who say that you write bad English *when they don't even know that this particular blogger just so happens to one of the people who has reviewed many of the MUET exam guidebooks in the country as part of her job*. You get people who either intentionally, or unintentionally test your patience with what you consider accusations and insults. Most of the time it's unintentional, I hope.

But most of all, you get addicted to both writing and reading the blogs. You form a relationship with the blogosphere; something that I think has become a living organism of sorts. You know that in this evolutionary and revolutionary thing, there's birth, growth, death and well, several re-births. You visit sites that go on hiatus, either temporary or permanent, and you pray for the owners, hoping that you'll see them return to the society of bloggers again. You pray so earnestly, that you make it a point to leave their links on your blogroll, and you visit the empty sites at least weekly, if only to see a sign of their return.

Mostly, I'm talking about Malaysia. Include the world, and you'll know we're worthy of a pseudo-UN membership… if only to have our voices heard, and our rights protected.

Welcome to Blogger-nation.

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