This site will soon no longer incur costs, thanks to PayPerPost.

I first started taking up post opportunities from PayPerPost on 2 April 2007, and I’m glad the wait is not in vain, for I have chalked up 17.50USD in my paypal account, and am waiting for about 50USD more to be rolling in. All this in just a month! Okay, it may not be a lot of money, but for just merely 8 short posts, I think I will continue doing this for a while (the least offer amount for a post is 5.00USD, but there are many opportunities that offer more).

I have requested to withdraw money from my paypal account to my bank account (minimum amount to withdraw for Singapore dollars is S$15), which is going to take 5-7 days to process, so once I see the digits in my bank account, I’m officially earning money from this.

Considering that the requirements for your post to get accepted are very basic, it’s really easy to be earning from this actually. The number of opportunities vary from time to time, and you simply choose what you want to write about. As long as your posts adhere to the requirements of the sponsor, you can be certain of getting the green. Writing with flair or providing more constructive ideas in your post for the sponsors may get you higher ratings which in turn leads to greater opportunities, but is not a must. After you submit your post to be accepted, the 30 days countdown to getting paid begins.

I admit it’s not too lucrative, but it’s helping to pay the overhead costs for this site, and there may even be a profit. If that’s not enough, it’s pushing me to write instead of indulging in sloth.

Get paid with PayPerPost, the portal that uses consumer generated advertising.

This is a sponsored post.

I came across the blog The Misadventures of Sibeh Sian one fine day, and have been quite an avid reader ever since. In the facade of a strong Singaporean boliao tone, he depicts the life of a Singaporean very lucidly and candidly. A good example to substantiate my point would be his latest entry on The Long and Short about the Unwritten Rules in Singapore, which describes Singaporeans’ innate reaction towards having personal space. His posts sometimes make you wonder about your hometown culture while entertaining you with his anecdotes. I sometimes speculate whether his posts reflect his real life or not, but ultimately it’s amusing to read and sometimes even has an educational effect with his underlying messages.
This is not a sponsored post, though I wish it was haha. I don’t know why I’m actually helping him advertise here. Well, his blog is a good read sometimes, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. It’s in standardized English with an occasional Singlish slang word, which doesn’t irritate like how other broken English ones do or how some blogs are just completely in Singlish.

I’ve been wanting to set up a travelogue, but have not been satisfied with setting one up on my own with wordpress (like this blog), and the one I did on Microsoft Frontpage would be too much of a hassle to update and not too user-friendly. It will also take up too much of my server space. I’ve set one up at Travellerspoint, because I like their user interface, and I hope I’ll update it religiously. I’m currently writing about my Yunnan Trip with Sam (2-8 November 2006), which is long overdue, I know. I won’t be including travels before that because my memory ability is really rather limited.

I should have started a blog and a travel blog way before, but better late than never I guess.

Have a look at Squareface’s Travelogue.

Update: I have deleted my travelogue with Travellerspoint as I prefer to have everything consolidated on my own site instead. Have a look at my travelogue posts here instead.

Do you try to create publicity for your website by participating in various Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? I hope you’re aware that you’re in for many risks, for you may be scammed in their schemes.

For instance, are you in one of those PPC (Pay-Per-Click) plans? It sounds attractive, since you only need to pay if someone clicks on the ad, but many people click to get to your site and then don’t give you any business whatsoever. In the end, you might be disadvantaged whilst the PPC companies benefit. I’m sure you don’t want to pay for advertising without getting revenue.

Basically the internet now contains so much misinformation it really takes quite an amount of analytical skill to determine whether the information you’re looking at is accurate or not. Don’t bother trusting the Google-ranked pages because the formula used to rank these pages are unknown, and most definitely not heavily based on the content of the site.

Anyway, this site might be useful to learn more about it. And even more on Search Engine Marketing.

This post is sponsored by Apogee Search.

Hopefully it will improve my Chinese significantly. I know I should have started doing so sooner. Just as I should have joined the blogosphere sooner, so that now I wouldn’t have difficulty remembering how I house-hunted, and the various other memorable (positively or not) experiences of my sojourn here. Anyway, do have a look at Squareface in Squarespace once in a while, yar?

If you blog mostly about yourself, do you agree that you’re mainly using blogging as an avenue to sort out your own thoughts? It has been a long while since I wrote frequently in my “traditional” diary, and I haven’t touched the diary ever since I resorted to blogging. I don’t think you can know a person for what they really are by reading their blogs since most of the time we blog by hiding this and magnifying that, agreed? The personal diary might contain the formula to a person’s heart instead. But ever since owning a laptop, I think my hand isn’t accustomed to the pen anymore. Thus by extension, I may not be as conditioned to write deep personal thoughts as I used to, and I am losing that kind of honesty as the days go by. The lies I tell myself are aplenty, but not like the mountains I tell others all the time now. Without hesitance, even.

