Help !!!

As you may well notice, something went terribly wrong with the template of my blog here. I am trying to work it out, but in the meantime, I beg you to bear with me ... or send me your welcome advice on how I can get that sidebar to be a ... well, sidebar again, instead of a "bottombar".

One new blog a day ...

From a blog-spotting perspective, this has been a good week. I even think it's fair to say it has been an excellent week.

First I ran into J's "Jottings of the Granite Studio", which makes for really very refreshing reading on Chinese history and how it links into modern China and the rest of the world, or just the opposite way round. Can't go wrong with a guy who can actually blog an entire entry on how he got to the name.

Then today, I stumbled into "The Opposite End of China", a China blog by an American laowai on life at China's outer regions with focus on Xinjiang. Still a lot to be discovered over on that site, but I couldn't resist drawing attention to the magnificent pictures of Michael's last trip to Tibet. I was especially charmed by this one:



The charm, apart from the beautiful colors of the sky, comes entirely from the angle from which it is shot. Not the seen-that-one-thousand-times (yawn, yawn ...) frontal view of the Potala Palace, but a more distant shot from the side, contrasting the building with the relative chaos of the other urban dwellings in front and making it look like one of these Japanese fortified castles like you're bound to see in for instance Kurosawa's "Ran".

Love it, and the best part ... there's plenty more to be enjoyed.

To enter into the light ...

There's this magazine where I live, that every year, around Newyear, invites the people with name and fame in our small country to answer a few questions on their best and worst experiences of the past 12 months and one of the questions deals particularly with what they consider has been the major trend of that period. So you get to see a lot of answers that refer to the political upheavals we've all witnessed, or to the growing -ism's worldwide (nationalism, egocentrism, puritanism ...) with an occasional young mother happily stating the birth of her son or daughter was THE event of the year and she didn't care about all the rest.

This year, I was wondering by myself what I would have answered to that question. The answer became clear to me when I saw an article stating the number of blogs there were around in China: it was up in the millions ! And then I saw Technorati, keeping track of 30 million blogs ! So it became clear to me that one of the major trends going on worldwide is definitely this thing called "blogging". As it is, I think we are probably only just witnessing the beginning of this phenomenon, that in my view is due -or more carefully expressed: potentially has the power- to have a major impact on the decision processes that rule the way this world functions.

Someone has invented free speech and it's a computer tool. Glory Hallelujah ... !!!

It seems like the Genie is out of the bottle, now it's time to find out what kind of a Genie was in there in the first place.

But why, then I wondered, is blogging seemingly such a huge succes ? What's the attraction? While I was pondering the question, it was this song from Patricia Kaas that came to my mind as (maybe only just part) of the answer:

"Entrer dans la lumière,
Comme un insecte fou ..."

(To enter into the light,
like a crazy insect ...)

Isn't that part of why we all do what we do on our blogs? For sure, we don't all belong to the class of the bold and the beautiful that get followed by the spotlight wherever they go, but we all want our five minutes of fame. At some time, we all want to be under the glow of that light shining on just you, to be there up that stage and the audience at your feet, holding it's breath in awe of your every move. So we have come to flock to that biggest stage on earth that has become the World Wide Web, we are attracted to it like the insect at night is attracted by the light. And we perform, we blog about whatever comes to our mind. Some may harvest big rounds of applause, some will have to do with just one shadow sitting in the back of the theatre and walking off without a sound. But at least, we will have been there and we'll know how it felt. The rest is up to each of us.

So, yes, I decided to also start a blog of my own, mostly because I was always better at writing than I was at talking, and maybe now I'm already not much of writer anymore. But at least, now I have a space where I CAN ventilate some of my thoughts, be it about China, movies, my personal self ... I haven't figured out yet where exactly I want to take this blog to, I'm keeping the options open. For now, I'll just spread my tiny little wings and be off ... into the light.