18 January 2012

Pressure!


Pressure         

So there is Eli Manning, after a five-step dropback, looking down field for an open receiver.  Score tied, 58 seconds on the clock, third and eight on his own 40, if only Cruz could shake loose from that cornerback with an illegal grip on Cruz’s jersey. Uh oh, out of the corner of his eye, Eli spots the defensive right end spin away from the Giant’s offensive left tackle and make straight for him.  What now? Step up into the pocket? Into the arms of the blitzing middle linebacker? Take the sack and leave the field to the punt squad? Scramble right with 515 pounds of beef chasing him?  Dump the ball off to the blocking back and let him run for his life?  Decision time. Pressure unbearable must nevertheless be borne. All on him.  Hey, that’s why he gets the big bucks.

Pressure.

Whoa.  Is London demented?  Hung over?  Brain rot from heat, rain, Tanqueray and Red Stripe, (did I mention rain?), followed by the shock of the Giants beating the unbeatable Green Bay Packers? Nothing like this occurred in that game. Not even close.  Giants led all the way, despite the best efforts of the cheese-head officials.
 
Ok, it is all my imagination.  It is I who feels the pressure.  After my escape from Islamabad airport, I need to write another blog about St. Barths to maintain my standing.  After all, I do have an audience to feed.  So far, not fickle, but I know some who would pounce like a blind-side defensive end if I do not communicate in a timely fashion, i.e., like today.
Okay, let’s see:  talk about St. Barths?  You already know the Russians are here, it is still raining, and there is still no parking permitted on the roadway adjacent to St. Jean beach.  Nothing new there.

We did eat at a new restaurant the other night.  Who cares? No big deal.  Just excellent service by friendly waiters, great food prepared by an accomplished chef, while we sat at a harbor-side table, and spent two hours drinking red wine with friends without any effort by the wait-staff to turn the table over. (Just like NYC, right?  Ever eat at Quatorze B in the east seventies? Two minutes after you sit down, the waiter demands your main course order.  Not ready? Not to worry: he’ll be back every three minutes until you submit to his whining. If you are not out of there within 65 minutes of your arrival, the waiter all but removes the table cloth and sits the new patrons in your lap.  Food is good, but the hospitality is decidedly unfrench.) And when was the last time you ate in a New York City restaurant and could actually hear anything said at your table?

Other news?  You already know about the decline of the Euro.  Good news? I  dunno. Our cost of living has declined, but so have real estate values—or not. Too complicated for me, so I just focus on the short-term items, like the cost of gin and light bulbs.

I think I will punt. So instead of talking about St. Barths, a few words about this Blog.  Yeah, that’s it:  A Blog about a Blog. Then we’ll go the beach. It is noon, the sun is shining , no clouds in the sky, which probably means it will not rain for another 90 minutes.  Gotta hurry.

Pressure.

I send  blog-reminder emails to friends and family members, most of whom live in the metropolitan New York area, with a few sprinkled about the United States.  Google hosts my Blog at no cost to me. Hard to figure out what's in it for them. Maybe there’s some profit for hosting Blogspot when a Blog has thousands of viewers.  Google does have an advertising program available for bloggers, but I  can not imagine having to pay my accountant another thousand bucks to add 18 cents a year of new income to my tax  returns.

I discovered recently that Blogspot supplies statistics on one's blogees. Hmm.  You thought I did not know who was looking at the blog, that I  could not track who looked, and when? Hah.  Well, actually, you are correct, I don’t know who you are, but Google does tell me how many of you there are.  

This project began with stay-in-touch emails when Pinks and I came down here for the winter six years ago.  (I am not even sure Facebook existed then, but that’s irrelevant because I am not a Facebook person and know few who are.)  After the sending the first few communiques to about 40 friends and family members, I became self-conscious that I might be cluttering inboxes with unwanted material, so I switched to the Blog mechanism, which gives the reader the option to click on the site or not,  if and when he or she chooses.  The number of blogees (I take credit for inventing the word) on my email-reminder list has grown substantially. While it is hardly “viral”, my tiny blog audience continues to expand.  While my email-reminder list is now at 230 (the greater part of the growth the result of  word-of-mouth request) so far this month there were 300 hits to the page. Not exactly IPO material, (Ariana Huffington can relax) but satisfying nevertheless.

But to me, the total number is not the only interesting statistic. Google’s Blogspot also tells me stuff about my readers. For example, 30% of my readers view the blog on a Mac, iPad or iPhone, the rest on Windows, except for three hardy souls who connect via Blackberry.  (And I can guess where  they work!)

But the most interesting data are these:  I get to learn where the hits come from.   The facts are beyond my ability to rationalize.  Here are geographic locales of this month’s page hits:

U.S.: 237
Russia: 22
France: 18
Germany 5
China: 4
Israel: 4
Netherlands: 3
Thailand: 3
UK: 2
Qatar: 2

Don’t ask me. I haven’t a clue.

The important thing is that I have now escaped my pursuers—at least for this week.  I feel  better.

Qatar???

Go Big Blue.

A bientot.