Today is a special day of sorts. Isidor's Fugue has now been in existence for exactly 1 year. The first post was mostly an "I think therefore I am" proof of existence. That reminds me of a night when I was a teenager and briefly convinced myself that "I think therefore I am" was not necessarily true. This greatly worried me for a few moments until I realized the flaw in my logic. I was quite relieved. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I have no memory of how I originally reached the erroneous and bizarre conclusion. I will just say that I was very tired at the time.
Anyways, this blog most certainly exists (at least in my mind). But I'm not sure I would have gotten started when I did without a most wondrous opportunity offered by James Fallows to be a guest blogger on his blog at The Atlantic. As he noted in his introduction, we had corresponded frequently about a variety of mutual interests including China, technology, and beer and first met each other in person at the World Expo in Shanghai. When he invited me to guest blog I was surprised, honored, and very excited.
So, for one week I was able to put my words and photos on The Atlantic. Some of my posts went in directions I had not expected, and the week culminated in one of the most sleep-deprived states of my life. It was great, and I learned a tremendous amount from the experience. And while there are some posts I would especially love to rewrite, there are others that I still enjoy -- one is my first post there, which was my first blog post anywhere and posted the day before my first post here. It thanked Fallows and a family in Wuzhou, Guangxi for their very different, but both very special, invitations. You can read it here. Another post I wrote explained some of the motivation for this blog's name. You can read the post about fugues here. Finally, one of the photos I shared particularly caught the attention of my host and you can find his worthy comments on a photo that may look familiar to you here.
Of course all of that is not on this blog, but it was certainly the start of my blogging and helped attract some initial readers here.
I am going to avoid yammering on about the past year of blogging. Instead, I want to address a question that I am sure many of you are asking yourselves at this very moment, "What can I do to celebrate this exciting birthday?!?"
And now a few of you may be thinking, "Yippee! Here comes the PayPal link!"
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you. There will be no PayPal link today. I do not even have ads for you to click.
Instead, my suggestion is simpler (and cheaper).
Share a link to this blog or a specific post you like to some of your friends, coworkers, family, or whoever. It should only take a minute unless you want to do it by stone tablet. If you do it that way, please send a photo.
If you can not think of what you would like to share, how about cats, monkeys, frogs, or a dog that served as a tour guide for me one afternoon in Taiwan? Or if you are more interested in technology how about a post on a Chinese lady's opinion of the problems Google was facing in China last year or a comparison of Google Maps and the surprisingly flashy-at-times Baidu Map? Interested in censorship in China? Maybe a post about a waitress's opinion regarding her inability to access Facebook or another comparing students in mainland China and Taiwan would do the trick. Want to share some scenes from China instead? How about photos of the city of Hengyang, Hunan province, the beautiful villages of minority cultures around Kaili, Guizhou province, or the fascinating Islamic culture I saw in Zhaotong, Yunnan province? Food your thing? Well, then how about tasty items from Hanoi, Vietnam or a comparison of Italian and Taiwanese food culture? And of course there are the recent posts about Xiaoxin such as the story of her first payday in Shanghai.
Whatever floats your boat. Easy, eh?
And if nothing else, it may help convince me that I exist if my thinking about my thinking ever goes awry once more.
Yes, it's late again.
Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing. More of course is on the way.
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