The reply I got from Google was simply:

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://www.vincentrich.com/.

We’ve now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don’t find any problems, we’ll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn’t appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

I have checked Google’s webmaster guidelines and made sure my site complies to their rules. I think I may have accidentally linked to a “bad neighbourhood” or “web spammer” according to Google’s Link schemes guidelines. I have removed 10 links from my links directory just to be safe. Now I am looking through all my blog comments to see if there are any weird web sites in them.

Technically speaking, I do not think my site has violated any of Google’s rules. If you read Google’s article, My site isn’t doing well in search, there are 4 things to check before submitting a Google reconsideration request:

1. Check your site is in the Google index – Done!
2. Make sure Google can find and crawl your site – Done!
3. Make sure that Google can index your site – Done!
4. Make sure your content is useful and relevant – Done!

I may have digressed a bit on my blog by blogging about my personal experiences instead of internet marketing related content but I do not think that is enough to remove my site from Google.com.

Google has a very interesting video on their reconsideration process and how to keep your site in their index. Not much information in the video but it looks like an entertaining video to me.

I just submitted another reconsideration request. Let’s see what Google has to say…

How Did I Get Into Argentine Tango?

I have always liked beautiful, elegant and graceful women. I am a sucker for women who are polite, punctual and exhibit great table manners. Women who walk like ducks or walk like their feet weigh a tonne have always turned me off. One of the biggest turn offs for me is when I meet a beautiful woman who eats with their mouth open or talks with food in their mouth.

Unfortunately, I have met some women in Bangkok who have turned me off with the previously mentioned behaviour. I decided that I should go where the elegant and graceful women go to to meet the women I like. I brainstormed a few ideas and dancing came to my mind. I did some research and it came down to 2 dancing styles – Salsa or Argentine Tango.

I took a free Salsa intro class and I didn’t like it. I didn’t connect with the Salsa music, the beat and the movements that I was required to do. I just didn’t feel like moving my body to that type of dance and music. Although I can appreciate the beauty in Salsa, I found it a little unrefined for my liking. In short, I felt like Salsa  didn’t suit my personality.

I checked out some Tango videos on Youtube. I saw a lot of “over the top” Tango videos that were really hot but it was the simpler Tango videos that caught my attention. The movements were feline, graceful and sensual. It looked simple and classy. Some people say Tango is just super fancy walking while others say it is “vertical sex”. I didn’t see any body shaking movements like Salsa and I thought this could be the dance for me.

Embracing a woman made perfect sense to me because I didn’t want to shake my body. If you’ve got your arms around a woman, you can’t shake your hands and upper body and look good. What’s left to do is leading a woman to dance what you want them to dance and fancy footwork.

With my background in yoga and martial arts, I knew I could do the Tango. It doesn’t seem as physically challenging and the 3 activities seem to require similar skills like balance, posture and timing.

I Googled a couple of dance studios in Bangkok and signed up at a studio for only 3500 THB for 10 one hour lessons. I try to learn from as many Tango teachers as possible. I have 3 Tango teachers at the moment and they all teach differently but I learn a bit from everyone.

I am not sure how far I will take this Tango hobby of mine. I am just enjoying myself as much as I can because I think it is a great social activity and a wonderful way to destress and feel good. I should have learnt to Tango earlier – I feel like I missed out so much fun in my life because of my own insecurity of thinking dancing is not for real men. Now I know better and the women who dance will agree with me!

I have submitted a request to Google to reconsider my web site via Google Webmaster Tools. I hope they do the right thing by restoring my site to their search engine.

I wonder if someone tried to sabotage my web site. I once read that it is very easy to get someone’s web site de-indexed. Alice Seba once had one of her sites de-indexed like mine. I wrote and posted all of my blog posts since 2004.

I hope Google will let me know why my site has been de-indexed. I have a feeling they may never give me a straight answer.

What is Greng Jai/Kreng Jai/เกรงใจ?

