恭喜發財!

My new year wishes for my Taiwanese, Chinese and Singaporean friends

My own handwriting, scanned.

My blog's traffic for 2010

My blog's traffic for 2010

I've noticed that some bloggers published their annual blog stats, which gave me the idea to publish mine. Actually my title should be "My blogs' traffic", as most of you know, I have 3 blogs (with 3 feeds), but they're all from one Blogger account and have the same name. That's my concept and it's really going well for me.

1 My stats for December 2010

I had 21,640 unique visits (and 60,132 page views), which is 698 visits per day.

2 My stats for the whole 2010

I had 212,182 unique visits (and 476,091 page views), which is 581 visits a day.

3 Subscriber stats

My main blog (this one) has 171 subscribers in Google reader, my Quick-post blog has 37 and my photo blog has 5, because it's relatively new. There are of course more feed aggregators, but I haven't checked any other than the one from Google. I've also noticed that there must be at least 20 regular visitors, who bookmarked my blog and about 30 who come irregularly, but also bookmarked one of my blogs or posts.

4 Most popular posts

Believe it or not, my most popular posts are usually the one about women. They bring me the most traffic from Google and that's why I like to write them. They increase my blog's searchability and many people are browsing my other stuff, too, when they come here looking for a post about a certain model or singer. My best day was August 25, when I had 7747 visitors on my blog in one single day and they were all reading my most popular post of 2010: Visit Taipei in traditional Chinese (22235 views in the whole year). The runner-up post was about Elly Tran Ha (18990 views in the whole year) and third was about Yao Yao (15862 views in the whole year). It's funny that these two posts became so popular, because they're so simple and boring. But for some reason they always show up close to the top of Google's search results, even though there are thousands of posts about these two (former) internet sensations.

5 Plans for 2011

I doubt that I can top 2010's traffic, but if I come close to it, I'll already consider it a huge success. I'm just a simple blogspot blog, who writes about so many different things, so I think my traffic is not bad. Sure, I hope I could have around 1000 daily views and double my subscribers, but that's hard to predict. I'll continue to write personal, funny, trivial and encyclopedic posts, mixed with my travelogues and foodventures. A lot will be about Taiwan, because that's where I will soon relocate, but I try to make it general and interesting also to those, who don't care about the country so much. I can't wait to go around Taipei with my girlfriend's DSLR and visit all the night markets, temples and famous spots. I do aspire to be the number 1 blog on Taipei and one of the best resources on Taiwan in general. Besides, my girlfriend and I plan to visit Japan, not sure, if we can make it, though. If we do make it, be sure I'll blog about it for a month. Regarding my layout, I'm never really satisfied. The buttons I use on my sidebars are all made with Photoshop and are in jpg. format. I'm thinking about making a CSS styled vertical navigation bar. And also I think I'm gonna make all my 3 blogs same color, so it'll really look like one.

What do you think about these ideas regarding the layout?
What was your traffic for 2010 and which posts and topics were most popular?

De-lurk: Tell me what brings you here

Dear silent reader,

I would be happy, if you comment below and tell me what brings you to my blog regularly. You can comment anonymously or not, whatever you choose, it's fine to me. Just tell me what is it that makes you return here either daily or occasionally, I'm just curious about it. I've noticed that I have some regular daily visitors coming to my blog from Taiwan, USA, Canada, Russia, Malaysia, Germany and Slovenia. Of course there are many occasional visitors from countries like Singapore, Philippines, France, UK, Australia, Mauritius and Japan. And I'm sure also from elsewhere, I just can't track everybody, because I have on average about 500 visits a day, sometimes even more.

I'm very happy about everybody, who loves to frequent here, that's something that keeps me going. I'm sorry that lately I'm not very productive on this blog, but that's because I'm busy with many things. But wait till I come to Taiwan, I'll have a lot to blog about for sure. Hopefully you won't get tired of me.

So, once again, I ask you: What brings you here regularly? What do you like to read? Is it because of me or is it my content? Whatever you write or reveal about yourself and your reasons, I'll be happy to read, because I'm very curious. And remember: You can comment anonymously, if you want, you can comment in German, Slovenian, Chinese, I'm fine with it.

I'll work hard to provide good posts in the future,

all the best in 2011 to all of us.

Your MKL

I was Top Tweet on Twitter!

When your tweet gets retweeted several hundred times you feel like a celebrity

Look, my tweet appeared on Twitter's homepage!

Twitter never ceases to amaze me. Today I sign in and see that HATE MALAYSIA is on trending topics. Since I have a connection with the country, I was curious about it and found out that at a soccer match Malaysian fans blinded the Indonesian goal keeper with lasers (source). Seriously, that was pretty lame. Whoever did that, does not understand the spirit of fair play. However the incident, incited by one or few people, started an online war between Malaysians and Indonesians on Twitter and other social networks. I read some tweets, became angry and wrote this:

It was a simple tweet written out of an impulse. I didn't expect much. But then suddenly people started to retweet it, Malaysians, Indonesians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Indians... first 3, then 20, then 62... then over 100. Suddenly I got tons of new followers, people reposted my words few hundred times. I could not believe what was happening. Not only that, so many gave me feedback, most was positive, but some accused me of being racist, a white supremacist or that I don't understand the situation in Asia. Some also asked, if in the West there was no hate. Those were the ones, that would also add something derogatory about USA.

I was RTed by @toptweets. Felt great to see my face up there. Didn't I look cool? :-P

So let me explain my epic tweet. The things I mentioned of course were generalizations, simplifications and a bit exaggerated. But what do you expect from a tweet? What else can I say in 140 signs other than something with a point, something that hits you right in the face?

Those who know me, know how hard I try to understand the reality from multiple sides and how I want to be a bridge between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe. I always try to see things for two sides in every issue. And accusing me of being a racist or white supremacist based on this tweet is hilarious, albeit baseless. My point was to highlight the silly conflicts in Asia, that always make netizens go haywire and attack each other.

Just recently there was an incident in taekwondo, where a Taiwanese athlete was disqualified unfairly by a Korean referee (source) and Taiwanese netizens went berserk, created numerous I hate Koreans groups on Facebook, some even burned Korean flags. How can you hate all people of a country because of one single incident that only involved few people? I understand the anger, but sometimes things go too far. And that was part of the reason I wrote that tweet. If you ask me, there are too many conflicts in Asia (like the one in Korea recently). And we saw how real and deadly it can become. It always starts with words, words of hate. Then incidents follow, the hate grows and suddenly there's no way back and something really bad happens. Be it in Europe or Asia, I'm against all hate. I was always against hating certain groups, just because few people from that group have done something bad.

Luckily most Asian people, who have read my tweet, got the point, that's why it became top. The most important part of my tweet is the question at the end: How about love? My point was to make you think. It's so easy to be angry and say stupid things, because you can switch off your brain and just follow what everybody does. It's harder to pause for a while and ask yourself, if it's really right to hate someone for something very trivial. And that exceeds race and culture, it's sadly a very human flaw.

Let me share some of the interesting responses to my tweet:

It was fun to be celebrity for few hours. Now I know a little what it means to be when people attack celebs or want to be their friend. It's not easy. So many asked me to follow back, but I'm very selective and don't just follow anyone. So hope you guys understand that. But I will always try to reply to someone, if I get @ed.

UPDATE: @Favstar50 has just notified me, that my tweet was favorited 51 times and retweeted 623 times. That's plain crazy :P

Jaws

Photo by Lily.