Cakap cakap...personal.

Since I started my blog I have been asked why I am doing so. Am I a Politician? No I am definitely not. Am I paid for every article that I write. No I am not – not a single cent. Then why do I write? Let me start from the beginning.

 

I have written maybe a couple of letters to newspaper on matters I felt strongly about and and both were printed. I got a thrill out of that. Then I wrote a couple of articles for a tabloid in KL and those articles too were printed. And that just about sums up my writing career to the end of last year. I came back to Australia and settled in Adelaide. I had time on my hands and started surfing the net. I came across my MCKK schoolmates website and that started me writing to my friends – especially Zaharan and the late Ancient Mariner. The Ancient Mariner, Captain I call him, saw fit to post one of my anecodotes about life in KL onto his Ancient Mariner blog. That made me want to write some more and at the goading of Zaharan, I finally did start steadyaku47.

 

It took a great deal of effort, trial and error on my part before I even manage to get back into my own blog site every time I sign of. I must tell you all that there is at least two steadyaku blog site before this one that is still floating around cyberspace simply because I could not get back to them after I signed off. Most embarrassing.

 

I stuck at it for about two month and then I simply could not get the writing juice flowing – and I stopped for about three months. Two months ago I started again and a month ago I decided to send “A sobering thought” my piece on Mahathir to Lim Kit Siang because I though he might want to read it. He printed it on his blog – and since then I have been spending time developing my blog – writing mostly political stuff and on matters I felt strongly about and about me personally.

 

These things that I write are not thought off much in advanced. I put down my thoughts as and when they happen to come along. I let my mind wander where it wants. What ideas I had when I start an article might change completely by the time I am halfway and again by article end. If that happens that I will have one article with three separate story and I will have to break them up into three stories and tidy them up to make each of them complete on its own. As soon as I am satisfied that an article is complete I will post it on my blog first and then offer it to anybody else that will have them – mostly to Kit Siang.

 

In July most if not all the articles were written just off the top of my mind. Increasingly in August I found it necessary to research what I wanted to write in order to give it more depth and content. This meant a need to spend more time on each piece – checking my facts, grammer and finally packaging the story to make readable. This was something I did not bargain to do because disciplining myself in this manner is something new to me. But I now know that research and the development of a storyline is essential to any writing to make it something I am prepared to put out there for people to read, understand and react to it.

 

Can I make something out of it? I do not know. For now I am focused on building up my blog. The blog is me. It is what I want to write, it is an extension of what I do and most important I hope to develop my blog into a situation where anybody that wants to, can be in touch with each other and share our thoughts on matters that interest us. Developing a blog takes time, effort, commitment and most important discipline – discipline that will ensure that you will make the effort everyday to add contents to the site so that it is alive and will continue to grow.

 

My area of focus will be Malaysian and Australia for the time being. I do not see just yet how I can go beyond that.

On average I get about 500 to 1000 hits a day. Once it went up  to 6000 hits. Helen of CPI Asia (Center of Policy Initiatives) told me “ My guess is that one of the alpha blogs linked you. Perhaps M2Day, Kit Siang or Anwar?” To be honest I did not understand a word she told me but in order not to let her think my mind is ‘rosak’…I said “thanks for the info”. The things you have to do to keep your image ! Would any of you want to read what I write if you think I did not even understand that ? Aisehman got to watch my image lah.

 

Anyway it is good to be able to share these thoughts of mine. I do get worried that I might get ‘writers block’ – but let us get serious here – I am no writer! Whenever I start to think that I am a writer I think of Bill Crosby. He is in hospital on a trolley waiting to be seen by a Doctor and has been waiting for quite sometime. Suddenly he see a Hospital Orderly walking past him. Cosby see the guy ignoring him again…so as the guy walks away Cosby calls out to him “Hey you….almost the Doctor!”…so I am almost a writer…but not close enough. Till we talk again ….salam for now.