Monthly Archive
Browsing entries posted on August 2008
If you want to blog, you must wake up early.
I am at work before it’s even 9am! And this is a Sunday too! Before the clock even hit 0900, I had not one but TWO interesting things to blog.
1. I was on the 143 going to Novena when the bus stopped at a, um, bus stop. There was a loud metallic clang from outside, but being the not-kepoh kind, I sat quietly in my seat listening to Guns N’ Roses. (Perhaps if I hadn’t been listening to them, I’d have realised how loud the crash was.) But when the other passengers started swarming to the windows, I looked out.
There was a white car missing its front, broken green road railings, and a very shaken but intact driver. He didn’t move for quite a while, and in the meantime his vehicle leaked fluid, the bus passengers offered their own theories as to what could have happened, and people gathered to gawk. At least it was still early, so there weren’t that many people around.
No pictures. What do you think this is, STOMP? Anyway since the vehicle was missing its front, I couldn’t see the number plate anyway.
Crumple zones. One day they will save your life. Oh, and the car’s airbag didn’t deploy. Perhaps it was an older car and didn’t have one. So, once more, hooray for crumple zones!
2. As I headed to United Square to buy kaya toast, a woman walked past with her 3 fluffy white Malteses. I’m guessing the breed here, because I dislike small dogs and hence don’t care much to differentiate between them, but Maltese suits the description. There was one bigger dog and 2 smaller puppies, all on leashes. Well some people are dotty over their pets, so no comment.
I went downstairs to find that Ya Kun was closed. NOOOOO! I went to McDonald’s. But their hotcakes failed to tempt me. So I went back up, and as I walked back to the office -
I NEARLY STEPPED IN DOG POOP! Right there on the sidewalk outside United Square! WHERE PEOPLE WALK!
Stupid female in sunglasses with a purple reusable bag! Curse your lack of civic-mindedness! Dammit, how do people get away with that? And she had 3 dogs! What if the other 2 decide they, too, want to relieve themselves along their walk? Stupid female obviously either didn’t care, or decided that she conveniently wouldn’t bring baggies to dispose of their poop. The dogs are not to be blamed. Their human is. Too bad I didn’t notice what she was doing when I first went downstairs, because by the time I came up, she was far away.
THEN YOU WILL SEE PICTURES OF A STUPID BITCH!
No pictures of dog poop because this is not a kau-see-lap-sap blog. (Literally, dog-shit and rubbish - meaning miscellaneous odds and ends.)
Honestly, some dog owners should just be taken out back and pelted with shit. If you can’t take care of one dog, you sure as hell don’t deserve three.
So long, and thanks for nothing.
I’ve removed the nuffnang sidebar ad from my sidebar.
Reason #1: Even though I’m a Glitterati, I’ve not seen any increase in my earnings. They’ve stagnated at $16.17 for the past few months. I blame this lack of income on the new system that relies on clicks instead of page views. Now, I won’t tell people to go click on my ads, and I’m certainly not going to be stupid and click on them myself. So the ad has to be interesting enough to warrant clicking, which brings me to my 2nd point.
Reason #2: I get uninteresting ads. I don’t want to advertise “Uniquely Singapore” or “Safra” on my blog, but unlike Google’s contextual ads, I don’t have a choice. At least with Google Ads, I’m to blame for the HIV-testing ads, because of the posts about my J-drama. And no one wants to click on these crappy ads, so they’re generating zero income FOR ME while the advertiser gets free eyeballs.
Reason #3: Advertising on my blog not only costs you money, the money has to come straight TO ME. That was why I stuck with PayPerPost for so long, because I saw the money in a month. With nuffnang, I display ads but I don’t see the money. What’s the point?
Reason #4: I started working.
And now for possible rebuttals:
Rebuttal #1: It’s my own fault for putting sidebar ads. Yes, I know other nuffnangers get the cute new Wall-E ad because they’re using the rectangular format. Well, Wordpress doesn’t allow me to do that. And between a blogging platform that I really like, and advertising that doesn’t even earn me that much, which do you think I’m going to choose?
Rebuttal #2: I have very low pageviews, so I get ads that no one’s interested in. Well then, shouldn’t I remove them in order to keep the 20 or so pageviews I get every day? I’d rather be read than make a few cents.
Rebuttal #3: My blog makes money while I sleep, whereas I only earn money as long as I work. True enough, except that my blog doesn’t ACTUALLY make all that much anyway.
So, I hope you enjoy the new and nuffnang-free Bohemia Bunny. The Google Ads stay for the time being, though, just because I like seeing what funny ads they come up with. Oh yeah… now that I’ve removed the nuffnang, maybe I’ll put Advertlets back on. Just because.
Disclaimer: I acknowledge that it’s my own damn fault I’m not making money from my nuffnang ads. So since it’s my own damn fault, shouldn’t I be the one taking steps to rectify it? So I am.
