Tuesday, July 16, 2013

To Blog or not to Blog

I was invited by my friend Haui Bin to join him on a visit to Phuket, he is a very active blogger with a large following in Asia.

I had met him via Suanie from Suanie.net, who previously had been introducing me to the Blogging culture here in Malaysia, she as well has a large following and on these blogs they write about food and products, general aspects of their daily going’s on etc… and as such they get invites to newly opened or re-launched bars and or restaurants, product launches and more… this also includes Hotels and Resorts on occasions and whereas I had joined Suanie on a Restaurant re-launch tasting and event once, this time Huai Bin had a spare space for someone to join on a trip to Phuket and I was the lucky one. (See my next post on that specific trip itself….)

These couple of outings have been a bit of an eye-opener for me.
(yep, given that this blog is mostly about my eye –sight.. this is a pun indeed… a bad one at that, but still…)

Blogging encapsulates soo much its an interesting thing to observe.

So many people have different reasons and different approaches.

I have friends that blog to just get “things out of their system”
I have friends that use it to chronicle travels
I read blogs on “Lifehacks” TechieStuff” “Android Phones” and many other stuff.. for either info or an opinion on a subject I guess..

I started writing my blog because I was initially frustrated about not being able to find out much info about living and experiencing Keratoconus… in the hope that by writing my frustrations and experiences down, I might be able to make someone else’s situation easier to navigate…or alternatively for them to use it as a tool to make others understand what it is we are going experiening, and that its not just a matter of getting a new prescription for your glasses…
(I know for instance that my circle of friends and family have approached me with different responses from:
 “Wow….. that made me cry” and “Man, I never realised it was this bad” to compliments about my style of telling my story.)

In all honesty, whilst hoping it might help others, I also have a very selfish point here and that is….to get my frustrations “out of my system” as well of course..

  
Then again, when I first signed up for this blog in 2005 it wasn’t to do with any of my eye problems( i didn't have any then), it was a vain and failed attempt to write “HotelBabylon Style “ about my experiences in the luxury hotel industry where at that stage I had been working for about 10yrs.

It turned out that at that time in my life that definitely wasn't the thing for me to write about, and although currently I can still come up with plenty of stories, and maybe one day might just do so, at that stage I gave up quickly and retired the blog so to say.

It wasn't until a friend of mine pointed out that maybe blogging about my Keratoconus experiences wouldn’t be a bad thing I decided to see if the bloglink actually still worked after all those years, and as we know, nothing disappears on the internet, so here I was able to re-instated the blog as such, gave it a bit of a face-lift, and started writing..

So far its been a good (and at times cathartic) experience, and although I do have moments where I can’t think of what to write, and admittedly do run out of things to write about KC wise,  then again, when there is something to tell, I always will…

That’s why my experiences with the bloggers I mentioned at the beginning of this article, were so interesting…

For instance, initially I was kind of bemused by the taking of pictures before eating a dish from many different angles to just make sure it looks good on the blog, to taking photos of the whole hotel room and hotel and surrounding area’s from different angles, once again, to make it look great for the blog…

And props to them for having made this a semi source of income, as I saw for instance that during our trip to Phuket, it wasn't all just fun for Huai Bin, it did involve quite a bit of time spent on updating his Blog and his Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare feeds…
So, although it might all look like a Jolly.. these guys take it serious and are indeed providing a professional service in way to inform us, the public, of whats out there…

As for all the picture taking that initially bemused me….I started thinking….. its exactly what we do nowadays already when we go on a trip or evening out… taking pictures of out meals, or the place we stay at anyway..

So maybe, when I don’t have anything interesting to say about my adventures in Keratoconus land, I could write about other experiences… or maybe not…. Maybe I should just give it a go and see what happens…in any case, given my vision, my pictures might end up a bit more blurry then theirs..




3 comments:

Unknown said...

For more information on keratoconus you might also want to check out the National Keratoconus Foundation. They have a website and Facebook page with great info as well as an online forum where people share their experiences.

KiltedDutchman said...

Hi, Yes, very true, thanks for that.
I've found myself on their page a couple of times aswell... but as they are mainly focused on the US and at that stage i lived in the UK (different treatment options etc), I was more drawn to the Keratoconus GB group on Facebook... although they have grown into a global group more then a purely UK focused aswell...

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