Hey y’all!
You do know I’m a nerd at heart, so writing for PolicyNet pretty much suits me perfectly.
Nope, I didn’t create a new blog. Or I sort of did, but it’s for someone else. It’s not mine in the sense that I don’t deal with the hosting and stuff.
So anyway, yes, I’m paid to blog, but this isn’t your usual paid to advertise stuff kind of blog.
It’s a blog where I get to talk about my biggest passion: China.
I’m almost done with my Masters in Chinese Studies, so …

Can you imagine me rolling my eyes as I say this post’s title?
Sure you can.
It sounds funny, I know, since most bloggers only know one way of earning through advertisements: the earnings-per-click model. Back when I was a newbie, I ran through the entire range of programs offering money in exchange for ads displayed on my websites. Unfortunately, each time I checked these programs to see my earnings, I would find a little over two cents at the most.
It got frustrating soon enough, and I just didn’t have …

Yes, everyone!  I’m finally back here online!
I have to admit that I’ve been a bit disheartened ever since my Google Page Rank dropped from PR2 to PR0.  I worked very hard to achieve a PR2, as you all know, and seeing it drop to nothing was just a bit painful.
I’m not really sure what happened, but I do remember that the last thing I did was install the Text Link Ads plugin.
I read somewhere that TLA can be quite a bane for bloggers, given that Google sort of really hates …

Decades ago, when I was a little girl listening intently in class, my teachers would often exhort us to keep journals, so that we might be able to improve our writing. These journals weren’t really specific; they were diary of sorts that we had to write in everyday. It wasn’t voluntary. We had to submit the journals by the end of the week so that our teachers might grade them.
I was sort of lazy then (as I am now), so I often wrote all my entries Friday …

I just mentioned a while ago that I was in search of a more reliable web host than my current provider. My current host is completely free, hence the usual down time that’s been really bugging me lately. So then, I went on a search for a better web host; one that won’t be too hard on my wallet and still let me sleep soundly each night.
After rummaging through several hosts, I noticed that many of them seemed okay at first glance, though more thorough research often revealed quite …

As a blogger and reader, one thing I’ve realized is that there are some blogs I don’t bother to read at all. It’s not that these blogs are horrible; alright, some of them are. However, my point is that I don’t take time to view some blogs that might actually be worth reading, simply because getting them to open is a difficulty in itself. A lot of times, we find blogs with interesting titles, only to get bored halfway through because loading takes a few minutes …

I wasn’t always as tech-savvy as I am now.
Of course, being a techie geek doesn’t just mean being updated with all the latest gizmos that the world has to offer. That I learned the hard way, after an ex-officemate pointed out that I was being shallow and had little to no idea what “technology” really entailed.
Anyway, I’m still not an expert, but more than two years of immersion with the tech-savviest of people has somehow rubbed off on me. I now know what PHP means, and I can …

You know those weird, nagging questionnaires that bloggers answer, post and pass around? The thing has a name.
“Meme”.
A brief consultation with my best friend, Wikipedia, reveals that a meme (pronounced “mim”), “consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.”
Though it doesn’t exactly define meme as an “annoying viral questionnaire or quiz”, there are some points in this definition that suit the blog meme. First of all, the blog meme is …

Just a few months back, I had no idea what Entrecard was, let alone heard of it. I had just started pro-blogging and was as green as could be. In fact, I didn’t even want to sign up with Entrecard, simply because I thought it was some sort of nonsense site that spent its time gathering email addresses it could then sell to the online black market.
Obviously, I was wrong.
Now I’m a happy member, gleefully racking up credits through occasional dropping. I’m still not one of those …

Guess what. I wrote this yesterday, but I’m publishing it today.
I know it sounds stupid, but it’s something completely different and short of miraculous for someone like me. I’m almost always sick, as nearly everyone knows by now. Last week it was hyperacidity. This week — I don’t even want to explain. Anyway, stress over my day job and my freelance projects has led to quite a few days of unavoidable bed rest. That means I can’t even reach my Macbook. I have …