NEW LINKS

Frank Kelly, an expat living in Costa Rica, showed up in my referrer log today. One of four recent links that I've received that haven't been reciprocals.

Even more impressive Frank says:

There are some outstanding bloggers who I personally admire but won’t link here. Belle de Jour, Billy Beck, Bill St Clair and others were excluded to keep Costa Rica Expat an upbeat, family friendly experience.
But the vast majority of link candidates were rejected for reasons of quality. I have exacting standards for content, authorial voice, page design, ad clutter, etc. My mission is to bring you the best I can find.

As one Frank's initial links, I've extremely flattered. His blog is here and has been added to the blogroll.

There are a lot of local blogs in Singapore, but very few are political. That makes Singabloodypore highly refreshing. The author, who's pen name is Hicky, says he will reveal his true identity on 1 October - in honor of PM Lee's recent suggestion that the local population need to speak up and be more politically active.

Hickey also acutely picked up on a recent verbal misstep made by the PM when he was encouraging locals to speak out.

"The second thing we are going to do is to open up the Speakers' Corner where you can go and make any speech you like and we are going to say, 'Well, if you want to go there and have an exhibition, go ahead.'

Once in a while, Think Centre says they want to go to the Speakers' Corner and they want to plant 100 flowers there,let the hundred flowers bloom."

Chairman Mao also called for the blooming of a hundred flowers. Shortly thereafter, he decided most of them needed to be uprooted.

For Hicky's sake, and for the development of the Singaporean blogosphere, I do hope Lee's use of the phrase was just a verbal misstep and not a subtle warning.