I first wanted to say that my heart goes out to the victims of that hostage crisis in The Philippines. Very sad and tragic.
I know this is yet another incident that hurts Philippine tourism and it’s overall reputation. And now the Hong Kong government and citizens are protesting in anger, and outraged with how the hostage crisis was handled.
Personally, I have to say a few words about this…
This tragic incident could have (and has) happened anywhere in the world, even in America! And, law enforcement officials usually end up being blamed for any deaths that may have occured during the rescue attempt, etc…
Still, my heart goes out to the victims and their families, and I pray they will find some sense of closure, somehow… though, I can imagine that their lives will never be the same. And I pray that relations between Hong Kong and The Philippines will somehow get “patched up” too.
. . . .
The Philippines – Directory
I’ve have been working on Rice Bowl Journals for 10 years! So, whatever has been done in the past to make the site what it is today… it took 10 years in the making. Read the rest of this entry »
As soon as I got back from Oahu, I spent the better part of yesterday working on and managing The List and other “tasks” on the Rice Bowl Journals site.
The essence of The List is simple:
Showcase the most popular, prolific and dedicated Asian bloggers on the world wide web.
With that in mind, there has been a few key points in deciding who should be included on The List.
As part of The List, I have included the “original four”, the original four online diarists of Rice Bowl Journals. Read the rest of this entry »
I sort of enjoying the process of going through each country in Rice Bowl Journals and “releasing” blogs and journals that haven’t been updating in like… forever!
And, I’m seeing a LOT of blogs and journals from 2003 and 2004 that were simply abandoned.
Now, Globe of Blogs is a site dedicated to registering countless blogs from all over the world. Their philosophy has been to only delete broken links. They say that keeping blogs that have been abandoned is still worthwhile because people can still rediscover them and it’s still a story about someone or something that may have an end, but it’s still a story… or something like that.
Anyway, they don’t delete abandoned blogs! Read the rest of this entry »
RBJ Notes
As many of you know, I’ve been busy cleaning up the Rice Bowl Journals directories.
I’m feeling ambitious again, when for many years (actually) I had lost virtually all motivation and passion to work on the site.
I must confess I’d been a bit depressed about the mass exodus that had occurred some years back. As webmaster of a blogging community I witnessed bloggers just completely abandoning their blogs and jump into the social networking sites. I myself jumped on the band wagon, watching Twitter and Facebook gaining momentum, then finally becoming the top sites on the internet today.
. . . .
A Sense of Sadness, A Loss of Passion
All is forgiven with what had transpired. But, I felt a sense of sadness, and lost all motivation, when I found out my pet project in Rice Bowl Journals seemed to lose it’s importance with its community, whom seeked better pastures elsewhere.
Sure, I felt hurt. But at the same time it was understandable. The big social networking sites featured more stuff, basically. And with an army of computer engineers and software writers, how could a small fish webmaster compete with all that? Read the rest of this entry »
Carlos (a.k.a Randomguru) is a working musician, web developer and web publisher living in San Diego, California.