I started blogging this March and since that, I visited quite a lot of blogs. And the number of the blogs I follow has increased to a frightening amount..all my friends blogs.. and the Malaysian blogs I found through Petaling Street.. On this page I want to present a few blogs that I like, and which might be interesting (a separate page especially for Malaysian blogs will follow).

Petaling Street
Not really a blog, But a blog-portal is www.petalingstreet.org. Every Malay blog is allowed to post links to his articles on this site. Since I’m living in Malaysia right now, my articles get posted there, too. I already got some Visitors to my page through that portal and I found a few of the below blogs.

Teheran Bytes
As an column for the online magazine “Spiegel.de”, Nahid Siamdoust writes about life in Iran, with a focus on political movements.

Jeff Ooi’s Screenshots
This is the blog to get the other side of the story of Malaysian News. Awarded with the Freedom Blog Award, Jeff Ooi not minces matters and talks about sensitive issues.

CY Leow’s Photoblog
Is a remarkable Blog with pictures on Malaysia. The senior photographer uses this blog to tell some stories of his life/work. Very remarkable!

Infojahr Singapur
Is a Blog by Christine, who is working a year for Siemens Singapore. I’m still very curious to contact here, but I couldn’t find out a correspondence address? Anyone here to help? Unluckily for my English Readers it is written in German.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media at 10:47 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

10. You get quite some tan (even without using the great banana boat tan-lotion LSF 0)

09. Nasi Lemak becomes a favorite dish.

08. Everything gets la. Cannot(la), Blog(la)!

07. You keep your wallet full of RM 1 not to get anyone into the embarrassment of not having change.

06. Walking on the road you are no longer upset when a motorcycle almost runs into you because the driver wants to bypass a jam on the roadside or outruns you on a jungle road.

05. Your favorite weekend challenge has become to hang around shopping centers

04. Your hard disk is jammed with thousands of Twin Tower Pictures, since you want to get the perfect shot.

03. Seeing a woman in a bikini gets you upset, since you are only used to elderly woman in bathing suits.

02. Searching for the newest songs you don’t use a crappy internet connection, but simply go to Petaling street.

01. You no longer think of the local food as spicy, since you had some moving Indian curry. In order to taste anything you now need to spice everything up using chili.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know at 12:59 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Today I searched my mp3 collection for some real recommendable tracks. I ended up with the following list. They do not fully reflect, what’s in my Winamp playlist those days, but those are the songs I’d urge you to give a chance into your playlist.

• System of a down – B.Y.O.B. (Album: Mezmerize)
• Coldplay – Speed of Sound (Album: X&Y)
• Lucie Silvas – What you are made of (Album: Breathe In)
• The Chemical Brothers – Believe (Album: Push the button)
• Queens of the Stone Age – In my head (known from the NFS2U Soundtrack)

Lucie Silvas bugged me for endless times on the Radio, withou
Probably less interesting, but with a high ranking in my playlist are:

• ATB – Believe in Me
• Die Toten Hosen – Freunde
• The Goo Goo Dolls – Give a little Bit
• My Chemical Romance – Helena (need to get the Album “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge” urgently)
• Coyote Girlz – Friday on my mind (especially in Mondays very important!)
• U2 – City of Blinding Lights
• Christina Stürmer – Ich Lebe (why does that woman has to perform in Bamberg just when I’m out? )
• Faith Hill – Mississippi Girl (that is real country mainstream – easy listening at it’s finest)

Hot Guess for the Top100 next weeks.

• Adam green – Carolina
• Hermes House Band & Tony Christie - Is This The Way To Amarillo?
• 3 Doors Down - Behind Those Eyes
• Il Divo – Unbreak my heart (Regresa a Mi)

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media at 08:32 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

.. that's what i wished... Unfortunately it hasn’t even dared to rain for over a week, and the heat becomes kind a oppressive. Living in this climate here can be considered a reversed Sauna, where you don’t go in to sweat, but you enter your house to cool down. Some rain might be very helpful to get rid of the muggy weather condition – and I would probably be able detect the twin towers through the haze again.. It might also clear up my mind a little bit. It’s somehow loaded with indecisiveness (where I don’t even see the decisions to take.).

I talked to my mom yesterday, and she told me that they make hay at home these days. And although I’m not a friend of hard physical work I would like to join them and help. It’s just one of those family things were you can only get a good and fast result if everyone works together. I'm sad that I cant be there. Is that homesickness? Also I have only the picture at the left here, which doesn't even show hay.. but it was taken at last years hay harvest.. At least something.. thx to Photocase.. (Hay reminds me although of Dirks farewell party “unload the hay in front of the barn”, who knows the corresponding German expression and it’s meaning?).

