Burnt Midnight Oil

March 26, 2008 · Filed Under Work · 1 Comment 

A little while back I was asked to prepare a short two day workshop on how to write a press release in English for the Media Relations master at the business school where I often find myself.

After burning copious amounts of that old midnight oil, I came up with such a course.

The first time this course was held was quite a nerve racking experience and I remember feeling much like an actor appearing on his first night. I really had no idea as to how my course would go down. Even though I was fairly sure that I had covered almost everything, and come up with a method that was thorough but, at the same time, quite straight forward. I had even come up with a way, I hoped, of getting the most out of a large group of people with widely differing levels of knowledge of English.

At the end of the day though, I had never really done anything as extensive as this. So how did the course go? Read more

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Curious

March 3, 2008 · Filed Under This blog · 4 Comments 

I had a look at Blog from Italy’s world wide rankings according to Alexa’s ranking service today, and I noticed a few interesting things.

First, most of my visitors come from the other side of the Atlantic. This is no great surprise, seeing as the USA is probably the most connected nation on earth. But in a very close second place is Italy. Now that did surprise me, as did my blog’s ranking within Italy: 13707.

I have noticed, and am pleased, that quite a few more Italians have been dropping in and leaving comments recently, but I did not really think they would be that interested in my waffling on about their lovely country. Must have been wrong. Sometimes being wrong is not so bad after all!

The surprises though are not over, though. Quite a few Germans pop in here too, which is great, but again surprises me. I mean I’m sure there are more than a few good German blogs that talk about Italy out on the www.

However, the biggest surprise for me is that people from the Philippines and Singapore are visiting too. Again, I had no idea that people from these countries would find my blog even remotely interesting, but some must - so a big thanks for visiting to my readers from the Philippines and Singapore.

I have to admit that it is little discoveries like this that make blogging so fascinating for me.

Who ever you are, and where ever you are from, please feel free to drop in whenever you like. And thanks for doing so.

Alex - the chap that writes all this, er, stuff ;)

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800 Posts!

January 28, 2008 · Filed Under This blog · 5 Comments 

I started off this blog back in January 2005 - this is the first ever post, and I’ve just noticed that my previous post was the eight hundredth. Sounds quite a large number.

I’m quite surprised that I’ve managed to keep this thing going for so long! Who knows when I will run out of steam.

Oh well, here’s to the future. And thanks to one and all for reading and commenting - these things have undoubtedly encouraged me to keep chuntering on.

Have a virtual one on me! - Alex, the guy who writes all this stuff.

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