The "official" xanghe blog
Well, I guess I'm official. Triết posted a shout-out to me on his blog. I hear once someone links to your blog, you all the sudden become noticeable to Google. I guess the old-school meta tag contents doesn't cut it anymore. Anyway, a big thanks to Triết, and I think he'd be pleased to know that the first blog I ever remember reading was actually his, while he was in Vietnam. I had a question about something, and he referred me to one of his blog posts.
UPDATE: I just checked my web stats and yes, I have become noticed. I got a hit from Hanoi yesterday. I hope I'm not black-listed now because I've posted one article about labor protests in Vietnam. No kidding, I know of sites (which are run by people I associate and even hang out with) that are filtered by the government and can not be accessed in Vietnam.
Also, along the lines of being noticed, my friend from UCI told me that she was searching the library catalog and came upon my name. I guess my senior thesis is now available in the library. It even has a call number, which is cool even though they spelled my name wrong in the title. Oh well, it's not the first time. I look back at it and realize that it's not that great, I can't believe I spend a whole year on that thing.
If you're interested in what I do for work, we had an interesting day in regards to the recount in Nguyễn vs Nguyễn, which was filmed and later posted on YouTube. Everyone is pretty wowed at the electoral process in our office, but it's pretty much run-of-the-mill. Take a look here (IE users, please hold a moment while the video loads):
Click here for more (many more) video clips.
1 comment:
Thanks for the recognition back! Your thoughts are true--you don't truly enter the blogosphere (and the google universe) until someone posts ABOUT you. Here's to many more!
And the black listing...get used to it. I'm blacklisted in parts of Vietnam, and I'm generally favorable to the government. Why, you ask? Because Vietnamese ISPs use a general block on domain names. Therefore, unless your blog is big and powerful (which we aren't...yet)you usually get blocked when you get swept up in the mass "blogspot.com" block.
Typical to all things Vietnam (communist with a free market), some ISPs are very block-friendly while you can walk a block to another internet cafe and somehow have nothing whatsoever blocked. I've found no problems at all in Saigon or even Hue (which can be worse than Hanoi in areas), and have personally not had issues in hanoi, though my friends have.
All in all, the vibe I get from Vietnam is much less worrying about political commentary by American bloggers than porn sites and the such. Oh, and Vietnam uses a word filter too (at least for emails). So if you don't want to get blocked, use euphemisms (or don't talk about that subject).
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