No blogger ever wants to lose the audience; that goes against the whole reason we got into the game. This post is about a dreadful mistake I never should’ve made. Maybe you can learn from it…

Today my charming Russian friend decided she was going to teach me some basic Russian; I played along for kicks. She’s a good teacher, and who knows, maybe one day I would need it.

It was like being in Kindergarten all over again. She’s thorough, and the language isn’t the hardest I’d ever attempted, but trying to keep up just made me feel really stupid. We’d make a little progress on 1 subject, and in her need to further explain it so I could understand, we’d move on to another subject altogether.

I just saw these really random comments (usually under the DnB Daily posts; which shoulda been a dead giveaway; 1 word, Netsky), filled with really weird, alien, (Unown Pokemon-esque) symbols. I always just figured it was spam. I never considered it was someone in another country reading my blog. I totally shut down my readers without even bothering to listen to them; let alone engage them. The potential long-term damage, beyond scary. For me, it’s the type of shame that doesn’t wipe away overnight.

I don’t hate Russia, or Her people, and I’m very embarrassed that someone as culturally knowledged as myself took so long to catch this. I do hope I haven’t chased off all the Russian readers from the feeds (or otherwise); you guys are more than welcome. And BIG, BIG, BIG UPS, to the International community at large, who’s always stopping by the site to stalk me for a few minutes each day. I’m baffled at the amount of traffic I manage in America to begin with, never thought in a million years I’d ever get any eyes from outside the US.

I had the grand pleasure of visiting Canada for the 1st time for the 2008 Anime North convention in Toronto. Unfortunately between all the time I spent at customs and the con itself, I never really got to experience much of Canada. I hope to go back one day.

-Anime North 2008
-Anime recording studios

[World Tour]

As I continue my journey to experience the immensity that is the United States, I’m also bracing for a far more compelling odyssey to see the world, one destination at a time. I’ve a list of locales & I hope to see them all once before I die.

-Amsterdam
-Australia
-Austria
-Bahamas
-Brazil
-Canada *5/23/08-Ontario
-China
-Christmas Island
-Egypt
-Easter Island
-Fiji
-Germany
-Greece
-Ibiza
-Italy
-!!!!! JAPAN !!!!!
-Kyoto
-London/UK
-New Zealand
-Osaka
-Paris
-Philippines
-Prague
-Rome
-Russia
-Sweden
-Switzerland
-Thailand
-Tokyo
-Vatican City