Color me

Often many people ask me, "What are you?" of course they are referring to my heritage, but I always love to play the hard-to-get-game with that question. I have three automatic responses for that kind of question: A) I'm a new yorker , B) What do I look like, or C) why do you ask?

I can't help but question the motive behind the person who is asking me that kind of question. I know that sometimes people are just unsure or curious. That probably makes the most sense right? I guess so.

For me often enough people will assume I'm another race because to them I look exotic. Maybe I do, especially when I wear a lot of makeup or when I'm in costume.

Still there are others who ask about what race you are in order for them to size you and judge you differently. I don't like the idea of being labeled and judged based on what I am versus who I am. I like to be judged based on my merits not my ethnicity or anything so ridiculous.

Sometimes when people find out that I'm not the kind of ethnic race they expect me to be they begin to take away my dance creditability. All of a sudden they will view me as a good dancer instead of the great dancer they loved during my performance. Why you ask this may be? Simple they believe only certain races can be true bellydancers-- that just makes no sense of course.

If you want to know what race I am, then pick a color. Color me the shade you please, just don't attach my dance skill to it. That will really push my buttons!

Even in this blog I'm not going to say what I am. It's not because I'm not proud of my race (goodness no I love my people). It's because again this blog is part of my belly dance life. I'm a belly dancer and that's all you really need to know.

P.S: Okay... I confess, I love making people guess what race I am just for fun =)

Sad Blog Imitation

Yesterday I found myself frustrated by discovering a sad imitation of so called Video blog. I have no problem with others creating video blogs as I did, but I am frustrated by the idea of creating a blog with nothing to say This blog was the laziest blog attempt I have ever seen.

Ok, I know anyone can do anything they want on a blog, say anything they please (some what) and post just about anything as well. But as a writer, I personally feel that a blog has to have some kind of written material within it. Anything from quotes, statements, opinions, essays, stories, poems... anything that requires the author to express themselves a little to their readers. A blog doesn't have to say much but for heavens sake it should say something. Now back to the lazy video blog I found...

So I checked out this Bellydancing Video blog and I'll describe to you what I found. It's a well set up video blog filled with a collection of Youtube videos listed under specific dancers names. The videos are of dancers who are well known professionals recognized around the world. The basic concept of this blog that this person created was to have dancers watch other dancers dance. Pretty much like Youtube. The only difference is this author of this blog organized the videos to make them easier to watch. Whoopee... As if it's that difficult to type in the dancers name on the Youtube search bar and find the video myself. I didn't think typing in names could be like rocket science.

So that's pretty much the concept of that whole blog. Congratulations this author create an imitation organized version of Youtube all over again. Seems so unnecessary doesn't it?

The biggest problem with this blog is that there is NOTHING TO READ. The blog has a title, a description of what the whole blog is and a list of links, that's it. No other information is provided. There are no explanations why the particular videos were picked, no description of each of the videos, no written thoughts, no anything. The website looked like a lonely wild western movie. This blog lacked luster a personal touch can provide.

That blog that person created was so easy to make too, it was almost insulting. All this person did was cut and paste videos from YouTube, anyone can literaly do that within two hours or so. I wondered why they even bothered calling it a blog in the first place, they should have just created a website with this video idea as their main focus. I guess the blog world and website madness is somehow merging into one.

I for one manage 3 blogs, I have 2 that are focused on bellydancing and a third which is a little more personal. But for all my blogs I put a great deal of my own effort into each of them. Each blog has central idea and gives readers an insight to what I'm thinking or feeling. The point is to share something on a blog. Don't just throw stuff together, put in a little effort in everything you do!