[utter blog-whoring]

While other high-profile bloggers can get free Ferrari laptops from Microsoft and then debate about the ethics of it, lowly 100-visitor-a-day blogs like mine get no such love. And so when I saw a post on Youth.sg dangling a chance to win a PSP in return for a blog post, I decided to jump, coz you’d never know if the planetary alignment today is favorable to good fortune, or if the gods are particularly choosing to bless you today. What’s the deal?

All you need to do is write a blog entry, in your own blog, on the theme “I Am @ Youth.SG”. You decide what “I Am @ Youth.SG” means to you, and you are free to interpret it any way you wish. Title the blog entry “I Am @ Youth.SG”, link it to us at www.youth.sg, and send an email to iam@youth.sg to submit your entry.

So I thought – how difficult can it get – I mean, it’s just writing some random paragraphs on your own blog. But I realized that when incentives are thrown in, the balance tips. When I was just writing for my own curatorial sake, for leisure, and with no profit, there were no pressure on my back. It was really easy writing those entries day in and out, because I didn’t have to crank my head in my posts too much to make them a little funnier, or the comments that much wittier, because in a way, I did not have obligations to please anybody on this blog.

In this case however, I spent the last hour trying to think of something witty, something clever, maybe something that deserves publication and glorification – I started to wonder how the people on Best of Craigslist do it. Or even local Singaporean favorite bloggers like Mr. Brown who have gone pro in producing amusing podcasts and blogposts.

I came to realise that churning good reads on a daily basis is definitely not easy – and when your livelihood depends on it, as in the case of pro-bloggers, it is perhaps even more difficult because every step you take does affect the readership, and eventually the bottom line. (And to think I once, and at times actually still do, harbor aspirations of being a pro-blogger). Bloggers, podcasters, news media, even aggregators and portals like Digg, Reddit and of course Youth.sg definitely have to keep scratching their heads to engage and involve their communities, or they’d simply fade out of relevance.

Perhaps an analogy would be between a job interview and a chat with a buddy. With an incentive, the nature of the conversation changes. In this post, I am interviewing with Youth.SG (albeit a Youth.SG with a big PSP face – damn to me who can’t see beyond materialistic possessions – though I think I do get excused because I’m an industrial designer, so I’m supposed to be into gadgets and all!).

Anyway, Youth.sg is a Singapore-based portal with content and links catering to youths – I (sadly) discovered that I am probably at the upper spectrum of “youthfulness” given that I am not quite captivated by either Superstars or the latest teen idols featured on their front page. Kinda like the adult-proof ringtone – you know you’ve “arrived” when you’re deaf to these. But that’s just the old crummy me speaking – you may discover your cup of tea there!

For now, I’d just have to pray for an email to arrive in my inbox bearing good news.

[/utter blog-whoring]

Saw this photo of people cleaning the soot off the wall of a typical building in Manhattan – man, that sure is hell lot of dirt/grime/dust. Not quite as artistic as the time where a graffiti artist used the dust for artistic/commercial purposes, but certainly almost as astounding. I’m sure it’s not just Manhattan, but practically any major metropolitan in the world. For years, people have turned a blind eye to pollutions in cities, taking them as a necessary chip for economic advancements. With the recent report on expats leaving Hong Kong for cleaner air elsewhere, it’s about time to realise that, hey, the environment does play an important role even if you just want to plainly look at the numbers.

I have taken a particular liking for Foxtrot comics by Bill Amend (which started to appear on the newspaper just a few years ago) – it has precisely blend of humor and geekness – you may not understand some of his strips if you are insulated from online happenings – for example, you might not get World of Warquest. Some of the references in the strip are also slightly obscure – but it’s truly a great feeling to get the “AHA” moment as he parodies some events in the strips, when it seemed like being able to understand the references from his strip meant you’re perhaps more tuned than the rest.

The one above for example – you’d have to understand the context of the strip.  This is the last daily strip to appear on newspapers (I cut only the last two of the three frames to fit into this blog) –  he would switch to drawing only on weekends from now on. I guess 19 years of daily humor does take its toll. And the character’s conversation were simply a final tribute to his fans and readers. And if you didn’t know what “fourth wall” means, you might not get it completely either.

So, this is a tribute to Bill and Foxtrot – the strip will appear only on weekends – and that perhaps would again reduce the incentive to drop my eighty cents for a daily newspaper on the other days.