Monday, October 13, 2008

Strange, but cool!

Lounge 18

Something really cool, but strange, happened on Sat night in Shanghai. I was in town to hang out with a friend from Sweden who was in SH for the wknd only. We were having cocktails at Lounge 18 when a girl suddenly came up to me and asked if I was Jonna.

-Sure am! I said.
-Cool! I read your blog every day!

Wow! That was pretty cool and a anything similar has never happened before in my life! I am really happy that she came up to me and said so many nice things about my blog! (thank you deeply, pretty girl!!!)

Also, the whole event left my Swedish friend wide-eyed. She doesn't even know that I am writing a blog (or maybe she does but she doesn't read it anyways) and later asked, casually:

-Does that happen often?! Are you, like, famous over here?

Ah... hilarious. Funny that people that I don't know read my blog while my friends back home have little or no idea of what it's even about... Or OK, now one of them has!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL, it's freaky isn't it. It's happened to me too. There are a lot of people who read and never comment but they always read, so the number of people who know you is more than you think. If I saw you I'd definitely go up as well.

Rambler said...

Your blog is for a real niche audience, but you and Woai are at the top of it.

P.S. I'm going to the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday on pick up my work visa. I'm finally down to my last two (I hope) weeks in the US. Then my blog can be hip and popular too! I'm not sure, but not being in China, or being Chinese, really seems to effect the number of people who want to read a blog about China. It could just be me though.

P.P.S. I really do love your blog. I check the RSS feed multiple times a day to see if you've made a new entry.

Anonymous said...

Tripfriend - It's not about where you are or whether you're Chinese. I used to get just one or two comments per month then suddenly a few months ago for some reason it just exploded and there were suddenly 20 plus comments for every post. I think you MUST blog daily or often and respond to comments and of course write something interesting.

You are totally correct it's a very niche audience. Hardly anyone back home reads my blog. It simply isn't interesting to them. Many of my readers live here and experience the same things I write about and can identify with that and like to then respond with their own similar experiences.

It's more like a support group!

Jonna Wibelius said...

Tripfriend -great to hear that u r getting ur visa, finally!

Once u get here I bet u will see so many interesting things that u won't be able to stop blogging!

I think 50% of my readers are Chinese. None of my friends from back home read my blog (only my mom! She's the best!) -maybe what Woai says is true -they can't relate to what we are experiencing here... or, they simply aren't interested in China! Which is fair enough, not everybody are!

When I started blogging no one read my posts.. then suddenly I started to get more comments and emails from people who's 'stumbled across my blog.' But it really depends. Some posts I write still get zero comments... But as long as I still have stories to share I don't mind.

Unknown said...

呵呵,能被自己的博客的读者认出的确是件非常开心的事,不过如果你知道你博客的内容有时会被别人转载,发表的话是不是会更开心呢?呵呵,我很喜欢你的博客,感觉很有趣哦。如果你愿意,也欢迎你看看我的博客:http://blog.tianya.cn/blogger/view_blog.asp?BlogName=yllzqt&idWriter=5947344&Key=686787020

Jonna Wibelius said...

Alex -谢谢你。如果你喜欢我的博客的话我当然很开心。我已经看过你的博客但是很多汉字我看不懂。我的汉语水平还是太低了。看汉字一定很难。

Jon said...

i will do that again as well as the girl does if i meet you in the bar! hehe.

Mark's Blog said...

I love your blog!It's interesting, informative and mirrors my own experience

I am sure if I meet you in a bar I will come to you.

I will be back home from 17 Nov, if you are interested in visiting Xi'an, I might be your tour guide, haha
^_^

Anonymous said...

Just to let you know that you have a group of fans from Canada. We all enjoy reading your blog :)

Little Tiger said...

I have read Chinese blogs for the past year. Lots of them have your blog on their blogroll list (for obvious reasons!).
But I always assumed your blog was about the girlband S.H.E....so I never clicked on it until about a month ago!
So I had a nice time reading all your previous posts!

p.s Take Mark up on his offer if you're free, Xi'an is beautiful!

Jonna Wibelius said...

Mark, anoymous (from Canada!), tripfriend and Little Tiger -It's really awesome to hear that u all like my blog. It makes it so much more fun to write knowing that there are actually people enjoying reading your posts and coming back to read on a regular basis. So thanks! :) and like always, feel free to shout if you think there's some topic I should address more/less.

Anonymous said...

it's great when you're single
cause i have gotten some date opportunities through my blog
but i have never gone to any :P

it's really fun though, especially this summer i got recognied about 6 times which is quite amazing. Then you know that your blog is good.

congrats!