The Things We Write About

God my head hurts.

I planned to have an easy, early night in (after 12 hours tending to various students and their respective baggages) but it seemed God had other plans. Rather, my PC did. I'd gotten a trojan alert earlier after my sister installed ICQ, and a rather hasty cleanup/checkup gave the impression that all was well. At midnight, I quickly realised how wrong I was after the damn thing froze for the 50th time. I'm all for System Restore, but I thought this warranted a more..decisive course of action.

Therefore, I decided a clean install was in order. There's something about formatting a drive and installing a fresh copy of Windows on it. Somehow it's kind of..therapeutic (yes I'm a sad, sad excuse for a human bean but hey) and I usually feel a lot better after. Thankfully I'd already backed up most of my important documents earlier in the week, and all that was left to do was format the C: drive, wipe it clean and pop in the Windows CD, after which it finally took me till 4 am to finally finish installing all the software I use (plus all the antivirus, firewall and anti-spyware utilities and THEN updating them). Honestly I have a feeling it's a little more than a trojan problem alone, since the HDD is rather old and it's been seeing a whole lot of use lately (this is one of those times I wish I was actually rich, and not only metaphorically). As of the time of writing, I'm waiting for Windows Update to finish before resuming my broken(!!) torrent downloads.

So in the meantime, constant reader, I'll put in some more padding so you won't feel your time here's been wasted (cmon, you didn't just come here for the pseudogeeky writeups, right?). In the past week, some bloggers I know have touched on originality and other aspects of blogwriting. It's inevitable that some bloggers will be more prominent than others, inspiring their readers to come up with similar themed or styled writings of their own. Sometimes it's the content. Other times it's the person's style (humourous, dark, sordid or what have you). All of this invites imitation (the sincerest form of flattery, although I HIGHLY recommend against doing this in real life, it just irritates the hell out of the person you're trying to flatter) and sometimes, feelings of inferiority.

It's come to my attention before that I don't do serious socio- or politically styled articles. Sometimes I ask myself why (especially when some other bloggers seem to be unsure of their content as well). I guess the answer (for me that is) is as simple as I just don't lean that way. We already have more than enough political, religious and social commentaries going on (inside and outside of PPS), written by people who are passionate and more importantly informed about their material. Anyone who's been reading me from the beginning (yes, you three) will notice how I've tried my hand at several approaches before finally settling (for now) for the format you see today. It hasn't been easy finding my online voice, but it takes a certain mix of passion, knowledge (shamelessness?) and being comfortable inside your own skin to find that sweet spot (think of it as the G-Spot of blogging). Working in academia tends to force any writing I do into rigid, scientific prose. Blogging is the exact opposite.

So until I decide I need to change some more, The Insane Ox will still be dishing out anecdotes on my life, attempted relationships, the business of local education, video games, movies savoury and otherwise, DVDs, gadgets I want, sex and all those things that matter to me. So here are some tips if you're new, since I got the same from another blogger when I first started:

Be honest, and more importantly be yourself. Readers will know if you're ripping off someone else, so don't bother. Respond to the readers' comments, and always remember that no one sees things quite the same way you do, which is a good thing. Don't worry if you feel insecure about the content because all blogs change, as you do.

Having said that, I don't think I'd really be me if I turned Jeff Ooi on myself and my readers, would I? Till then, whatever your poison (be it sex, politics, tech or boys/girls) take a nice long gulp, and I hope I'll be reading about it soon.

Cheers!