Sunday, July 08, 2007

Korean Blogs round-up

I met for drinks with Daeguowl of Kimchi for Breakfast during the week. I got the 461 bus down to his neck of the woods and snapped a shot of the "Always Funny Chicken" shop, which I'll post later.

We selected a bar called "The Beatles", it had about as much atmosphere as a meeting of the local undertakers union, so we moved on to a branch of the Millers chain of bars which was much more popular with the locals. Unlike our friends back in England, where smoking in enclosed public spaces has just been banned, we were soon enveloped in the fug of cigarette smoke. Over here the Koreans have just announced the opposite: Smoking is to be banned at bus stops by September and in the Seoul parks by 2008. Anyway, we had a great evening discussing our careers, the Koreas, friends, families and, of course, blogs and bloggers, so I thought I mention a few that we discussed.

Last week I celebrated the first anniversary of this blog, which reminded Gdog that he had started blogging just a few days before I did last year. Expat Jane also celebrated her blog's first anniversary with a background colour change to pink.

ROK Drop revealed some very respectable statistics about his blog. My blog did not make it into his top 5 referring sites. So, if you could all "Do The Korean Thing" and click this link to his blog, say 4 or 5 times, perhaps I can make the list next month. [if I make it to the top 5, I won't be promising to appear naked on the blog like Mr Angry , but if you think of a suitable stunt you'd like me to perform, do please let me know.]

Phil at London Korean Links also had some stats to share. The number of spam comments is causing him problems in spite of introducing the requirement to register before being able to leave a comment. I got fed up with blogger.com's anti spam feature, so I turned off the 'word verification' option on the comments a few months ago and I have been very lucky and still not received any spam comments so far, touch wood.

My blog's stats took a huge leap from the usual average of 40-50 visitors per day to 400 on July 2nd, thanks to a one line posting by Robert at The Marmot's hole linking to my posting on The Ideal Korean Male. In that posting I also mentioned Rain's cancelled concert, more details and discussion over at PopSeoul.

Kevin, the Big Hominid, had some equally respectable statistics about sales of his book 'Water from a skull' and celebrated the fourth year of blogging. If you want a good laugh read his crisis at 40,000 feet post.

Feet Man Seoul has all the details on going for a pedicure, or 'padicure' as the sign at our local nail salon calls it.

Mike in Busan has an excellent shot of one of those crazy Korean motorbike drivers, this one was transporting a six foot tall potted plant on the back of his bike. His earlier shot of a lady with an iguana on her head still makes me smile.

Lost Nomad had some excellent shots of a life and death struggle between a snake and a toad he watched on one of his fishing trips. Richardson, meanwhile, had a photo of some attractively high kicking soldiers (North Korean I am assuming).

The Bat and I went to see the Transformers movie as did 75% of the cinema going public in Korea. We didn't join the Metropolitician's gang but, like Joe and Gdog, we both really enjoyed the movie.

The other Joe, of ZenKimchi fame, has some great news. The police have declared that he is not guilty of the libel charges raised against him by the hagwon owner from hell.

I'll end with that happy news, and I wish all the Canadian readers a belated Happy Canada day for 1st July, and all the American readers a belated Happy Independence Day for the the 4th.

6 comments:

daeguowl said...

You've still got word verification running....unless you're just targeting me somehow!!

Jon Allen said...

how bizarre.
It is turned off for me. Does everyone else see word verification come up?

daeguowl said...

it's definitely asking me to input letters although somewhat suspiciously, the last set contained my name with a couple of letters either side. If it asks me for a bank account number, I'm not coming back!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for breaking down what's going on in the Korean blogs. I barely have enough time to browse the few that I do.

I'd like to renew blogging myself, but being burned (almost beyond recognition) due to a blog in the past (1993), has me extremely gun shy. I was young and didn't realize that the truth can also send you to prison.

Regina said...

Thanks for the mention. It's always cool when someone notices what you're doing ;-)

According to atlasien over at Fighting 44's forum I'm one of the "halfway sane" bloggers in Korea. I'm wondering why I only get "halfway"? Maybe it's because you have to be a bit of a nutter to live here in the first place.

Oh, and, btw, the word verification is still up since that's been discussed in these comments.

Stay dry.

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