I saw an article advert with a picture of my cat and I in Life! this morning.  I say I cut out the bit with BBQ in it and call that the best thing that happened in my whole press experience.  Certainly that hideous picture of me in last week's Sunday Times was harrowing.  If any of you are ever photographed for the ST, the photographer may tell you, "Just relax! Don't smile.  These are just test shots." Lies all lies.  Smile till your teeth fall out, your gums quiver and your lips throb.  Somewhere, someone will look at the photos and pick the ugliest one he can find.  'Candid' shot, he'll call it.  I may be ugly, but eyebags, messy hair and that scowl, now that's Ugly.

Well, there will be an article featuring bloggers, myself included, in tomorrow's issue of the Sunday Times.  They took a picture of me already, but I'm not sure if I'm breaking any rules if I tell you ahead of time what it's like.  Just remember to take it all with a pinch of salt.  I felt hugely pretentious while doing the shoot; all the while I was asking myself: why are you doing this? I mean, it was fun, hugely fun - especially when En and Hou from Students' Sketchpad and Zaki who runs a music/briefly political blog joined me, great guys all - but that's not what I am about.  That's an uncomfortable part of having attention; you have no control over how you are portrayed.  They wanted to know more about me, put a face behind the posts and whatever, so alright, I gave them that. But I hope you all know that's not really what's important.

Someone called 'sandy' posted a comment some time back asking why the surge of political posts here.  She asked if it was just because of all this sudden attention.  I may as well address this here; firstly, I had blogged politics long before the Kausikan issue, but that's not the important thing.  Yes, I've made my blog considerably more centred around politics since the surge in readership, and yes, I've done that because of the sudden attention - but what for? Not for myself, I'm personally uncomfortable with so much of it.  But for a message.  They can write whatever they want as long as it keeps you coming back here to see for yourselves, to read and question for yourselves.  I'm not going to kid myself, whatever small fame I have is temporal.  People will forget about me, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing either.  There are only so many bad pictures of yourself published nation-wide that you can handle. But what I hope they won't forget are the questions I've asked.  Hopefully I've awakened an interest in something far greater than myself.  Hopefully I've encouraged people to look deeper, think beyond.  Hopefully something will last.

So yes, I have capitalized on the attention to be more political in my posts, because as more people keep coming, I blog increasingly to them - not just esoterically, to myself or my friends.  This place used to be personal, if not private.  I've surrendered so much of that since then.  I miss posting random poetry, flashbacks, vignettes, even pictures of my friends and I on vacation, etc.  I really do.  Maybe one day when this furore is over I can go back to that.  For now, I'll use what opportunity I have given to say something that matters more than which jazz lounge I was at last night.

Even as you read about me, remember that it's not about me.

Well - cheers, everyone.  Sorry I'm a little late with another real post, these few days have been real busy.  Work is piling up.  Take care!