A quick google of the word blog, a gander at some of the featured blogs from the first few results, and a skim read through the most viewed, the following facts make themselves known.
- There is a blog by written by a man who is in prison for convicted murder. This blog throws up inevitable controversy, but due to its nature (the author, for example) it manages to gain some real, media recognition.
- There are blogs solely devoted to providing cooking recipes, 21st century named like, of course, Phoo-d, (actually born out of the fact that the desired domain names were taken, food, for example)
- There are crap blogs
- There are self indulgent blogs, with self made portraits, that simply shout "I LOVE MYSELF FAR TOO MUCH"
- There are funny, informative, un-funny and ill informed blogs.
- There are a lot of blogs! (Figure not known, but somewhere over 100 million!There are over 72 million blogs in China!)
Anyway, a blog is to writing, what a fish is to water...its just in there somehow.
Today I have decided to try and "publish" a piece of writing i did, whilst i was in South America earlier in the year. Just to put it out there. I guess its just entitled:-
Bolivia, Geoff and other trains of thought...Confused Social dynamics
"I started this collection of, shall we say, “scribblings” on a bus, somewhere near Buenos Aires, Argentina. I think it was Rosario, but such was the nature of my mind at these times, I cannot be entirely certain. It was certainly on a Bus, and it was, most certainly, an extremely interesting time, a necessary one. The start was inspired no more by my own fleeting aspiration, but as much by that mildly ethereal bus terminal, in the cultural capital city of Bolivia, La Paz. In said terminal, it is like wandering through a Bangkok market, just more spaced out, and people aren’t selling knock off jeans and “Fragrance of the moment” perfume (what a pretentious load of crap!), no no, they’re flogging telephone calls, and bus tickets out of there, to Uyuni(the salt plains), Kusco, and Santa Cruz . This is not to say that it is conducted in what anyone could possibly perceive as a conventionally “efficient” manner, but it works somehow. Amongst the hyped up jumble salesmen (and women with what sounds like a megaphone, attatched to a ducks, Spanish speaking beak), are little “kiosks” of such cube shaped lovability, that a visit to each of them is like going to Amsterdam and turning down..... . Once “contact” is initiated at one of these kiosks, it is for the traveller who travels with a heathrow suitcase and an ever declining , but stubborn red plastic bag as hand luggage, a constant barrage of questions, designed at getting information about a product (in this case it is almost always strange looking sweets that I just haven’t seen before). The most pointless thing about this whole exercise, is that I point and say my “Que estas?’” at everything, knowing that I wouldn’t understand a single thing, said in the response. It is something which I can safely say, I fell in love with. I became the god of the understanding nod, accompanied with a muffled, seen it all before “Si, si”, which also makes no sense because then I should know what the sweets are!? Possibly. Anyhow, once you have just about established what you want and he has bundled it into a smallish plastic bag (no money back for saving bags here), is ask “Cuando?”. At this point, said kiosk “runner”, will have already weighed up where abouts in the world you are from; if not English, he knows I’m at least European. In every case, it feels like they are picking numbers from thin air knowing that you have the money, its great though, because if you become aware of this, you can haggle, just like a market, but this is actually a conventional shop in a way! They sell cigarettes, lighters, cold drinks, hot drinks, water, biscuits, crisps, stationary, every type of sweet, even the highly rated “Gatorade”, sometimes lurks upon these shores. "
So there we have it, the first "real" entry, there is more, but a blog shouldnt be overbearingly large...until tomorrow