Some say there is no English word for Greng Jai. A lot of people have tried to narrow it down to a single English word like consideration or respect but this concept has more aspects to it than just one or two words.

Here’s a small list of what Greng Jai encompasses:

• Avoiding confrontations with others
• Be respectful of another person’s “status” and behave in a way that conforms to social norms
• Trying not to put another person in a situation to say yes or no
• Being considerate and courteous
• Avoid causing another person to feel bad
• Putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own
• Avoid asking favours from others
• Don’t inconvenience others

This sounds really sweet doesn’t it? I am sure Thais wanted to express these wonderful qualities but sometimes they end up messing it up and cause others to think they are rude, inconsiderate, lazy, funny, crazy and all sorts of other negative things you can think of.

How I Personally Express Greng Jai in Thailand

Being a vegetarian, I do not like to cause someone inconvenience when I am eating with non-vegetarians friends. Sometimes I try not to inconvenience the people who cook my food and accept eating a bit of garlic, onions, milk, honey and other non-meat stuff that I don’t usually eat. I put the needs of others ahead of my own to try to make everyone happy.

Sometimes I request for no chili or a little bit of chili but still end up with the wrong amount of chilli on my food. What is a man to do if he wants to be Greng Jai? Smile and eat the food anyway! Don’t cause others inconvenience because they are so used to adding lots of chili in their food!

I know it is hard for Thais to say no or “I don’t know”. I try to be Greng Jai by not putting them in a situation that requires them to give me a definite yes or no answer. For example, if I am meeting a Thai for an event, I tell him or her something like, “See you there at 2 PM tomorrow if you would like to join us for soccer. It is okay if you cannot make it.”.

This makes it easy for him or her to give me an “indirect answer” like maybe or yes. If they say yes, maybe they were just being Greng Jai and were afraid to hurt your feelings. If they say maybe, it means yes or no. You will rarely get a direct no. It is almost impossible to tell if they are doing the Greng Jai thing or not.

Thais are such friendly people. When I first came here and got to know some Thai friends, they all told me,”If you have any problems, please feel free to contact me. I will help you. It is my pleasure”. Now that I am more aware of the culture, I know some of them don’t really mean what they say. When a Thai comes up to me and says something like that again, I joke to them and say “Jing Jing”, which means “really” in Thai. I know I shouldn’t do that because it may hurt their feelings!

Anyway, when a Thai offers me favours like that, I know I should not take up his or her offer for help because this is considered Greng Jai! For all you know, they assume you won’t ask them for anything in the first place and that was why they offered you help. They probably weren’t expecting you to take it up because they don’t want to inconvenience themselves! The best thing to do is to say “It’s OK” or “Mai Pen Rai” and a nice thank you with a smile if possible.

Last month, a ladyboy asked me if he/she looked pretty. I lied to her by telling her she looked pretty even though she had the face of an ugly man. Clearly, she needed more work done on her face, body and voice! I was being Greng Jai about her feelings so I lied to make her feel better about herself. On hindsight, I should have said something like, “You look good in your very own way”.

Sometimes my Thai neighbour smokes outside his apartment even though the landlord placed a sign reminding people not to smoke along the common corridor. His stinking cigarette smell seeps into my apartment and I being the wonderful practictioner of Greng Jai does nothing because I do not want to confront him about his selfish and inconsiderate behaviour. My patience is running thin now and if he does it again, I may toss this Greng Jai thing out of the window and pluck the cigarette out of his mouth if I have to.

Choosing Between Being Honest/Hurting Someone’s Feelings and Being Dishonest/Not Hurting Someone’s Feelings

If I had to choose between the 2 scenarios above, I would choose to be honest and piss someone off. However, we have choices in life and we have a lot more ways to handle situations than just the 2 ways above. Here are some of the possible scenarios someone can do in a sticky situations that require honesty and consideration for someone’s feelings.

