Long Sort of Introduction...

Funny word, blog, isn't it?

Sounds like a sort of name you might give to a small dark slimy creature you find in a drain. Or something a plumber with a bad cold might say when arriving on your doorstep: "I've come about your blog".

Anyway, I think it has too many negative connotations, the word 'blog'. So I'm here to try to give it a bit of 'gentrification' as they used to say in linguistics. I'm going to raise the status of the word blog from the linguistic drains to the dizzy heights of lexicographic superstardom.

I'm going to make the word 'BLOG' a household name, a name worth shouting out to the world without fear of embarrassment or social stigma, I'm...Oh dear! My son has just told me that the word 'blog' actually has nothing to do with drains and is in fact a blend of the words 'web' and 'log'.

How rather clever!

So in fact I'm writing a web log. Like a Captain's Log only on the web and without the need to ride around in a space ship saving the universe. So I'm actually doing something which is established and has a lot of 'street cred' already.

Jolly good!

Ok then. I remember the last time I did something like this, writing a log, it was a diary kept on bits of paper, hastily scribbled on in the last hours of the day, full of mental garbage, fears, hopes, blah blah blah. I was in my early thirties then.

But thanks to technology, things are going to change now I'm in my forties. Oh yes. This time, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the mental garbage and hopes and fears etc will still be there, but they will have more POLISH.

I will be able to edit out all the swear words, sexual innuendos, references to friends and enemies and bad stuff that might get me into trouble with the Big Boys. Pity really....

My new Blog will be kinder, gentler and altogether nicer to know. So I hope you will enjoy these bits of stuff from my head, which will appear in this space from time to time. Please feel free to do a Simon Cowell and say it's rubbish. I don't mind. Honest. "Poisons poured into the oceans cannot be drained out again".

Let me tell you a bit more about myself, apart from the blatant lies I wrote in my profile to confuse the Secret Police.....

I work in a large university in Malaysia. Specifically, I work and live in the lovely city of Kuching which is in the state of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. More on that later. I teach English, so hopefully there will be no spelling mistakes. Perhaps later on as I settle into the blogging genre more I might throw in a few typos to show I belong! (sorry - English teacher humour!!).

You are probably wondering how a university English professor in Malaysia has such good English. Well, that's because I AM English. I was born in that lovely rainy island without a roof known as Great Britain and because I married a Malaysian lady, I decided to lay my hat down here in Malaysia.

So you see, I am in a fantastically good position to 'blog' you about what is going on in this part of the world, this wonderful wild Borneo island where I live. Please log onto my blog if you want to know more about this place. I'm not being paid by the Sarawak Tourist Board (though that's a thought...).

Well, my little fingers are getting a bit stiff and painful now, and my wife just called to check up on me (the Secret Police!!). I look forward to telling you more adventures of a lost professor on the magical island that is Borneo.

Toodle-pip!!

By the way, I'm not mad really!!??!!