Decided to ditch work today and went to MPH MidValley Megamall. It was all Sinatra_Z’s idea, blame him. If you haven’t checked out this blog, ‘Catatan Seekor Lipas Sepi‘, writings of a lonely cockroach, I suggest you do so.

We were there for a good reason. We don’t normally ditch work if there is no good reason to do that. No really, we don’t.

The reason was Chedet. Malaysia’s ex-Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad book launch and and book signing ceremony at MPH. A collection of his writings on the blog Chedet.com made available in physical form, the book – ‘chedet.com Blogging to unblock’.

So this dude starts a blog and less then a year he gets like super crazy traffic, over 6 million unique visitors and now a published book.

That is just crazy, I’ve been blogging way longer then Tun Dr. Mahathir, I’ve been around the blogosphere for quite sometime, you don’t see me publishing my blog post in any books. It has only been a year since I started to get serious with Jiboneus.com, and doing 1500 to 2000 unique per month. That’s chicken feed.

Somehow not being an ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia or any other country might have contributed to the lack of success for my blog. I rarely blogged about politics. I am not a political blogger. I blogged about oil prices and ISA once or twice, hardly makes any impact.

This may come as a surprise to you, but there were a time when blogs were not about politics at all.

I don’t really read political blogs, or blogs by politician. Can’t stand them. However, Chedet.com has always has been on my feed reader list ever since I first heard of it. The success of Chedet.com the blog is not mainly due to the fact that he is an ex-Prime Minister, it is because he is a good blog writer.

He writes in short paragraphs and sometime organizes it in lists. He follows the rule of three in writing. Most importantly, he’s upbeat and often straight to the point. Each blog post structured in a way that’s very scan-able, easy to read.

While I may say that I’ve been blogging longer then he does, but one thing for sure, he has way more experience in writing then myself. Which is why, if you haven’t checked out Chedet.com you may want to do so, or get the book to catch up on previous post.

I am not going to comment on him using Movable Type (once he ditched blogger.com) as the blog platform and not WordPress. Seriously now, Movable Type?

Back at MPH

There we were, me and Sinatra_Z, like a bunch of fanboys waiting in line. Waiting for our turn to get our book signed by the man himself. All the people there are as if they were waiting for some super famous international pop star artist. People held up their camera phone, hoping to get some photographs. Camera flashes coming from all angle. All this trouble for a blogger?

The line moves slow. Finally, it’s my turn. My turn to get my two minutes or so with Tun Mahathir. Very smoothly I took out my Moo card holder, flicked it open and took out one of my Moo cards. He was at awe looking at my cool moo cards, thinking to himself, ‘this kid has got some style’.

He took one and read what’s on it. My name and under it is the word ‘blogger’.

“You a blogger too?”

Yes I am! I’ve been blogging way longer then you. I’ve been blogging even before they call it blogging. Periodically updating my .gif laden static HTML webpage on Geocities and Angelfire. Back then folks don’t call it ‘blogging’, they called the process, ‘updating your website’.

I were busy writing and posting on the web while you were busy running the country.

“Wow, I could learn a thing or two from you.”

Yeah, sure. Have your people call my people, we could do lunch. I walked away, book signed.

Ok. I just made all that up. That was what I wish had happened, but what really happened was that I fumble trying to get my phone back on inside my pocket and took out my Moo card. Nothing smooth about it at all. I slowly handed him the card while he was writing my name and autographing my book. He took a glance at the card and said, “You a blogger too?”

And to that I answered ‘yes’. By then he had finish signing my book. He looks up at me, smiling. The impression on his face, saying in his smile that, I’ve sign your book, now move you are holding up the line.

As I walked away, I can see he pushes my little mini Moo card aside as yet another book was placed in front of him.

I hope he keeps my card.