The Thinking Blogs

I feel so honoured to have been awarded a feel-good Thinking Blog Award by Firehorse aka Fatty Poh or Overseas Mom-wife. (Gee, if not for programmable html links, this unthinking blogger will never figure out a way to get to her blog. Hehe, can't help making that dig - it's my sarcasm at work.)

In my opinion, every blogger is a thinking blogger. How can anyone write anything that is comprehensible if he does not think before he writes? Even my 10-year-old son needs to think (and very hard too) before he writes a composition. So I guess I should be writing about blogs that make me think instead.

This award was started here. You have to award five others whose blog you think deserve this award. Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
   
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
   
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote

Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all — blogs that really get you thinking!

Now for the my own list of deserving Thinking Blog Award winners, in no particular order of merit:

1. Mr Wang Says So

Mr Wang is a very popular blogger who writes about Singapore's social, political and economic issues. His posts are often based on newspaper articles on some controversial issues, a recent one being about our ministers' pay. Mr Wang, who is a lawyer by training, would also add his own insightful views on the issues. Each of his posts typically generates more than a hundred comments from readers who offer a variety of opinions.

2. Sleepless In Singapore

This is another blogger who is similar to Mr Wang in terms of what he writes. In his own words, his blog is "one middle-aged Singaporean's commentaries on some of the unpleasant things we read in the news and Singapore society in general". As to why he chooses to focus on writing about the unpleasant things, I have no idea. Perhaps he is a pessimist by nature. His nick gives me the impression that he's sleepless either because he's worried about the "bad news on the doorstep" or he writes his posts when he can't sleep. He does not write very often (his last post is dated 7 Apr 2007) which could be a good sign because it may mean that he is getting more sleep nowadays.

3. Don To Earth

The owner of this blog is the very senior Donald Crowdis. His blog's tagline is "A Nonagenarian (90+) Ponders Life, the Universe, and Aging". He has done work related to museums, libraries, heritage, and radio and television broadcasting. Some investigative browsing through his blog will reveal that he was born on 24 Dec 1913. (Gosh, he has the same birthday as my elder son but their years of birth are 78 years apart!) That makes Don 93-going-on-94 this year - definitely old enough to be a museum exhibit himself, kekeke. He is obviously one of the oldest bloggers around, possibly the 3rd oldest in the world. Don writes extremely well. He is proof that not every elderly person suffers from diminished mental faculty. His posts are short, sweet, thought-provoking and to the point. He even has a great sense of humour to boot - his last post on 8 Mar 2007 with title "I'm Not Dead" assures readers that he is still alive, kicking and writing. In his own words:

"Family concerns are currently preventing me from posting to 'Don To Earth', and from responding to the numerous e-mails that I have received and continue to receive."

It has been almost 2 months since that post. I do hope that he will resume writing soon.


4. Good Morning Yesterday

In his blog, Mr Lam Chun See reminisces about life in Singapore during olden times. Reading his articles never fails to make me think... about my own personal experiences as a child. I can relate to his stories because he is only 4 years older than me, biologically that is. Intellectually, there is no comparison; it is obvious that he is much, much older.


5. Life As I See It

Many of Chris' articles are thought-provoking and insightful. Like mine, there are some mindless ones of course but these are few and far between. He likes to horse around with me and whenever he does, I have to think very hard of how to "monkey around" back at him. It saddens me that I might not have this chance ever again.


I am not tagging anyone for this meme because firstly, thinkers are not known to be doers and secondly, at the rate that blogs are being shut down nowadays, soon there will be no bloggers left to tag. Sad but true. So one day, if you visit my blog and find that I have not written for some time, it could be one or more of the following reasons:

a. I am too busy to blog and have taken a hiatus;

b. I have moved my blog to a new private one or a good old-fashioned diary;

c. I am dead (possibly from deep vein thrombosis because of successive 8-hour blogging sessions);

d. I have quietly shut down my blog as well because it no longer provides the challenge to me.


Yes Elaine, it is proven that the blog flu can be as infectious as the bird one.