1. Being Honest and hurt someone’s feelings
2. Being Honest and not hurt someone’s feelings
3. Being Dishonest and hurt someone’s feelings
4. Being Dishonest and not hurt someone’s feeligns

To me, the 4 scenarios above are all the possible combinations. Why is it that a lot of people choose to lie to prevent hurting someone’s feelings when they can be honest and not hurt someone’s feelings. I know that sometimes it is hard to tell the truth and not hurt someone’s feelings. There isn’t a need to lie all the time!

Good Greng Jai and Bad Greng Jai

Most people would appreciate the good Greng Jai. It is the bad Greng Jai that gets on a lot of foreigners’ nerves! At the end of the day, I think I should try very hard to assume that they all had wonderful intentions when they were doing bad Greng Jai.

To me, bad Greng Jai is when someone is being dishonest and accidentally or intentionally hurts someone else’s feelings.

For example, someone may tell you that he plans to meet you tomorrow at 2 PM but he never shows up and tells you he wasn’t coming. He only agreed to meet you because he did not want to make you feel bad by rejecting you. He does not understand that he has caused you a great deal of suffering by not telling him the truth. In scenarios like this, I don’t feel the considerate side of what they were trying to do because their lie was sweet in the beginning but bitter in the end. Now I’ve got a bitter taste in my mouth and he has hurt my feelings.

Good Greng Jai is when someone is being honest and does not hurt anyone’s feelings. Everyone involved is truly happy. No offence taken and no bad feelings.

For example, an ugly Thai ladyboy comes up to you and asks you if he/she is pretty. You smile and tell her that everyone, including her, is beautiful in their very own way.

How to Deal with Bad Greng Jai?

• When setting up appointments with Thais, try to plan alternative activities for yourself if they do not show up. If you are meeting a single person, try to plan other activities or bring some books or CDs to listen to while you wait for them to arrive. Do not expect them to arrive and you won’t be too disappointed.
• When someone does a bad Greng Jai thing on you, try to console yourself that they had the very best intentions of trying not to hurt your feelings even though it does not make sense most of the time.
• If you can be open and honest with a Thai and he or she is willing to listen and adapt to being  truthful at all times with you, tell them what you expect from them and what they can expect from you in a direct but polite manner. Hopefully, they will stop that bad Greng Jai stuff that you cannot stand.
• If you really cannot tolerate their dishonest behaviour because they did something really bad, tell them off as politely and indirectly as you can. Keep in mind that by doing so, you may lose a “friend” but if you don’t consider people like that as friends, then you’ve just gotten rid of another source of pain in your life. Congratulations!
• In extreme cases, limit your contact with Thais, go back to your own country or move to another country!

Why it Seems Impossible to Deal with Bad Greng Jai

It seems like if you want to get used to bad Greng Jai, you have to be very indifferent to the Thais you meet. I don’t like putting people in boxes and labelling them as ______. Not all Thais exhibit a lot of bad Greng Jai behaviour but you will experience this a lot if you live in Thailand. I do not think it is fair to negatively judge all Thais just because some of them did bad Greng Jai things to me.

I have often wondered how Thais get along with one another with this Greng Jai thing. I find bad Greng Jai detrimental to relationships. How do they cope with this? Do they brush it off by saying “Mai Pen Rai”? I don’t know… I need to find out how they do it and it better be good!

Further Reading

• Thais are “Kreng Jai” people
• Kreng Jai in the Workplace
• My attempt on the word, Kreng Jai
• Kreng Jai
• Thai Words – Thai to English – Greng Jai
• Greng Jai (Being Considerate)
• The Great Greng Jai Gripe
• The Art of Greng Jai
• What is Kreng Jai

photo credit: victoriapeckham

Most Thais think I am a Thai because I look Thai. I thought I would have an easier time adapting to Thai culture but it has not been easy. Tim Ferris, author of the 4-hour workweek, was right about spending a minimum of 6 months in a foreign country for the “transformative effect” it will have on you. I feel I have improved as a person because of my short time here. I plan to stay here till January 2010 and my total stay in Thailand would be close to 1 year if I count the 3.5 weeks I spent here from December 2008 to January 2009.

