Chris, the Blogger

This is an interview with yours truly about the blogging experience, published in my company's internal newsletter.

Reporter: When did you start your blog?

Chris: I started blogging back in March 2004, when there were practically no blogging platforms and my first blog was more in the form of a forum. Then I moved to Yahoo 360 and now I have a Wordpress blog. The next step will be, obviously, to get my own domain :-)

Reporter: What motivated you or how did you come to the idea of having one?

Chris: I've always kept diaries, and when Internet came into fashion it was only natural that I should use this new medium to share my thoughts. Then I discovered the beauty of live interaction with other bloggers, via comments and e-mails... this is the best part of a blog, in my opinion.

Reporter: Why should anybody visit your page?

Chris: Well, I guess my blog will help you get to know me better. For Romanian speakers I have my primary Wordpress blog: http://chrismilla.wordpress.com and I also have one in English, for my friends who don't speak Romanian: http://smilla-smilla.blogspot.com.

Reporter: Which is your favorite blog (apart from your own, of course)?

Chris: I have lots of favorite blogs that I read frequently. I read Suzi and Ina's girlie blogs, they are lots of fun. I read the Book Lover's (although she might say otherwise) blog to find out about new books and what to read. The list is very long, I tell you. But you can browse it all on my blog, right-hand side blogroll.

Reporter: If your intention was to make some money with your blog, what would you write about?

Chris: There are various ways to make money from your blog. You can attract a lot of traffic and the make money from advertisement. However, I blog for pleasure, not traffic, and I hate commercials on web pages. So I would not think about this, but I must confess I have in mind another method to make money from my blog: writing a book. :-) And I'm now taking part in a blogging contest where I'm also going to win some stuff for my blog. You can read my article and vote for me if you like it! :p [commercial moment over ;))]

Visiting Romania: Bran - Babele

Last week-end we went to Bran and spent two wonderful days at a b&b called MIS, very close to Bran Castle (marketed as Dracula's Castle, though it has nothing to do with Dracula) and very nice and comfortable. The landlady is a retired teacher from Brasov and the place was build using EU Sapard funding and is one of the most clean and elegant places to stay in the area. A little hard to reach, true, but on the other hand it's a good thing to be farther from the main road if you want a quiet holiday.

On Saturday we took the cable car from Busteni to Babele. It was a 15-minutes trip uphill, in a spectacular landscape (going down is even more spactacular, like a huge roller coaster, though at a lower speed) and we ended up on the Babele highland, a weird place that looked like the moon to me.

Of course I knew Babele ("the Old Ladies") was a plateau at 2200 m, where you could see, apart from the renowned Old Ladies (two large rocks looking like mushrooms to me), another huge nature-made sculpture called the Sphynx (2216 m). But actually seeing them was very very impressive and I can't wait for the summer, when we will go back to take the 1-hour trip to the Caraiman Cross, which we couldn't see this time due to the snow and late hour (we would've missed the last cable car going down, if we went).

I really liked the feeling of being on top of the world; it was a nice sunny day and the sky was bluer than ever, there were quite a few people up there, taking photographs and having a good time, and the only bad thing of the trip was the fact that the toilet at Babele Chalet was broken. But this will hopefully be fixed by the next time we go.

Chernobyl

In 1986 I was about 7 years old and I had no idea what "radiation" meant. My only memory related to the Chernobyl explosion is a dialogue I had with my mother one day in the tram station:

- Mom, why aren't we allowed to go out these days?
- Because of the radiations, Christina. You must stay inside because of the radiations.
- And how are the radiations?
- Well, I'm not sure, but they're very bad for you. If you're touched by radiations your skin is burnt and your hair falls out.

That was all I ever knew about the radiations. I don't remember feeling frustrated for having to stay indoors, like I felt when I had the measles. But a few years later I read a book about the atomic explosion at Hiroshima and recognized the effects of nuclear radiations. It was only then, after several years from the Chernobyl explosion had passed, that I started to worry about losing my hair or my skin, and I would run my fingernails over my forearms every day to see if my skin was falling off. It never did, so after some time I stopped doing it :-)


This entry was initially published as a comment on Sonykus' blog entry, Level 7.