Blogging is Fun!

My beloved father passed away in 1999. If he were still alive, he would probably enjoy blogging very much. Since early childhood, he'd kept a habit of writing diary everyday, and he left with us children volumes of his diary to remember him and miss him. I inherited my father's habit of keeping a diary after he passed away. Now I use the weblog to document my thoughts day in and day out.

After I became a full time housewife five years ago, one of the most FAQs among my friends is that how I spend so much time alone at home. I always respond lightheartedly that the advancement of internet provides the solution. I rediscover myself and others in the global village through blogging. And I welcome all of you to the fun blogging world where the personal medium is now the message.

We are now living in a world which is flat and where we can reach one another within a click of the keyborad. In addition to words and photos, we can also share our artistic and theatrical videoclips with people on line instantly. On top of that we can receive comments from family and friends and get a global presentation to people of the same interest and passion.

The world is changing very fast. Thirty years ago, we were excited about the fax machines. Today we are blogging on line. The blogging history itself is short, less than a span of 10 years. From late 1997, Jorn Barger first used weblog, till the middle of 1999, Peter Merholz converted weblog to "We Blog" to make blog a new verb, even in toastmasters, the first article about blogging was published in April 2005, "Get Blogging" by Babara Adamski, CTM. Let's take a look at "Blogger" Babara mentioned in her article for example, it is a rather user friendly blog hosting service. Once you get linked to http://www.blogger.com, just follow the three easy steps, 1. Create an amount; 2. Name your blog; 3. Choose a template, then you can create your blog.

I recalled when I was invited to give four sessions of GMP inspection training in English in 2005 at NLFD (National Laboratories of Food and Drugs), I recommended GMP inspectors construct a blog among themselves to share inspection experience, enhance GMP report writing skills and enjoy GMP inspection. No matter whether it is about planning, on-site inspection, discussion and documentation, the on-line knowledge sharing and management is the key to successful GMP inspections. Ever since, I myself have become actively involved in building blogs to share and to disseminate information to people in the global village.

For novice bloggers, there are many free blogs available, Yam Blog, Xuite, Pixnet, Wretch, Blogger, just to name a few. At the moment, I keep several blogs with different themes, The Spirit is written in English to share my everyday life in general; The Class of 1973 is written in Chinese to connect my college classmates; Golden Ladies Clogging Toastmasters is written mainly in English to report the Toastmasters magazine reading activities, Be Earnest is written in Japanese to reflect upon the weekly PHP magazine reading activities, and Sherry Li's Library is written in English about the comments of the books I read.

I blog therefore I am. I'm happy that I was given a chance to talk about "Blogging is fun" at the joint meeting of Grand Toastmasters club and NLFD Toastmasters Club, Thursday evening, September the 27th. I thank Erick Suen, DTM, founder of NLFD Toastmasters Club to be my written evaluator of my c-9 speech "Persuade with Power". I hope I can persuade the toastmasters into taking action to construct their blogs to open their worlds to others and to add another new dimension to their lives. Sherry