Thailand is Amazing But Not for Me

One year in Thailand is more than enough for me. I feel like I have seen and experienced enough in Thailand to know that this is not a place I want to be for too long. I often ask my expat friends who have lived here for a very long time on how they adapt to the culture in Thailand. Their answer is always the same. “You’ll get used to it over time” is their reply.

I can get used to most aspects of Thai culture but I find the “habitual lying” part of their culture unacceptable to me and I don’t think I will ever get used to unless I become extremely indifferent to all Thais I meet.

How to Deal with Wrong Directions You Get From Thais

I have found a simple way to avoid getting the wrong directions from strangers on the street by asking more than 1 person. I have discussed this issue in my previous post on adapting to Thai culture about how a lot of Thais will give you the wrong directions when they do not know it.

Yesterday, I asked a security guard at a shopping mall for directions to a restaurant in the building. He looked confused for a few seconds then he told me to go to level 2. I knew something was not right from his body language so I decided to ask another person to be sure. I found the information counter and asked the lady at the counter for directions and she told me the restaurant I was looking for is on the basement level, which turned out to be true.

I can deal with minor dishonesty like this but the serious cases of dishonesty is something I don’t wish to put up with.

photo credit: Adamina
photo credit: JasonDGreat

Thinking of Getting a Thai Permanent Residence Visa? Think Again!

I know 2 Singaporeans in Bangkok who had to bribe immigration officers to process their Thai permanent residence applications. One of them is a lady who married a Chinese Thai and the other is a gentleman who married a Thai lady. The amount they had to pay to these corrupt officers was substantial and it costs more than what I had to pay to apply for permanent residence in Australia. The benefits in Australia is way better than Thailand so it does not make sense to me to try to get a Thai PR.

The Thai Marriage Visa: Renewable Yearly Until You Get Divorced

My Thai friends told me that I can become a Thai as long as I marry a Thai. That is totally untrue. Most Thais have no idea what expats have to put up with at the immigration office because they don’t have to go there. If I marry a Thai woman, I can only get a Thai marriage visa that requires me to meet a couple of requirements and pay the Thai immigration a fee every single year. Seems like a lot of hassle to me. In Singapore, if you are a foreigner and you marry a Singaporean, you can get a PR just because of that marriage. It is the same in Australia and a lot of other countries.

I know an American guy who used to be married to a Thai woman. He had one of these Thai marriage visas for the duration of their marriage but he and his wife fell out after he found out that his wife didn’t really love him and she only pretended to love him because “she needed help”. Now he is using a student visa to live in Thailand.

photo credit: n00n0te

Thinking of Studying in Thailand? Be Prepared to Visit the Immigration Bureau Every 90 Days!

In Thailand, they have a lot of fancy ideas on how to make you renew your visas every 3 months, 30 days or yearly to squeeze more money out of you. They make a lot of money through visas so I don’t blame them for wanting to rip foreigners off but I don’t want to be that sucker because I do not have a compelling reason to live here for more than a year.

I am using a student visa and I have to visit the Bangkok immigration bureau every 90 days to extend it. I get a letter from my school that lets them know I am still studying in Thailand,  submit a form with a recent photo of me on it, pay them a 1900 THB extension fee and wait 1 or 2 hours before they return me my passport. It is a hassle to have to do this every 3 months!

If some foreigner wants to study in Thailand for 3 years, he or she would have to repeat this process 4 times per year (7600 THB) and 12 times over a 3 year period (30400 THB). I find this ridiculous but it beats having to do a visa run to live in Thailand. Some students only show up for a couple of classes and they disappear only to show up at the end of every 3 months to get a letter from the school so that they can extend their student visas for another 90 days.