I haven’t been blogging “religiously” (quoting Shaina) recently since there are many little things scattered all over my head. These days the voice in my head mostly goes,”Ok, go xx place to get the slip of paper, then go across to xx place to pay for it, then come back to xx place to collect the transcript, then go across to another place to submit the transcript for the official stamp, go downstairs to pay for it, and come back the day after to collect the transcript” (standard of procedure for getting a copy of your transcript in Fudan), or “after the 2nd period, look for xx teacher to ask for a recommendation letter, after the 4th period, look for xx teacher to go to his house to collect the recommendation letter, then go for a meeting at xx time, go for a talk at xx time”, and “scan and photocopy at xx place (because it costs half the price than the place across), then go across to take passport photo (pay money today, but collect tomorrow), then perhaps grab a bite while waiting for xx time to meet xx teacher to talk about recommendation letter”. There’s also “email TOEFL centre to ask why I haven’t received my TOEFL score report, find out about Canada’s visa requirements, confirm with Singapore’s China Embassy of CGS application, ask mom for bank statement, translate exam transcript, ask dad to send over the essential documents for application…”. You get the kind of mess I have in my head now?

There could be other factors that mess with my head in pernicious ways, so I’m glad it’s just these little things for now. Anyway, recently, if anything troubles me, I can watch SHAINA’s VIDEO to destress a little (Haha, Shaina, don’t scold me ok I’m giving you free advertisement).

I can access blogspot blogs again.

But I typed a whole long post only to get an error, so I’m not sure I wanna write it all over again.

So setting up my own site is worth it, because my blog does not get affected by China’s regular blocking & unblocking game.

Read: Foreign blog providers blocked

Friends using blogspot, sorry I can’t continue to be a loyal reader of your blogs for the time being. Maybe a month later?

I spent the entire time after writing the previous post working on Squarefaces’s Shots. I’ve created a main gallery page using my Chinese version of Microsoft Frontpage, and my various photo albums even play music now. Have a look! All these are prior to using my Kodak Z650 thought, so do bear with some not-as-richly-coloured pictures.

This semester I have spent countless hours in front of my laptop everyday. Initially it was in search of a good blog host, then it became a search for a good photo host…and when I mean in search of I mean I try almost whatever is available after sieving through what sounds good after reading their FAQs on how much space is given and what it would cost (I mostly tried what is free). Then after blogger in beta sorta screwed up on me, and China employed the Great Firewall of China tactic again and blocked blogspot sites, I then decided to set up my own site, and thus have plenty of freedom to do what I want, which makes things all the more complicated, and made me spend even more time researching on how-tos for Wordpress, downloaded many themes and plugins, and then I started to play around with Porta and Simpleviewer. Check out my photo gallery on the sidebar for a view of my pictures there. So after all those time spent on searching and trying out photo hosts to display my albums etc, I end up sorta hosting my own pictures.

Despite all that time spent with the computer, I totally screwed up yesterday’s computer exam. There was the theory paper, as well as 3 practical exam questions. I couldn’t answer most of the theory questions, and by the time I was done with the 1 Frontpage question, I had only 10 minutes to complete the 2 remaining Flash questions. Needless to say, I barely attempted them. I quite definitely failed this final exam, so I just hope I pass overall with my mid-term paper and assignments to pull up the total grade.

I have also screwed up my body clock these days, sleeping at 5am or so surfing around the net for I-have-no-idea-what because somehow time just whizzes by when you’re online. Not to mention a lot of waiting time for the stuff to load. My computer has also gotten much slower due to the many downloads and perhaps the many bugs that I haven’t got around exterminating. I shall have to reformat during the holidays. My eyesight has also weakened, and my eyes hurt sometimes now, like during the computer exam. My back aches quickly now, and I haven’t been eating regular meals either.

The computer/internet is rather addictive, and I think it’s time for me to get out of it, for the sake of passing a few exams. I have writing due tomorrow that I haven’t even begun on, and tomorrow is also the exam. For the next 2 weeks I’d better work on my exam material. Will only come back when I need this catharsis, or if there’s anything interesting to blog about instead of just ranting and rambling on.

By the way, I believe spending too much time on this, resulting in disrupted sleep, irregular meals, deteriorated eyesight, bad back, less time for everything else etc, has caused my mood swings to be rather bad. By extension, this has led to many rifts between Sam and I. Including the current one that has been going on for about a week.