Edit: I added the Advertlets sidebar for all of one minute. It’s very cute and all, but having my face compete for attention with the gorgeousness of Felicia Chin just doesn’t seem like a great idea. So I guess the money I have sitting with Advertlets will just continue sitting there. Oh, and I have an incoming ad from Nuffnang next week (they sent me the email some time back and I forgot about it). Let it not be said that I don’t stand by my opinion. I’ll restore the sidebar ad in time to display the ad, just to see if it actually makes any money. Stay tuned!
Edit 25th August:
Well I made little more than a buck off the Dove ad, and about the same from SAFRA. Altogether my earnings have grown by 3 dollars since I last checked. Whee.
Google Ads is still the best, I’ve earned 3 USD this month alone.
Since I don’t have any incoming ads, I should remove the Nuffnang logo. But actually I’m also a lazy person and the need to add and remove the widget is just a hassle.
So in conclusion: Does Nuffnang make you money? Yes. Is it a lot of money? Well, at my current viewership, no. It’ll be ages before I make enough to cash out and call it a day. Then again, I am the same person who patiently did surveys for 5 years (or more - can’t remember) until I had enough points to cash out, and made myself about 50 USD. I can outlast the system - the company had better still be around to pay me when I qualify!
Edited 28th August: Some dude with the nickname “Uncle Josh” left a comment advising me to switch to Advertlets. Unfortunately some glitch happened when I approved the comment, and it’s mysteriously disappeared. Anyway, Uncle Josh, thanks for your advice, I’ve already tried Advertlets and it doesn’t satisfy my requirements as far as making money goes. However, you might want to praise your staff member Jess Ong, who already responded to my comments on the Titan widget. Good job on promoting your own company, “Uncle” Josh.
The Undercover Malaysians
They’re there, and you know they are. Sometimes you can spot them, but mostly you can’t. They’re indistinguishable from the average local Singaporean.
Yes, the Malaysian is a tricky creature indeed to spot. We look like you, talk like you (with certain exceptions that can be used to identify us), eat like you (except for my incessant bitching over how prawn mee, char kuey teow and laksa is very very different in KL) and we’re found in every level of society, from the humble hawker assistant to the loftiest of judiciary posts.
Don’t believe me? Go check the backgrounds of the previous Chief Justices of Singapore on Wikipedia. They were all born and raised in Malaysia. This tendency means that, ironically, my ex-boyfriend may have a higher chance of becoming Chief Justice than his Singaporean friends. I find this amusing.
Yes, the dudes at Cheese Prata, your kid’s tuition teacher, your company’s IT guy, and even your boss - you never know if any one of these might turn out to be Malaysian. We sure are good at hiding it.
We’re like Cylons. HAHAHAHA!
What’s it like being undercover, though? Well, it’s fun until we get spotted. Then it gets funner, as our friend/teacher/classmate’s eyes widen in surprise, and they say (in my case anyway): “But you don’t look Malaysian!”
Er, I didn’t know we had a “look”, but I’ve always been wonderfully stylish, which perhaps contravenes the common perception of Malaysians as backwater hicks with bad dressing.
On the other hand, my kids think I come from a rich family because “only rich Malaysians come to Singapore to study”. They’re not familiar with the ASEAN scholarship, apparently. While it’s true that one needs to be comfortably well-off to send one’s kid down south, it doesn’t require giant amounts of money. You think there are THAT MANY rich families living in Johor Bahru?
Of course, being a Malaysian overseas has its perils. Unlike being one abroad in the US or UK, where they’re generally genial towards you, Singaporeans seem to harbour a strange mixture of familiarity and disdain. On one hand, they will tell you what a great time they had eating and shopping in KL. On the other, they love pushing what they think are hot buttons: politics, race and education. I enjoy rubbing salt in their wounds on all three counts.
Singaporeans bitch about our country because they can’t bitch about theirs, and besides, when was the last time THEY got to vote?
For a supposedly ’second-class citizen’ in a ‘backwards’ country, I sure have done well. Or rather, my parents did well, which set me up in life to enjoy a multitude of privileges. For some of us very fortunate ones, the racial quotas are things that happen to other people. Moral of the story: Money reigns supreme.
I’m a product of the “lousy” Malaysian education system, where you can “allegedly” buy your grades. Now, I don’t know where you guys got your info, or if you’re just stereotyping, because some things remain free of bribery. The system is built such that you’d probably need extremely powerful connections to get a (fake) good grade, because stapling money to your exam booklet isn’t going to work (so don’t try it, kids!). Don’t ask me how, because I earned mine the hard way.
Besides, “lousy” education or not, it was good enough for the Singapore government, plus I pwn my kids AND I learned my content in Malay, then relearned it in English. The poor dears just suffer from inferiority complex now that a Malaysian is lording it over them.
Muahahahaha.
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