I am a good student – I have only missed 1 class because I thought my class was cancelled during the April 2009 riots in Bangkok. I have since attended another class to make up for that lost time. I have tried 4 teachers at my school to find one I like the most. I do not like wasting money and I want to learn Thai as much as possible during my time in class.

One more thing to consider… If you want to study in Thailand in a public school, be willing to conform to their dress code. Everyone wear uniform from kindergarten to university level. See that photo of a Thai woman in a white top and navy blue skirt? That’s how the female students look like here. The guys wear a white shirt with a tie and a pair of long navy blue pants. Then again, if you are willing to experience wearing uniform almost every single day, you might like it here!

I don’t wish to put up with wearing uniform ever again. I have worn army uniform for over 2 years during my national service, I spent most of my Saturdays in high school wearing army uniform when I joined the National Cadet Corp and I had to wear school uniform from the age 4 to 16. That’s enough for me!

photo credit: honey-bee

Finding Love in Thailand: Is it Real or Fake?

The westerners always get it easier than Asian dudes in Thailand. It seems like a lot of Thai ladies love Caucasians. These white people are like the preferred race in Thailand and get a lot more attention in Thailand. If you are looking for real love, you may be able to find a good Thai woman to settle down with and experience a kind of married life that you may not get in the west.

If you’re looking for fake love, you’ll get plenty of that here too. Just be honest about it to the women you meet and you will get “understanding” women that don’t mind that you have 10 other girlfriends as long as you treat them nicely. This just doesn’t work for me but I know everyone wants different things and I try to respect that.

The worst situation is when you think you’ve found true love but get cheated in the end by a Thai woman who seems so innocent and sweet. You never really know what’s on their minds because they smile so often. The American friend of mine that I mentioned earlier told me that within a year, he has met 2 women that lied to him about their marriage status.

He knows a lot of Thai women lie to him about that so he asks them point blank if they have a husband, boyfriend and kids. One of them took him a couple of months to find out but the other woman took him over a year to find out. If you don’t mind being treated like a “ATM machine on legs” and you’ve got a lot of money to burn, I guess this may be OK for you. For the rest of us, this is just too much excess baggage to deal with.

Being with a Thai woman is not just about being with them alone. You are expected to take care of their family as well as them. If their brother is a drug addict and owes a lot of money to drug dealers, be prepared to be asked to help out. Maybe their roof in their home has a big hole in it, get some cash ready to fix it for them. I respect the Thais’ respect for their parents but I do not wish to take care of their parents because I have my own parents to take care of.

For me, I have always had this policy of “just because I can, doesn’t mean I should”, when it comes to getting money from others. Some people think that just because they can get money from others, they should do it as much as possible.

If your Thai is not good and your Thai partner does not speak your language well, you might have problems communicating. I need a woman I can talk to about almost everything and if we cannot find a common language to communicate in effectively, we just end up talking like a bunch of babies to one another. I find that extremely uncomfortable and tiring.

It is not uncommon for me to meet Thais and have them “reject” me just because my Thai is not good enough. They always prefer to speak Thai and because I look Thai, they expect me to speak Thai. I cannot deeply express myself in Thai at the moment and it is a problem for me.

I have concluded that there isn’t enough time for me to develop any meaningful long term relationship that could lead to marriage here with the short time I have left in Thailand. I am the type of person that needs to be friends with a woman for at least 3 months or more before deciding to become more than friends. I am not going to stay in Thailand because of love. It is either you go where I am going or goodbye.

It is hard for a Thai to leave their country because they think their country and culture is great. I believe they will have a very hard time adapting in a foreign country because of that. I have observed some things about the way they behave in public and I find it strange that adults act in a certain way because in other countries, you should have grown out of that by your teens but I find that a lot of them seem socially immature in many ways.

