NvB: Bored in Brno?

So here we are, happy Blog Day 2006!

I know that a lot of people who read my blog don't follow blogs much and have no idea what Blog Day is. So I'll start with this explanatory quote from Blog Day organizer Nir Ofir:

On these days, of war in the middle east, I would like to remind you all that BlogDay is a celebration of people and for people. It is a celebration of the ability to visit blogs that are different from our own culture, point of view and attitude and it is a celebration of free content written by people like you and me. Wars, on the other hand, are being fought by governments. Let us not let governments stop the celebration of Internet, Blogging and democracy.

Let me also add a few disclaimers: I'm avoiding, for the most part, linking to other Czech-oriented blogs because, well, they're too close to home at the moment. Plus, you can link to some of the English-language Czech and European blogs that I enjoy, currently in the "Blogs That Might Bore You Less" list on the right-hand sidebar. Also, I've started following the blogs linked below relatively recently (over the summer), so they're relatively "new" to me and, as is usually the case, there's a whole "backblog" of posts that I haven't read in most cases, but I trust you'd find a lot of fun and interesting things there, too.

This morning I got what I thought was a really wonderful reminder of the importance of greetings from Diane at Packing for Prague in her comment:

In Africa, greetings are a very important element of our society. It is considered extremely rude to not greet people properly and acknowledge their existence in a way that accords them a degree of dignity.

The longer I'm in the Czech Republic, the more I feel that I'm becoming dour, anti-social, and overly ironic (but maybe it's just my normal state), and so I hope that this post compensates for that tendency in part. The mentions below are what came to mind this morning and are basically the recognition of other personalities in a common e-humanity—a way of saying hello, glad to see that good things are happening out there. I hope that they come across as friendly greetings wherever you happen to be. So in that spirit and without further ado, and in no particular order, let's get underway:

Tetsu no Otoko no Buroggu is written by an American teaching in Japan. Last year, David's Prague blog was a lot of fun. In fact, it inspired a New Year's Day visit to the peeing men statue at the new Kafka museum in Prague. But it's now even more fun to encounter Japanese bathrooms and commercials. Worth czeching out, even if he's no longer in the CR. (As I write, it appears that the blog is inaccessible, but here’s hoping that David will soon be back online!)

The JavaJive by Brandon always has some beautiful pictures of Indonesia, particularly Jakarta and Java. Recently, his story about entertaining visitors while living abroad was quite hilarious. There's often fun commentary here, stuff about photography, and of course, the pictures are always wonderful.

Very far away from Brno, though we did have a cold August, are the Antartica blogs. There's a few (well, you have do something), but I'll just single out Antarctica!!! by Jeff, who has lots of links to other blogs. While I pooh-pooh the Czech winters (what passes for "snow" is generally pathetic and boring), I have to concede that the South Pole would give me a run for my money. I'd think twice before taking it on, but somebody's gotta do it, I suppose. It's kind of hard to imagine the winter-long night and the winter-long day, but it's wonderful to read about. They make up for the darkness with extra craziness, like when they assembled an Antarctic pinup calendar back in June (it was really hilarious). How else would you escape becoming "toast"?

I shouldn't leave off without a food blog, of course. I occasionally stop by Noodle Pie, written by the Pieman, Graham. There's always some good food pictures and savo(u)ry reading being served up. I was quite impressed by the Speed Rabbit Pizza, which rivals Pizza Go Home for a name. Unfortunately, it seems that noodlepie has moved out of Vietnam, but I'm sure that the interestingness will continue.

One of my favorite and fun nighttime reads over the summer has been Captain Picard's Journal. Now, I don't consider myself a fanatic trekkie, but I have always enjoyed the Star Trek series. The movies were obviously best with Captain Kirk, but I'm more taken with the "anthropology in space" sort of bent that the television series with Captain Picard took. Who knew that Captain Picard would take so well to blogging? His 24th-century-meets-23rd-century adventure with Captain Kirk was quite entertaining (part 1, part 2, part 3). And, even though the Captain doubtless lives in the 24th century, he sometimes even has to deal with our current stupidities, like arguments regarding Pluto.

So there you have it. The problem, of course, in selecting five blogs, is that it leaves out millions of other good ones. If you're into the whole blog thing but don't know where to start, check out Global Voices Online. You can find other people's BlogDay lists by searching the tag "blogday2006" at technorati and keep track of things at Global Voices Online's blog day posts.


Tags: blogday, bloday2006, blogs, links, communities

Posted 31 August 2006 at 20:37.