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Wednesday 10 January 2007

"Excuse me, what's your blog's theme?"

My blog is sorely lacking something important: a theme. Yes, I fly from one topic to another, like a sugar glider flying from tree to tree. There's nothing central to hold it together. An utter mishmash.

I've sorted my posts in the categories you see below every one of them. Thanks to the del.icio.us, I'm able to perform an analysis of my posts. Hopefully, I might find a deeply buried theme to this blog.

Ongoings is basically about what's going on in my fairly eventful life. The truth is in real life I'm not good at talking about myself. I usually let other people talk about themselves while I listen. But how about writing about myself? According to my del.icio.us Ongoings tag, this is the category with the most posts (63!). Well, well. Turns out that I'm no so good at talking about myself but I'm better at writing about myself. Maybe the next time people ask me about myself, I should tell them, "Read my blog." (Lame bloggers' joke. I know. I'm very sorry and very ashamed.) Ongoings is after all a rather loose description. As long I as I'm in the post in some way, it's going under Ongoings.

Next is Computer-related, which is self explanatory. I'm a techie to a certain level and I did study in computer school as an undergrad. However, I'm most interested in stories with a human angle, and not entirely technical (which explains why I glided to management school later in my studies). Number of posts: 48. Not too bad, if I may say so.

When I started this blog, I was at the peak of my Anime/Manga fever. That has declined a lot lately since this is of a more of social thing for me. A lot of my anime/manga network people (my friend dzul included) has gone off to live busy lives, becoming engineers, move to other states or gotten occupied with their spouses, kids and in-laws. And there's also my issue with differentiating between "appreciators" and "consumers" of anime/manga. Sadly, the appreciators are in low numbers nowadays, and the consumers are rising exponentially, thanks to the mainstreaming of anime/manga. (I'm not trying to be a snob or anything, I just wish people would have more appreciation for other people's works.) To date there have been 14 posts, the lowest among the categories.

The award for "The Category I Wish I Have Written More In" goes to Islamic, which at present contains 21 posts. I'm not a model muslim or mukmin. But I'm doing everything I could to avoid confusion or misrepresentation of Islam. One of the ways for me to this is to avoid expressing my opinions on Islam, as I'm not qualified in terms of knowledge and I fear that they may be misinterpreted. However, I wish I could do more than what I'm doing right now. I think Pak Adib, one of Malaysia's more well-known bloggers, is doing a great job by sharing tazkirah. Syabas, Pak Adib. Anyway, most bloggers who come here like eika, iena and mudin write more about Islam than I do, so syabas, you guys.

Coming in at second lowest (i.e. 15) is Nukilan, the slot for my Bahasa Melayu posts. After years and years of reading and studying in English, my BM posts sounded like is was parsed through an English-to-BM text translator, as proved during Bulan Berbahasa. Thanks for the honest feedback, faithful readers, I'm going to include more BM books in my reading diet from now on.

The final category (which is the the loosely defined one of all) is Miscellaneous. It ranks as the second highest number of posts (possibly due to its looseness) with a total of 51 posts. Any post that:
  • doesn't have me in it OR
  • not computer-related OR
  • not related to anime or manga AND
  • could be in BM OR
  • not about Islam
qualifies as a Miscellaneous post. It's an umbrella category, basically for anything under the sun and beyond, plus other things that might be under some other different suns. From this category I learned how to correctly spell the word 'Miscellaneous'.

At a glance here's how the catagories rank in terms of number, as prior to this post:
  1. Ongoings (63) WINNER!
  2. Miscellaneous (51)
  3. Computer-related (48)
  4. Islamic (21)
  5. Nukilan (15)
  6. Anime/Manga (14)
To sum up (or unearth) the elusive theme of this blog, here goes:
A blog by a Muslim Melayu blogger who likes to write (but not talk) about himself, computers, Islam, anime and manga, and whatever strikes his interest.
How does that sound? ("Tell us something we don't know", eh, everyone?)

The advantage of writing a blog with a definite theme is that we're free to write about anything as there's nothing to limit our focus. The downside is it will be difficult to promote our blog to people, unless we're famous or super interesting (or super attractive).

Thank you, everyone, for supporting me and my blog. I hope I can write more useful stuff in the future that will benefit us all. This has been my main goal since day 1. All the best to all, and I leave you with a picture of Mr. Sugar Glider wishing you a very productive life ahead.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rol,

Do you read Freakonomics? It is a book with no theme also. But a very good and enjoyable book indeed.

Theme is not important. My blog also does not have any theme. I just blog on what I want.

'aku tulis apa yang aku nak tulis!'

Anonymous said...

rul, hang ada bela menatang sugar glider tu ka?

r.o.l. said...

mudin001,
Yes I've heard of the book, it's been on the bestseller list of several bookstores for some time now.

Oh, I do hope you write a sort of tutorial, for noobs like me on how to buy stuff from your online store. I like a lot of the stuff being offered there.

dzul,
Sugar glider ni marsupial, takdak kat sini rasanya. Lagipun dia kecik come, aku takut aku pegang dia kuat sangat nanti dia penyet. Lagipun aku rasa menantang ni lagi suka dok kat hutan, terbang-terbang tanpa orang kacau dia.

Anonymous said...

hahaha kalau sampai penyet tu bukan pegang, tu dah kira hang lanyak dia tu. Aku ingat hang bela s.g ni sebab tak lama dulu ada aku tengok orang bincang pasal menatang ni kat satu forum tuh. Agaknya depa dapat dari pet shop.

Anonymous said...

Warmest greeting,
No theme is a theme..of serenity, vast emptiness before all beings. How tiny we are when flung out there in the galaxy and mega light years journey..of alastu bi-rabbikum. This..poor seeker heard it from venerable dr naquib al-attas in UM somewhere 1970s. Since then my seeds, branch, flowers and fruits were scattered by many winds. Eaten,given out, sadaqa,stolen, lost or planted with people whom encounter him. Wu Ming,the hero who called No Name.
Litlle bits of chinese tea and japan zen in his blood lineage.
Have you tasted the Real Tea of Khawja Yusuf Hamadhani of Persia many hundred years ago. He is one of the sufic master to groom and nurture the young brave zuhud abdal qadir al-jilani..now famous in east and west. Cai jian, my little tea cups for you.

Anonymous said...

Searching for this for some time now - i guess luck is more advanced than search engines

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