Some of them are very shy and they do not seem to know what is polite in Western and other Asian cultures. Neither do they seem to bother to learn. If you’re planning to marry a Thai lady and bring her back to your home country, it may prove to be a huge challenge and come with lot of “excess baggage” to put up with. “Up to you na ka!” You will hear this phrase from a lot of women in Thailand.

photo credit: n00n0te

My Conclusions

Coming to a foreign country with a foreign language and culture is not easy. It is unreasonable for me to expect the locals to adapt to me when the I am the one who should be the one adapting to them. There is so much I am willing to adapt to and I simply do not wish  to behave dishonestly like how some of them do in Thailand.

I was so used to high speed broadband internet, clean tap water, reliable postal services, electricity that doesn’t get cut off and getting things done quickly. Thailand is just not the place to for you if you want all of the above available to you consistently.

Sometimes I turn on the tap and I see yellowish water flow out of the tap. The postman comes to me and demands me to pay them 300 THB for a single debit card delivered to me via courier even though I should not be liable to pay anything else. The internet connection disconnects multiple times per hour and crawls like a snail. The Thai government censors a lot of web sites that they do not wish you to see. Sometimes the electricity stops working for a couple of seconds or even hours! Sometimes I feel like I need to point a gun at someone’s head to get things done here or pay them loads of money to speed things up.

I decided I am not willing to put up with all the negative things I have mentioned above. I think a modern and developed country would be more suitable for me. I plan to move to Taiwan next year and I believe that I would be better off there than here in Thailand. Eventually, I would like to move to Australia once their economy recovers and my PR has been approved.

For now, I shall enjoy my time in Bangkok as much as I can.

photo credit: Adamina

I have been living in Thailand for 5 months now. The first 2 to 3 months were tough because I had to learn a new language, adapt to a new culture and get used my new home. I thought it would be easier for a Chinese guy like myself to adapt quickly to Thai culture but I am struggling to adapt to certain things about Thai culture.

I have been reading up on books about Thai culture lately to understand more about the way Thais live. I have read a couple of Thai culture books before I arrived in Thailand but experiencing Thai culture can be extremely mind boggling and nice at the same time. Thais are generally very polite, easy going and friendly people. The thing I find difficult to understand about their way of expressing their easy going ways is their idea on honesty.

I get lost in Bangkok a lot and I ask for directions from people. Very often, I get the wrong directions that take me to the wrong location. Instead of saying, “Sorry, I don’t know where that place is”, some Thais prefer to lie. I just had this experience yesterday when I was looking for a coffee shop near a subway station. I asked the staff at the ticket counter and I was told the wrong directions. Maybe I should ask more than 3 people and follow the directions only if 2 people say the same thing?

Little annoyances like this takes time to get used to. They don’t really matter because they are just random people that tell me lies and there is no relationship between us.

When it comes to making friends, I value honesty. I expect my friends to be punctual, tell the truth at all times and do what they say they will do. In Thailand, I find that I cannot have these expectations with a lot of Thais. A lot of them live like they are following a different time. Punctuality is not a big thing here because you can always blame it on the bad traffic. Telling lies can be a way of saving face, gaining face, making you feel better or avoiding work/responsibility. If you hire a plumber and he tells you that he will arrive at your place at 5 PM, please do not be surprised if arrives at 10 PM without apologizing. In fact, you shouldn’t be upset because it is no big deal here (Mai Pen Rai)!

I have no idea how I can adapt to this aspect of Thai culture. I wouldn’t mind following someone else’s culture if it makes sense to me and if it is the right thing to do. I don’t like to lie about anything to anyone. Therefore, being lied to is not something that I enjoy very much. I have talked to many expats and this is something that we all struggle with when we first arrived in Thailand.

Overall, I prefer my life in Thailand because of the lower cost of living. I have been joining a lot of activities like Krav Maga, Argentine Tango, Hot Yoga and some others. I made a lot of new friends, both Thais and non-Thais. The loneliness I felt in my first few months here is slowly fading away.

