Not So Little Girl In A Reverie

This will go into my side bar as a page entitled “About The Blog” because I want to make an introduction and an explanation about my blog and also to ease navigation(if that is possible.).

What’s In A Name?

Little Girl In A Reverie..seems to pale in comparison with my often mind boggling url name.

Jayelleenelial.com. I’ve explained it time and time again, but if this is your first time here, I’ll say it again.

This nickname was created in 2001 when Esther, Mun Teng, Li Peng and I were exceptionally bored in class. We spelled out the pronunciations of our initials. Esther’s initials were EPL and Eepeelle, Mun Teng’s was Ceeamtee and Li Peng’s was ACLP hence Eiceeellepee. Mine was Jayellepias for JLPS. Break it up. Jay-elle-pee-ass.

I was quite interested in witchcraft(go on, raise your eyebrows) when I was in form2. And came up with a “mystical” nickname for myself. Enelial it was. Enel was a reverse of the Lene from my Jolene and Ial was a reverse of my surname Lai.

After awhile, I fused the two nicknames together and it has stuck ever since. Jayelleenelial. No one has something like that. Not even close.

A (not so)little history

I started out on a blogging platform called mBlog in the middle of 2003. Influenced by the likes of good friends Hsin, Barry and Leech, I was hooked onto the world of blogging. Back then, I tried to keep my blog a secret among a few friends. After some hangat-hangat tahi ayam posts on mBlog, news came in that the servers were closing down because they wanted to charge their freeloaders for their blogging service. Hsin and Barry moved on to blogdrive and I dragged myself over there, starting on a clean slate.

Blogging in 2004 meant keeping it among friends, using the blog as a tool to keep in touch with those who are..er, well, out of touch. However, soon it got to a level where I’d tell my friends things and they would say, “Oh yeah, read it on your blog,”.

Back in the days where everything on the blog only involved these bunch of darling peeps.(and many more who are not in the photo).

I wanted to make friends with more bloggers in Malaysia after googling up a few local bloggers like absolutely-fuzzy.com, midnitelily.com and suckball.com.. I explored around a little more and there was the god sent www.petalingstreet.org that opened up windows to a world of experiences. Nothing has been the same since I joined the community portal!

I was drawn deeper into the Malaysian blogosphere with the aid of petalingstreet.org, engrossed with the daily life of Malaysians everywhere. I read about a then drunk college girl(who is now already working in a neighbouring country), a lecturer who had trouble communicating with a chinese national student(who has now resigned from the college) and a guy who wrote about the anticipation of his first child(who is now already out of his mum’s womb and is attending preschool) and SO many more. The more I commented, the more I was part of this growing community.

This then led on to blog meets and incoming links and contacts and many many many friends.

In these 4 years of blogging, I’ve had a few rather interesting experiences that I’d like to reminisce about and share with you. Here are a few of the traffic changing events that took place:

In June 2005, I attended my first blog meet and was really hard up about attending Petaling Street’s Second Anniversary Bash which was one of the biggest blog meets ever held in the Malaysian blogging scene. Unfortunately, my dad feared for my safety and was not happy that I went alone to meet strangers off the internet. I had violated a big nono that was one of the VERY stringent rules about the internet that I have been brought up to adhere to. Furthermore, on the day that my father had this talk with me was the day that the news about Singapore’s SPG’s naked photos were put up on her blog and it was in the news. He pointed to a photo of her, lying naked on her blog header and said, “I WOULD DIE IF THAT WAS YOU!”.
As I did not want to further infuriate my parents with my whole blogging passion, I had to turn down an interview from the Star2(which was carried out by another blogging friend. It’s not that I was SO worthy that an interview was asked of me, just that I was at the right place at the right time). This interview changed the lives of four bloggers(Kenny Sia, Minishorts, Petertan and Suanie) as their blogs are now far more public than they have ever envisioned it to be.

Read my post about the issue here.

In July-August 2005, I had to attend national service. I was allowed to send letters back home every 3-4 days and this enabled me to ‘blog’ about my experiences there, just as I had intended to do. I wrote every single day, inconveniencing my brother and Esther(who were my gracious blog content uploader, moderator while I was gone). As I wasn’t there to observe the traffic myself and how others reacted to this unique way of blogging, till today I don’t know to what extent my national service blogs were regarded as. But I do know that more than a handful people linked back to my national service entries and the R.age(a college newspaper by The Star) even featured my national service blogs, without me knowing, but I was damn proud of that.hahaha. Kennysia contributed a whopping 2000 unique hits one day in August 05 after he blogged about my national service experiences. Till today,my blogdrive blog is still getting traffic from that post.

This got my dad worrying again because he feared that the government would come after my ass for being so outspoken about the training programme. I admit I was pretty crude in my entries. YOU should try living with 23 other girls from a variety of contrasting backgrounds. But there were also many lessons that I have gained from National Service which I have depicted in my national service entries. I never got to blog past my 40 something entry. The last entry was supposed to be The Merdeka Day which I marched in and was also my last day in camp before heading off to kedah to do dentistry.
So once again, to stay out of trouble, I removed those entries. I keep them in a zip file and share them with future national service trainees who want to know more about the life in national service.

Read my post about the issue here.

