My 5th Year Blog Anniversary...

Above: This is the Cheongsam-Style clothing I made recently. It's my first one made in Australia. I bought the exquisite cloth at a boutique named Bird Textiles Emporium located on Surry Hills, it's really expensive, even with the 50% discount, costing me AUD$80 for 2 metres. I found, with plenty of luck, a tailor whom had experience making cheongsams and aodais, cos she just immigrated to Australia from Vietnam recently! How cool was that...(the Vietnamese costume is called the Aodai and is virtually indistinguishable from the Chinese Cheongsam.) The tailor shop is even in the CBD! The tailoring costs matched my cloth costs. (I just love the light-weight transparent feel of the cloth and swallows pattern on it!!) The material is hand-printed in Australia, not machine printed...that's why its so expensive!


This month May 2010, marks the 5th Year Anniversary of my blog...I started this blog whilst on exchange in Tokyo, Japan back in 2005 as I felt living on student exchange in a foreign and exciting city like Tokyo would provide a cool experience for me to record down my time there as well as be part of the cool emerging trend of owning a blog as the blogging thing was only becoming more popular back in 2004 and 2005.

I first started out recording trivial stuff about my life in Tokyo and interesting things I encountered in daily life and later on included my takes on topics and social issues of interest to me such as women's rights and gay issues. I never spoke about personal issues on the blog but started doing so a year after my blog in 2006 and have continued to be as open as I feel comfortable in posting about my personal life. I also included a childhood picture once in one of my post as well as started annual posts e.g. WW2 Anniversary Posts as well as themed posts such as ones on HK Cinema and Women's rights or Gay Media.

I have also opened up opportunities to meet and have email contact with some readers of mine throughout the years. I would also like to take this opportunity, as I have done in past years, on my blog anniversary posts, to invite readers interested to please leave me their email address with a short comment on this post and I'll get in touch with you:)

As I have always revealed, e.g a photo of me during childhood, certain things about myself as the years have gone by, I thought it was time to reveal something else which I think many readers, old and new (of course, if you have contacted me before or have come from certain types of weblogs over to my blog via links or am just attune to 'those kind of stuff' through time, would have already realised) have sometimes misunderstood my identity....I am a male blogger.

Yes, I am a guy.

I understand with my frequent posts on women's issues and feminist rights which I am genuinely passionate about, many have come to have that kind of misunderstanding (what, with my passion for the cheongsam! haha...). I felt it was now the time to reveal that about myself, given it being my 5 year blog anniversary, and the general impression my blog has given about my gender. I however, have never expressly or purposely attempted to pretend to be female although certainly at times it had hindered how i expressed myself in terms of romantic descriptions. I think some readers should know what I am referring to given what I have written about in the past....

I hope I will have many years to come in my blogging life, as I realise many blogs I used to surf have shut down and many bloggers throughout my blogging life have stopped blogging altogether due to their own personal reasons. I may also stop one day but I hope that day won't be soon. Please continue to support me and my blog and do continue to leave your comments.



Thanks!

PS: I just found out in Chatswood, 'New Shanghai' serves delicious Chinese Rice Wine Glutinous Rice Ball Dessert called 酒酿圆子汤. I've always liked this dessert which was introduced to me in Taiwan. I've passed it several times but never tried and decided to give it a go this time.
You can have it with small tangyuen or sesame-paste tangyuen.

So Sydneysiders, do give it a try next time you're in Chatswood!