Being away from my home country, family and friends has been a great experience from me. I feel so different now and I have discovered new things about myself that I didn’t know I had when I was in Singapore. For example, I recently started learning the Argentine Tango dance. I tried Salsa for 2 times and it was not really for me because I find it too flashy and it does not suit my personality. My mum still thinks I am crazy for learning to dance! She’s thousands of miles away so she cannot nag or stop me!

I think I will leave Thailand some time next year for Taiwan. My goal is to move to Australia once my permanent resident visa has been approved but that will take at least another year or more until the global economy recovers. I have to move to a rabies-free country for at least 6 months before I can move my cats to Australia. I didn’t know that Thailand was on Australia’s “black list”. You cannot bring your pets to Australia from Thailand!

There aren’t many free countries in Asia. Thailand is one of them but they have a constitional monarchy. This is my first experience of living in a country with a king as the head of state. I would like to experience life in a free and democratic Asian country without kings and dictators running the show. So Singapore and Japan is out. South Korea and Taiwan springs to mind. I need to improve my Chinese reading and writing skills so Taiwan is my next port of call.

I don’t really know much about the history of Hawaiian Ho’oponopono but it seems like there are a couple of ways people use the system. I like the system described in Joe’s book because it is non-religious and non-ritualistic. You only need to say the phrases “I love you”, “Sorry”, “Please forgive me” and “Thank you” in your mind. These phrases are so generic they can do no harm to you.

My friend introduced this book to me because I was experiencing some complicated relationship problems with a woman I just met. She thought Ho’oponopono would help me sort out a lot of the issues I am facing with the woman of my interest and the woman’s issues too. This is a new concept for me. Not only do I have to heal my own issues, I also need to take responsibility for other people’s issues that occur in my life.

According to Dr Hew Len, if you see a certain issue in your life, be it in yourself or in others, you have caused it on a certain level. In other words, it is your own damn fault certain things happen in your world. The solution is to heal the negative memories and patterns that cause us to self-sabotage ourselves.

I get this great sense of peace, love and feeling of knowing exactly what I should do after applying Ho’oponopono. I use it on almost anything in my life. For example, when I see my cats misbehaving, I tell myself I am sorry for causing them to misbehave, I ask forgiveness from myself and the Universe for it, tell my cats I love them and I thank them. This beats getting my water spray to spray at my cats! I think they don’t like that and I am grateful that I have found a better solution.

I feel like I love myself a whole lot more and everything in my life. In Thailand, stray dogs rule the streets. They poop everywhere and they sometimes chase and bark at people they don’t like. Once in a while, I get barked at or chased by dogs around my apartment. I am comfortable with animals so what I do is I stop walking, look at them and tell them something like, “Hey, what’s up? I live here man”.

Now, I tell them in my mind that I love them whenever I see stray dogs around my apartment. I have noticed a shift in the way they treat me now. They seem more receptive and friendly towards me than before.

Another thing that I have changed in my life is accepting the messiness and crap around my home. You see, in Thailand, the sanitation system is not that great. Once every few months, I see a bunch of guys scooping up the crap from the clogged drains. When it rains heavily, some roads near my place gets flooded! I started developing this crappy memory of my neighbourhood. I would walk past piles of stray dog poop and think, “Crap”. I was so negative about all the unsightly things in my neighbourhood.

After applying Ho’oponopono, I no longer feel all these negative emotions about my neighbourhood. I said sorry in my mind to my neighbourhood because I have unjustly labelled it as crap just because there were a few imperfections. I could not see the good side of my neighbourhood because I focused only on the bad! I started saying, “I love this place!” to myself and asked for forgiveness for my negative judgemental ways in the past. Finally, I told myself to feel grateful that I have been living here for the past 5 months safely and happily. Now, I can walk past heaps and heaps of stray dog poop and not feel any negative emotion at all.