In July 2006, I was involved in a rather humiliating experience. Which I embraced knowing fully well how big the issue could be blown into. Strangely, I did not feel humiliated from the experience. Hehe. A girl blogged about being mistaken for me when someone asked her if she was me. She was horrified that she was equated with one of the ugliest bloggers around and posted up conversations of herself with her friends,ensuring that she is prettier than me. I got wind from someone that the post was about me even though she didn’t mention my name(but gave out my url to whoever who asked).

My alarm clock became famous from that incident.;)

I wrote a whole post to her telling her I know that it is me and questioned her motives. I directed my traffic over to her blog and even though I know it would be a big issue, but I didn’t think that it would generate 900 unique hits and I was even told that the issue was emailed around to as far as Australia. I was no longer concerned about how someone was belittling my looks but was rather intrigued about the attention that the issue managed to get. Comments were flooding in on both blogs and all I remember doing was spending my time refreshing and refreshing the pages. Haha. It was because of that issue where I learnt that I had so many true friends and knew what people thought of me. I suppose it is worth it to be called ugly in order to know exactly how many other people see you in a different light, inside and out.

Read about the post here.

In Sept 06, I moved into my own domain. It is almost like starting from scratch again. Losing all my incoming links, all my traffic and whatever credibility that I have managed to built up with my blogdrive blog. Things are more quiet now compared to when it was back at blogdrive. Maybe I’m starting to lose my juice. But no harm done! I still harbour this dream to compile my entries into a book(i understand that i’ll have to be by volumes ie. December 2005…January 2006..etc) as a souvenir for myself. Something to look back at when I am old. It might not be interesting for everybody(my grandchildren will probably turn away after looking at it for awhile), but I would like to look back on these entries one day.

An even greater dream would be to have archaeologists digging up my old archives and finding out a girl who lai si in tesco way back in 2006AD.

Categorizing

If you notice, I have a weird list of categories. Spoken in my everyday language(a weird mix of english, malay, cantonese, manglish of my generation(ie. la wei, chun, go die la u, happening etc)).. I think I should at least provide a little bit of an explanation.

56k Killer - dubbed by a certain Tan Yee Wei, I couldn’t agree more! I am the 56k killer who has no qualms about killing your bandwidth with an average of 70 photos per post when I feel like it. I just have to put up photos of things I see and do. Deal with it.

Bitching - self explanatory right. Can’t do alot of this in public because later my friends terasa. So that’s where the beauty of password protected posts come in.

Blog - general musings about the blogging culture. I do that from time to time. It might get old. Excuse me.

Buy buy buy no need money ar? - raving about my latest shopping purchases or even shopping trips. “Buy buy buy no need money ar?” is a phrase my father frequently uses on me.

Celebrations - usually go hand in hand with 56 killer. These will consist of blogs about people’s birthdays, dinners, festivities, events and many more.

Dentistry - being a dental student, I make it a point to take as many photos of the things I do during my practical sessions. I find it all very interesting and I believe some of you do too. Don’t deny it! I know you do~! *tickle tickle*

Eat Shit Sleep - a term used to describe generic blogs which blog boringly about what they ate today, whether if they went to the toilet and how sleepy they are. basically a whole log about what they do, every single day. It depends. Some bloggers are quite skillful eat shit sleep bloggers and do it in style.

Emo - where some of my best posts are. I believe that when you’re being honest and raw with your feelings(most of the time it would be because you’re upset), they make the best writing material. Fights with boyfriend, poems to describe how I feel without being direct etc… come get your dose of emoness here!

Jolene’s theories - sometimes my mind wonders too much and I am damn grateful that I have a place to store my craps. I like to think until melebih-lebih one.

Nightmares and dreams - even though these type of posts don’t get layaned much but I still like posting them anyway! I usually post these entries right after I wake up from my naps. That is when the memory of the nightmare or dream is the clearest.

Ngam ngam cham cham - could be in the same category as eat shit sleep. But it usually means a rather lengthy post. Ngam ngam cham cham in cantonese means excessive grumblings.

Old blog - see lah when I got the mood to transfer all the posts over. Stuck at january 2004. Haih.

Period pain - I think it’s quite a good way for me to record when my period comes by blogging about how painful it is. This category definitely serves its purpose. Most probably one post every month!

Pimpin’ - If people approach me to publicize an event/blog/product/whatever marketable….. this is where it goes.

PMS - usually angry posts which are inspired by my pre-menstrual syndromes. But so far it has the least amount of posts. So I suppose it says alot about me as a person..that I am generally a very nice, caring, darling gem of a person.:)

Sugar High - happy posts. Can accompany celebrations, trips, eat shit sleep and many more.

Trips - DEFINITELY inclusive of 56k killer posts as well. Self explanatory, I hope?

Uncategorized - this will be removed and changed when I feel semangat to do all the editting, all rite?

wtf? - nonsensical garbling from me, stupid idiotic things I think up, general bigotry of the humans around me(usually strangers) and crazy things that happened to me. All there, all there.

Password Protected Posts

If you email me, I *might* just give you the password to my password protected entries. This is the one feature that has allowed me to blog without worrying about anything and when given that liberty, the quality of the post becomes better and consists a lower quota of bullshit. Because when you tell the truth, it makes the blog entry real. And the blogging culture became popular because of honesty in real time. When you start censoring yourself, you lose that certain thing that makes a blog so real and fun. So, I hope you understand why I password protect some posts.