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 03:26 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

I consider it a problem, that I can’t give descriptions to my blog header pictures. So you are left without any explanation where they where taken, and what background story they might hide. Since I managed to gather quite a few of those pictures, so I decided to give them their own image gallery, where I could add manual descriptions. I also added the possibility to register at the image gallery and to write comments to my images today. I would be very happy to receive a little feedback to the header pictures. So feel free to register and comment!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Sights at 09:39 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Didn’t expect it happening so fast.. expected it to be around my half time to reach the number of 100 Blog postings here. I reached 100 posts almost 3 weeks before my half-time. I also managed to set up over 40 Malaysia related image galleries and I discussed with my friends and users in more than 170 comments (Although I expected at least an average of 2 comments/article.. but somehow my friends seem to be a little lazy, but I guess complaining here might not be of any use.. those who didn’t take the chance yet, will most probable not change their behavior in the future).

The header picture was changed about 10 times, and users have been attracted from all over the world. (Also I helped a little.. my articles get announced at the Blogger-Portals Technorati, Blogrolling and Petalingstreet. I also keep sending an updated sitemap to Google.) The number of unique visitors increased to over 1000 this month. But the average number of page views per visitor sank - so my users seem to be less interested in the overall content.

Extensive Site Update
To honour the number of visitors, I took quite some time this weekend, to enhance my services and updated my blog. I hope you will like the new implemented features:

• added random gallery image
• added weather info for KL
• added 5 last google searches, that found my Page
• made Travel Itineraries page dynamic and added content for my visitors
• updated some backend modules
  

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Web-Site at 03:25 | Comments (4) | Trackback (1)

Upss, I didn’t quite finish my post on the eight weeks. So I will do one additional post on 10 weeks, also I only had planned to do this kind of summary every 4 weeks. But you might consider it as 8 weeks continued (like I did on the 4 weeks posting )

Last week going to KLCC by LRT I noticed what has changed. After 2 month I know how to get around in this country. It is no longer something, which is alien to me. Stepping out of the LRT I know what to expect, and I learned ways to handle possible problems. Taking a taxi I know the local rates and can negotiate with the drivers – I know what is ok, and when they are trying to rip me off. 

Although the FRIM walk clearly showed me my limits concerning physical strains in the tropic climate, I feel quite comfy with the weather. Even walking in the hot sun around KLCC wasn’t a problem – also I sweated not only a little.

I also learned that I’m a communications junkie – I need a way to express myself and get feedback. Well. You are reading this Blog. So I guess this is nothing new to you. But I won’t forget the feeling sitting at home without a possibility to access the internet, and without an easy chance to talk to someone. Of course I always could call someone at home in Germany, but that is quite expensive… So I’ll keep writing mails. And also I might not notice when I miss answering a mail from one of my friends at home (using Webmail and Outlook parallel on 4 different mail accounts is quite a chaos – got about 900 unread mails in my outlook inbox..) I’m always disappointed if I don’t get feedback. Not calculating that my communication partners could have other problems then writing mails to me, or answering my ICQ queries.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 09:19 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

This morning I went out for a nice little walk. I woke up at half past 9, because it got quite hot in my room. Too bad if you program the air con to switch of at 8 o’clock, since you go to work on weekdays, and you forget to reset it for the weekend… Since I didn’t want to go neither to the pool nor to the restricted internet (only port 80) at the office, and I’m in need for a haircut and a hotlink top up card, I decided to pay a visit to Seksyen 14. Here I would get everything. So I started walking over from Tiara Damansara Condo, and wanted to catch a taxi on my way. Unluckily I didn’t manage to catch one, so I walked like 30 minutes. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the Malaysian roads are just not made for walking. You can’t go on the road, since you could easily run down by a car, and you can’t walk nearby the road, since you might fall into an open drain. So it wasn’t that much fun. But I at least saved the MYR 4 for a taxi. Since I’m almost broke I can invest that money probably into a can of beer tonight…

Now I’m sitting here at *bucks once again, downloading the newest charts and thinking about what to do this weekend. It will be a quiet one, for sure. I think I have a load of personal things to work one. I didn’t have a chance to care about them when I had action, while Dirk was around. I’ll also have to get into some more detailed planning for Christian and Bianca’s visit in three weeks, but since they didn't manage to give me a feedback to my suggestions, yet, this might not be an easy one...

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 06:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)