You can apply Ho’oponopono to a lot of other things that appear in your life. Remember, if it is there, you caused it on a certain level and you want it on a certain level. Ho’oponopono helps you to release all the negative emotions and expectations that are blocking you. I feel so much lighter everyday as a result of Ho’oponopono.

We are all imperfect beings brought up by imperfect parents. Therefore, no one can ever have a perfect childhood. We are bound to carry some negative issues from the past. If you can’t seem to break out of certain negative patterns in your life, I highly recommend giving Ho’oponopono a try. It is cheap to learn from a paperback book to apply it on yourself.

Nowadays, I like to sign off my emails and text messages with the words peace and love. I hope you will get more peace and love in your life like what I am experiencing in my life as a result of Ho’oponopono.

Peace & love,

Vincent

Once you have added the tweetmeme retweet code to the prefix field of your twtterfeed feed, you tweets will be counted by tweetmeme.

This saves me a lot of time so that I do not need to manually post my blog posts to Twitter with the tweetmeme retweet code manually.

In his free time, Vincent likes socializing, Krav Maga, Jeet Kune Do, yoga, reading, writing, watching movies, playing with his cats, building Web sites, swimming, running, listening to his favourite band Oasis and other relaxing activities.

Vincent has been obsessed with Web development since he was 17. He firmly believes that the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. He continually searches for ways to leverage on the Internet to make money, build communities online, have fun, make friends and a lot more!

Vincent enjoys reading and learning about the latest trends on the Internet. He is constantly reading about topics like XHMTL/CSS, PHP, MySQL, blogging, social networks, Google AdSense, banner advertising, affiliate program marketing, Ubuntu Server, Linux, XAMPP and search engine optimization. Therefore you will see stuff like that posted randomly on this web site.

Vincent understands that he can be a bit blunt and irritating at times but most of the time he’s nice.

Vincent’s Personal Mission Statement

To find happiness, fulfilment, and value in living I will:

• BE the best me I can ever be by exploring my every gift and talent, never wasting my potential to bring goodness, beauty, laughter and prosperity to my life and the world around me.
• LEAD a life centered on the principles of excellence, growth, integrity and honesty.
• REMEMBER what’s important in life is freedom, integrity, spiritual fulfilment, success and health.
• REVERE admirable characteristics in others such as being ambitious, courageous, creative, self-reliant, wise, and giving, and attempt to implement similar characteristics in my own life.
• RECOGNISE my strengths and develop talents as a person who is visionary, trustworthy, optimistic, a leader, intelligent, and confident.

Vincent’s Favourite Quote

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” – Bruce Lee

My followers have increased by 1766 in 45 days. That’s an average of 39 new followers per day. A lot of people are promoting the Twitter Traffic Machine on Twitter with an ad that goes something like “Thanks for the follow! Would you like to get 16,000 Followers in 90 days and make money? http://bit.ly/………”.

I doubt I would get 16000 followers in 90 days and I don’t really care. The “make money” portion of the Twitter Traffic Machine is to promote the eBook in your automated Twitter message to your new followers. That’s great for the author but if do not wish to promote his eBook on Twitter, you could promote something else.

Some of the tips in this eBook are pretty common knowledge for advanced Twitter users. I did learn a few new things about Twitter and Twitter tools that I have not tried. So if you think you know it all about Twitter, you may still find some gems in his eBook.

The author, Bill Cosby, demonstrates his system of automating the posting of great content to your Twitter account and other automation aspects of his system through 5 + videos. They are really easy to follow and implement. I got up and running within an hour.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

The only drawbacks I see with this system is that you need to make sure your content sources are relevant to your niche. Some of the automated ways of getting content might get you a lot of unrelated posts, which may make your profile look “spammy”. I also wish the author could ellaborate more on how to make money with other products instead of just plugging his own.

All in all, for only $27, the Twitter Traffic Machine is a great buy.