On our way back from Burma last month we stopped off in Hong Kong for a day, where Chinese New Year’s had just passed. The city was draped in bright red and gold lanterns, orange trees with red ribbons tied to the branches were in every shop and lobby and banners, flags and glitter were everywhere in shop and restaurant windows and edging the sidewalks. Along eye candy street, Hollywood Road, many of the art and antique shops that line the road were still closed and shuttered for the holidays, which did not deter me in the least from finding something to buy – an exquisite embroidered “painting” of a Chinese robe.

This is the Year of the Snake which happens to be my birth year as well, the year of the water snake. Check out this website to find out what “Year of” animal you are (Find Your Year-Chinese Zodiac). There are lots of websites that will tell you your Chinese year animal horoscope as well – making it easy enough to check them out until you find one you like. “Those born in this year are acknowledged by all who know them as being almost godlike in their perfection…”

I was in the post office the other day and found that Canada Post has issued a commemorative series highlighting the Year of the Snake with some beautiful, red and gold embossed special issue stamps. I had to buy some, lots in fact, they were so gorgeous, so email me your address and I’ll send you a real snail mail card (remember those?) with this beautiful stamp.

I decided that now was a good time to design a new blog on a new platform, something I’d been thinking about for some time, before I get into my tales of Burma. As I set up the new site and go through the horror story learning curve of a new software, I find that things have changed a lot in the blogging world since I penned my first entry back in 2007, as we were preparing to leave to live in Asia for 4 years. Now blogging companies (Blogger, now owned by Google, and WordPress) are all about how to drive traffic to your site, how to monetize it, meaning, how to stick advertising all over it, how to get more and more people to read your stuff and comment and encouraging almost daily posting. How to connect with Twitter and Facebook and everyone else and how to get people to like you and tell everyone else that as well. Blogs have become a key part of marketing plans for just about everything. As before, this doesn’t interest me much, so I’ll stick to what I like best. A place to play. This is still for me and my friends.

On this new site there are links to the old blogs, one from my time in Asia from 2007 to 2011 and another about the return to a new life on Vancouver Island in 2011. I write when the mood strikes, which can be a little frustrating for someone having to checking in to see what’s new. A friend recently asked if I could add an email notification when there is a new post. Easily done. Just click on the email notification link on the sidebar and you can set that up automatically, and just as easily cancel. Or, as before, if you follow blogs and other sites on a news reader there is a link for that as well.

Happy New Year of the Snake everybody and welcome to Jeannie’s Blog v.3.