Sunrise in Hong Kong

What it’s been? A couple of months?

I’m back. Sort of.

Where have I been? Here and there. Everywhere and nowhere.

After 3.5 years of blogging I was a little tired. Seeing what some bloggers had done in the name of making a buck made me sad. Tired and sad, I opted for a little time away from Asian Ramblings and the travel blog scene.

That and I’ve turned a page or two in the book that is my life. A whole new chapter, you might say.

• A new job, as I mentioned previously. Out of the classroom and into the boardroom.
• We (Mrs. Stevo and I) bought a condo. I have been busy rolling in plaster dust and trying to remember the cuss words my father was fond of saying while doing DIY projects.
• Mrs. Stevo is expecting. That’s right, there’s a bun in the oven. The stork is circling. I’m happy and frightened.
• I’ve taken a shot or two since I last posted here. I’ve been playing around with black and white.
• Asian Ramblings has been nominated again for the Bloggies. Head on over and vote for your favorite blogs.

That’s all for now. I’ll be around with a story or a photo to share as time permits.

What have I been up to?

Life speeds along at an out-of-control pace. I do my best, but find often myself running-to-stand still. I miss my Lao Po, I work too much, work out too much, and eat to many vegetable. Oh, to be the dirty slacker I once was.

Blogging

Things have exploded here at Asian Ramblings. Traffic is up 231% thanks to some handy-dandy SEO work I did. Being a 2009 Bloggies finalist didn’t hurt things either. A plug-in I installed led to an email from my hosting company, informing me that Asian Ramblings almost crashed their database server. Bye-bye plug-in.

Asian Ramblings was invited to be part of Lonely Planet’s Blog Sherpa program. If you’re surfing the LP site you may see a post or two by moi.

My review of the Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera backpack was recently published on Matador Goods. Want my opinion on this high-security pack? Read it, and give it a green SU thumbs up, please.

So many projects, so little time.

Photography

I am slowly wading into an uncertain sea called flickr. I have been  a member of Photo.net for three years, but think Flickr, (for the same price, if I pay the “pro” fee) offers a lot more. All the features I used on Photo.net were ones I could receive without paying the $25-a-year fee. Check out my flickr stream.

Craig Ferguson has taken his photography blog in a new and interesting direction. I’ve been playing, using his latest lighting tutorial. I shot an interesting self-portrait (which Ron will love) and am looking at getting a second flash, stands, and umbrellas.

Bountiful Healing, Robin’s photo blog, gets better and better. A recent post, Dead Giants, featured some stunning images.

Fitness

Only 7.48 more pounds to lose and I’m at my “goal.” I used to think trousers with elastic tops were the last resort of overly fat men. I’ve since learnt that a man shedding pounds can also use these evil garments when his belts and pants are too big.

To spice up my cardio fitness routine I bought a Dance Dance Revolution pad for my PC (a whopping $6.75 US). If I was to post a video on Youtube of myself attempting to stamp on said pad, I’d be infamous. Watching someone with no rhythm trying to dance is amusing.

Reflecting on eating right and dieting I wish:

1. Vegetables tasted like steak,
2. There was a high-protein, low-carb beer,
3. Eating deep-fried food was extremely healthy,
4. Water had a more interesting flavor.

What’s ahead?

I have some cool posts coming up. My feature on the Opium War, and some interesting tales of Chinese Canadians fighting in World War II will soon grace these pages, as well as a photo essay on the Battle of Hong Kong. I hope to post a regular cooking article as I continue to decipher Chinese food. Speaking of food: amuirin at Stop & Wander was suppose to start a week-long food series, but has postponed it. Damn, I was looking forward to reading it. I’m always looking for new ideas.

Also

An RSS email subscriber sent me an email, telling me that Hong Kong was not the real China. Yes, I know. My post on how I Hate Hong Kong is testament to this. That said: Hong Kong is extremely photogenic.

Lonely Planet Photo Contest
Lonely Planet Guides and photo-sharing site Pikeo have announced a travel photo contest. Have your travels taken you to London, Paris, Barcelona, or Istanbul? Did you take a stunning photo of the city? Submit it! Four winners will have their images featured on the covers of upcoming Lonely Planet’s new ‘Encounter’ guides for each locale.

And as they say on game shows, that’s not all. Winners will also be jetting off to India, Russia, Morocco, or Kenya. Runners-up and commended entries will also receive prizes.  The Lonely Planet Photo Contest is open to residents of UK, France, Spain, USA and Canada. For details see http://lonelyplanet.pikeo.com.

Change of Address
Erica at blissfultravel.wordpress.com has moved to travelblissful.com. One of the great travel sites on the web, she now enjoys her own, stunning domain. Stop by her new digs and read what’s ahead for the revamped site.

SEO Tips
RT Cunningham, an ex-Marine in the Philippines, has written a great 7-Part series on Search Engine Opimization (SEO) for your blog. Need the skinny on SEO, SERPS, building backlinks, and generating more traffic? Need SEO Tips that work? Read RT’s UV SEO Series to get the 411.

It’s Friday morning in the Middle Kingdom. I’m off to Hong Kong to pick up my new axe.

I’ll be staying in palatial cheap basic accommodations. My last trip to HK saw me staying at the YMCA. I don’t know what reputation The Y has in other parts of the world, but in HK it’s bomb diggity.

I’ve found some cool new blogs this week (well, new to me) and wanted to share. Give these folks a read, they have something interesting to say.

I mentioned Christine at almostfearless.com earlier in the week. She has a great post about how to receive your mail, in a virtual sense, while overseas.

Julie at Collazo Projects has an interesting piece on flubbed journalistic endeavors and gives her commentary on the Ann Curry/Ingrid Betancourt interview.

Want to do cool, free stuff in Boston? World-traveler extraordinaire Nomadic Matt has the answers in a recent post.

Theresa and Jeff of Livesofwander.com are leaving for a year of world travel. They have some interesting posts and neat things to say. Their site offers readers a chance to vote on where the couple should go on their epic adventure.

Signing off for the weekend. Stay chilly, I’ll try to stay dry.

Image courtesy of the BBC

My days of pimping products and crap for PPP and other ridiculous web outfits are over. Yeah, I’ll miss the easy cash but I do have morals. Bearing the previous statements in mind, I’ll admit the rest of this post is a giant advertisement.

Why, Sti Fu? Why? Because: This is something I use, happily. I want you, all of you, to get a blog host.

To My Fellow Bloggers: Are your words and images that unimportant they only deserve sub-domain status? Do you really want your URL to be http://hotchick.wordpress.com? No, you need a good blog host. Read the full story

RT Cunningham at Untwisted Vortex, uncrowned prince of the blogosphere, has been as busy as a beaver as of late.

Last week he posted some great articles on improving your blog.

Want to know how to use Feedburner to offer RSS updates by email? RT is the man to see. Check out info on the Top of the Blogs, a new ranking service . Heard about Stumpedia? It is a new human-powered search engine. RT has been there and lived to tell the tale.

RT is a knowledgeable guy that I met through Carrie at My Several Worlds. The man knows blogging and WordPress. Give him a click and learn a lot.