Surprise, surprise

I see from my stats that there has been a remarkable increase in my Swiss readership. I also see where most of the newcomers have accessed this blog from. Interesting. You lot should leave comments. I'm sure you have enough to say on those of my entries that deal with Switzerland and the Swiss. And if any of the other new readers from Switzerland are actually Swiss, well, please feel free to leave your comments in German. Myself and at least 80% of the other group I'm referring to above will have no trouble understanding and will welcome your input. It's only fun taking the mickey if someone else does it to you a bit too.

There's been a smaller yet noticeable increase in readership from the most remarkable places around the world as well, and considering how new, erratic, and sporadic this blog is, I am quite frankly well and truly surprised. Though if I look at how some of the readers accessed these pages, I have to admit that obviously not everyone's a true reader, or, more specifically, actually gives two sh*ts about this blog and the drivel they stumble across in it. Take for example the person who accessed from Rumania. The gateway was some unpronouncable search engine and the input that put them onto me was "I kan speak english". Huh? Later they hooked up with me again via "south africa visa live". Uh oh! Look out SA, looks like you're about to become the target of a new wave of immigrants.

Considering that over two hundred people have now either mistakenly stumbled upon, glanced over or actually read my suddenly inadequate-seeming bedtime stories, yet no one wants to get a google account so they can sign in and give me a bitchslap to the ear for expressing opinions they don't agree with, I have decided to play with one of the gadgets that is on offer, to wit: the poll on the top right below the title. It should be easier to get some feedback from that. Yes, yes, I too browse through many peoples idea of an interesting blog and hardly ever bother to sign on and comment, or even read more than half a single entry, but, oh well...

I can't get the bloody vote button and the little message to display in English, so to those of you who don't speak Kraut: "Abstimmen" means "Vote", and "Ergebnisse anzeigen" means "Display results". Actually, if you aren't able to work that out, you shouldn't be reading this blog...

Shouldn't be too hard for the South Africans, though I can't for the life of me remember what "vote" is in Afrikaans! These days I can hardly string a sentence together in that language, though if I see it I still understand. Funny how we all hated each other back in the days, and yet the minute a Saffer is overseas he latches onto Afrikaans as an means of fortifying his identity, even if back home he was such a Soutie (pronounced "soaty" for you non-South Africans) that he suffered from salt burns in his nether regions. Geez, how I can digress! Wonder if anyone is wondering what a Soutie is...

I suppose the time has come to be more regular on this blog, but I have to admit, the idea behind it was to get particularly memorable experiences from the quickly fading past as well as interesting tidbits of day-to-day life in a foreign country down on paper. I had also considered adding my tuppence worth on thoughts of the future. Hence the title. To simply write for the sake of writing would rob the meaning of this blog for me, and eventually make for ponderous reading for you excellent specimens that do actually read what's here. I must admit, it's a lot of fun once I get going, and there's certainly no dearth of humourous material in my everyday life here in Zirkus Schweiz, so perhaps it's just a lack of discipline?

We'll see...