Blog Recommendations.....布落格推薦.....

In my blogging life, i have met quite a number of bloggers and also found many things in common with some bloggers. I would like to write about these interesting blogs and bloggers.....

(1) The Plunge: I recommended his blog a few months bck as one of the best blogs written by a caucasian (he is living in South Korea and married to a South Korean woman) about the WW2 issue and Japan. I absolutely agree with almost everything he writes regarding Japan and the War. Since then, i was shocked to find out a few months bck that he has a very serious illness and that he stopped blogging. I wish him the best of luck and hope he recovers soon. Many other readers also wished him well....i do hope he is fine and doing well now....

(2) Beijing or Bust: This blog i came across because it was recommended by the influential China media and advertising blog 'Danwei'. The blogger is quite well known in the blogosphere and was once the North East Asia editor for the well-known blog aggregator 'Global Voices'. One of my blog posts was even put onto their daily roundups of recommended posts around the world because of this blogger. The blogger is originally from China and went to the United States to study and spent years there working as well. He returned to China and resided in Beijing around 2 yrs bck. However, as the blogger is an activist who made documentaries about underground Churches in China, i was horrified to learn that he was arrested and detained by the chinese authorities sometime in Feb this yr i think. He had more in common with me than i thought and i only realised it when he was arrested. As he never used his real name, even on 'Global Voices' , where he used a fake name, i never knew what his name was. However, after he was arrested and detained for a month with his whereabouts unknown, the international blogosphere started a campaign to free him and this blogger actually became quite a 'celebrity blogger' during the time he was detained. A special blog was set up to free him with badges made of him posted on many individual blogs all campaigning to free him...It was then i realised his real name was Wu Hao and that Hao was the same Chinese character as mine....he had added my blog link as one of his friends sometime bck and i was surprised given that he didn't have many links in his blog which means he only adds those blogs which he really likes....it must have been this common thing we had, one chinese character in our names, which he felt affinity with. Furthermore, i was half-taiwanese and his boyfriend is also taiwanese (yep he is Tong zhi), which must have made him feel even more friendly towards me. The thing is the Chinese authorities would have checked his blog AND his links which meant the Chinese INTELLIGENCE authorities must have visited my blog before!!!! And i am sure they would have suspected if Wu Hao was also the author of my blog given our similar names...which means even my links and commenters's blogs may have been visited by Chinese authorities previously!!
Anyways, the good thing is Wu Hao has been freed a month or so bck, after heavy campaigning by his sister and family, and the international blogging community. Actually, even US magazines and US senators apparently took up campaigning to free Wu Hao. I am glad he is free now and i do hope he is recovering well and will remain free.

(3) When Fame is not Everything!: This blog is another recommended one as it is just so frank and true that u almost feel like u know the blogger personally even without meeting him! (well i have so i know roughly what he is like) It has become one of my favourite blogs now as i like really frank and honest blogs where the blogger pours out his feelings and emotions. It is similar to other 'frank and honest' blogs (unlike mine,haha, i just cannot pour out everything in my life to a bunch of strangers) such as Ck's blog and Legolas's blog.

(4) Koyuuken: This blogger is really interesting.....i found his blog thru the comment he left on someone's blog whom i visit regularly who lives in Melbourne.....that time his blog was down but i saw his blogger profile and i found him a very interesting guy since it was filled with his love for Japan and japanese culture. Given that we were both malaysians and both interested in japan and japanese language, i added him on MSN which was given. We didn't really talk until later when he messaged me and i find him a really interesting person. Of cos, my interest in Japan is NO where near his interest in Japan. I find it extremely interesting to find a Malaysian soooooo SUPER INTO Japan that he wants to become Japanese!!!! I asked him before!! Anyone whom has read my archives would know that i absolutely DETEST the Japanese when it comes to WW2 issues given that WW2 in Asia is one of my most interested areas....I like Japanese food, tokyo life and the Japanese language...however i am certainly not crazy about Japan nor do i EVER want to become Japanese...however, Koyuuken wants to become Japanese and he is absolutely crazy over Japan...i find it soo interesting why a malaysian chinese male would love Japan so much?!!! I mean his MSN nick is almost always something in Japanese which is kinda cool cos most of his friend's dun even understand japanese which means its kinda code language for people like me given that i understand sometimes. Other times, even i dun understand as he uses a lot phrases from anime which is too difficult and colloquial for me...sometimes he even leaves comments in other ppl's blogs in japanese!! i mean if u see him, he is just ur average malaysian guy, even his dress sense is normal, not japanese style, so i really dunno why he loves Japan so much....i actually told him about the evils of Japan in WW2 but he says its history.....haha...i am just glad he is still talking to me on MSN after i criticised his beloved Japan...his japanese is improving VERY fast and sometimes he asks me japanese questions on MSN which i find difficult to answer....gosh...i really must maintain my japanese level....anyways i like his blog alot as it has tons of pics and he is very cute in his writing...cos his english is not that good so sometimes the expressions are funny....ganbatte koyuuken:)

(5) 男能可貴: I really like his blog with sections about his life, novels, and MOST importantly......he puts up so many pics of REALLY and i mean REALLY good looking cute guys, i mean these boys are just the type of men i like...i dun even know where he manages to find their pics....and they dun even look like models, they seem to be just ur average boy-next-door...people who have posted their own pics on the web and then re-posted by this blogger...so do check his blog out sometime...in Chinese language..so sorry for those of u who dun understand Chinese.....

(6) Penang Hokkien Podcast: This is a Penang Hokkien language podcast (an online free on-demand radio) by a Penang blogger currently living in the United States...he has his own podcast called Ongline which is also in my links section....i really like this podcast as it is in Hokkien and its kinda funny hearing them talk about stuff in Hokkien, feels really good...actually most of the speakers are Penang ppl currently residing overseas....so thats kinda fun too.....ppl like me...oh, btw, the podcast owner John Ong is a tongzhi too....haha.......

Another note of interest, just to remind ourselves of just how small the world is, i recently came across a Singaporean blog whose blogger has the same english name as me...i was researching on Thailand and the results came out in the hundreds of blogs with posts on Thailand....obviously i didn't know which one to choose...then his name caught my attention given it was the same as my name and further i may not have went to his blog if not for the way he spelled his name...he gave two spellings and it was a common mistake i encountered when ppl tried spelling my name in high school too! anyways, i just realised two of his links are to blogs i have visited before whom are friends of ppl i kinda know...wow...what a small world...

All the blogs i mentioned are in my links section so head there now:)