bloggers

The meet-up was fun.

I picked Edwin up because we live in the same area and I didn’t want to drive all that way alone. He ended up buying dinner because I could not find a working ATM that evening.

A few hours before the meet, he called me up saying that Irene asked us to pick the King and Queen of the night. We also got to decide the criteria. Since it’s obvious that we’re not judging them by their blogging, we had to come up with something else. Friendliness and accessibility became the main factor, although when we talked about it,  it sounded more like “must make effort to talk to everyone” and “if stick to table with own gang, cannot lah”.

It means we had to try and talk to as many people as we can.

When we got there, Irene said we’re sharing the duties with Rose, JF and Paul. This was good. More people to spread around and compare notes with.

I’m an introvert and aspiring crazy cat lady, but you can’t really tell that night. I mingled like crazy. I talked to anyone who was responsive. There were a few people who absolutely refused to meet my eye even when I was standing right there, like they’re terrified I’d start talking to them and want to avoid the possibility at all cost.

Weird fact: the guys outnumbered the girls. There was easily twice as many guys. (Why is this weird? I organise all sorts shit and the girls always outgun the guys.)

So at the end, we came out with Wombok and Effa.

Wombok is the Darth Vader guy in your MyBlogLog. He stayed in the headgear for so long, we were starting to wonder if we’ll ever get to see what he looks like. It appealed to my whimsical side.

Effa is warm and friendly and stood out… maybe because she’s quite tall as well! I like her vibe and style.

I’m glad I had something to do, otherwise I’d be the one hiding in a corner somewhere! But I really had nothing left to say when a small group went off for drinks at Starbucks later. Rambo entertained us with jokes, and I find it really sweet of him to tell it English so I (the only one who didn’t speak Mandarin) was in on it, although he would be more comfortable telling it in Chinese!

I think I might be getting used to the fact that I get “recognised” when people put a face to the name. I enjoy the “never thought I’d get to meet you” surprise, although I no longer enjoy the reason why they even know my name in the first place.

I did not take any photos, except for my dinner. See other people’s photos here.

Officially, this is is probably my 5th or 6th bloggers meet (in which complete strangers from the Internet are in attendance). The first one was way back in May 2004 when most of you are still in your short pants. Two guys and 6 girls.

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Latest Update: Hey, we’re all fixed! Carry on, folks. WTF.It’s broken again. Ok, ad is off until it stablised.

A few hours ago, a friend on Facebook reported that she was being redirected to another site when she tried accessing this blog. I mentioned this problem briefly here. I endorse no such tactics, so I set out to track down the problem.

I recently added a new ad thingy from GrabMyAds, so I automatically assumed that it was the cause of the problem and took the code off. It still did the redirecting thing, so I took the entire ad section down. It stopped. I really hated the idea that Advertlets.com was the problem so I decided not to make any such declaration till I can be sure.

Obviously I was too busy with another post tonight to think about this.

Then my brother IMed to ask if I discovered the problem. Turned out his blog was doing the same thing - redirecting to another site that sells domain names. What he did notice is that it was related to Advertlets.com. Going to the site gets you this:

Click for full size

Going to a few blogs that I knew carried the Advertlets.com gave the same results. The only way to stop it is to take down the code for now.

Update: According to Irene, Josh has renewed it, but it’s taking some time to kick in on our side. Sit tight everyone, and don’t bug Josh. He knows!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Please put your contact information on a visible location on your blog. I don’t always have time to hunt up and down looking for it. :-P If you don’t want to get your email harvested for spam, there’s a nifty icon generator here.

End of public service announcement.

Popularity: 9% [?]