Friday, January 8, 2010

New Phase (face) for New Year

I begin to feel bored with the green background of my blog, and also I am ready to move on to the next phase - learn to take better photos.  It will be an interesting journey since I have "zero" knowledge about camera except for point and "click".  I decided I should give my blog a clean and simple new face/look for the new year.

I started the blog about a month ago.  It's a big challenge for a computer illiterate like me to learn everything fresh from the beginning.  I had no knowledge of how to do a blog.  I had opened an account and attempted to do a post a year before that, just to see how blogging works, but I was not able to find time to continue exploring it.

I am not a very patient person, but I have a thirst to learn.  I wanted to learn how to type in Chinese on the computer for a long time. I know for a fact that I have to learn Pin Yin (Chinese phonics using English alphabet) to compose Chinese characters. Without any knowledge of what tool to use, I  spent a fair amount of time researching online and downloading all the possible tools I can used from Windows.

I started off with doing a Chinese blog.  It's a mistake to begin with, reasons being I have never learned PinYin before and I  have to learn how to blog at the same time . On top of that, I haven't written Chinese for over 20 years.  It literally took me 10 minutes just to finish a short sentence. From composing to typing, or translating to editing, it took me 2 to 3 hours to finish a Chinese post compared to a 20 minutes English post.  With practice and playing with all the widgets whenever I had time, all the practice paid off and today I can publish a post in about an hour time frame. Maybe I will get faster in the future or maybe this is the best I can do.

Blogging is easy, from setting up an account to uploading links and pictures to changing the template, fonts and colors.  They are all self explanatory. You just have to have the will to learn and practice.  With the blogger's help, I can find most of my questions answered at this stage.  It's the Chinese Pin Yin that's killing me. So anyone interested in doing a blog, it is no biggie.  But if you don't know PinYin and wanted to do a Chinese blog, starting with the English blog and practicing/learning all the widgets here first then moving on to a Chinese blog is so much easier. 

Why am I writing all these?  Becuase I truly find joy in sharing what I know or what I like on my blog. It's also a way to keep track of the things I learned and pass them down to my children. I hope that my children will find it useful in the future when they become adults.  That's why I do not have a theme for my blog. I hope to encourage more of you to write and keep a record of what you have learned, such as in cooking, flower arrangement, etc.  All you have to do is read a little, learn a little and do a little everyday.  It's nice to share and learn from each other and that's why there are many bloggers out there. I am not a good writer, but it's the things I want to share, not my writing.  So I am having fun blogging, so should you!

4 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for coming by my blog. I'm hugely impressed that you can write in Chinese on a western keyboard!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Imogen - What a nice surprise that you're here. Thanks for stopping by and comment.

    ReplyDelete