Writing in China

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Chinaren. 13th Oct 2009.

In my search for various funny photos for Lethargic Friday, I stumbled over www.thoughts.com website. It’s not really just a photo site, but a social networking kind of deal as well.

In their photos area is a wide range of images, ranging from the really quite nice, to the strange, (such as the one below), to the downright bizarre. They’re submitted by various users, which may explain the variety.

There are other things on the site though, from blogs to videos, polls, surveys a news area (rather out of date), a forum and groups area.

I’ve signed up because it looks like it may be a bit of fun, but also because I think it might be quite a good place to add my links and generally advertise my blog etc. Not that I believe in splashing my blog name all over the place, but if you put your links in a forum signature, and then actively and suitably join that community, people will click on them.

These can also be picked up by search engines, which is good for your pagerank and so on and so forth.

I have to say some of the blogs on the site are rather… meh, but there are a few good ones. The videos mostly consist of the usual ‘YouTube’ kind of tosh, though there was one that made me laugh.

I think the key areas here are the forums and groups though. For a bit of promotion, and a bit of fun. It’s not as big as the larger social networking sites, so you stand more chance of being noticed if you contribute well. I’m a member of numerous forums, and they’ve provided a decent amount of traffic over time.

The old lady and I are thinking of taking a break in the sun. Beijing is a pretty happening city, there’s always something going on here, but you need a vacation every now and then.

A guy at work has just been to the Canary islands, Gran Canaria to be precise, and it sounds like he had a great time there. I’ve not been to that area for many a year, and he recommended an online booking site.

I searched for Gran Canaria Holidays and it came up with a bunch of companies, most of them were a bit pricey though.

So another, more specific search: Cheap Gran Canaria Holidays went in! You know what I learned? There are too many holiday companies!

I used a couple of the sites, and compared deals, but most of them are very similar. In the end I chose to go through the same one my colleague went with. He said they were cheap and everything went well. They’re members of ABTA too, which is something to watch for in this day and age of economic stress.

Their website was one of the easier ones to use, so why the heck not? As much as I like Beijing, I’m looking forward to a bit of R&R on a nice beach!

So if you’re looking for Holidays in Gran Canaria give these guys a try.

I’ll see you on the beach!

I'm considering switching this blog over to Wordpress, which I use for my Blog of Lies and Revublog. This one uses the B2Evolution platform.

It's not that this one doesn't do the job, but it doesn't have the scope and add-ons that WP does, and sometimes throws up strange and annoying errrors.

The down-side is that I'll probably have to run a converter or something, and I will lose this pages' Google pagerank, which only went up to three a little while ago. Not that that is so very important, I just hate losing!

Has anyone swapped to WP from another blog? Was it easy? I've set up from scratch of course, but never swapped over an established one.

Some time ago I did my three 'rules' for living in China. (Look back to get the details).

To recap, these are:

1. This is China
2. Nothing can be easy.
3. Never plan ahead.

Howevever I also have various 'sub-rules'.

One of these is:

You have to ask at least three time to get an answer.

I put this down partly to the Chinese 'custom' of not wanting to admit they don't know something. Sometimes it's also that they don't want to tell you, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's just perverse Chinese thinking or mis-communication!

Here's an example, and it is the one that caused me to create this rule.

I was walking along a river with a Chinese friend, when I saw a strange looking building across on the other bank. I asked my friend what that building was.

Answer 1: It's a building.

Really? You think? I asked again.

Answer 2: It's something to do with the river.

I roll my eyes and ask again.

Answer 3: I don't know.

Ah, there you go.