Exams and Bananas

So as another week ends and another month begins... I find myself doing little but sweating. After a pretty hectic week of taking on a two new positions at work, the first of which involves waking up stupidly early to ask people I have never met stupid questions and then give them a grade between 1 - 5 on how well they answered and the other involves actually writing exams - something I consider myself wholly unqualified for but am obligated nonetheless.

Budapest is still managing to keep me thoroughly entertained and as the sun comes out for what seems like for good, the city has taken on a different personality and a different pace. The atmosphere oozes electricity to the point it is difficult to know what to do with it.

Last night me and Juli went out to celebrate her well deserved graduation along with some of her friends and although the night ended up early (the bad barman made cosmopolitans too strong), it was great to see more of what Budapest has to offer. So for anyone travelling to Budapest I recommend checking out the aptly named 'Morrisons 2'. Cleverly taking it's name from another successful pub in the city 'Morrisons 1', the venue is unlike anything I've ever come across with a huge underground complex, a topside garden and then 6 floors of rooms, bars and dance floors with the icing on the cake being beer for 200 F orints (66p) and tequila at a pound.

The football is keeping the city on it's toes with each of the small ex-pat communities mixing with enthusiastic Hungarian in Sabotag square ion the centre of the city to witness the latest match on the big screen.... it's also where I watched the obliteration of England last week - What a huge disappointment.

Other news includes my enrolment on a Hungarian course starting next Monday and our landladies announcement that she is selling our flat meaning that opportunity beckons.... prospects of a house with two whole rooms are on the horizon!


A photo of me and Juli taken in the rain at a free festival in the centre of Budapest.

And Finally I would like to leave you all with possibly one of the finest articles ever written entitled: The unfortunate sex life of a Banana.

It may look like a bit of read but it is great. It ticks all the boxes; namely it tells you something you didn't know, it's extremely well written, it is very funny and a deep sense of appreciation for this humble fruit may result. (If your not my mother you will need a dictionary).

Sziastok!

The Elephant and the Rider

I ended my last post with news of my sisters arrival home and today I ended my last post upon my sisters return home to the UK so it seems fitting to start this one of with the news of her departure.......
Amazing! With the -re- of that last word the phone rang with a concerned sounding sister on the end - Proof of a deep seated mental sibling connection no doubt.

Despite reporting a 90 percent inclination not to return to Egypt, she is still determined to catch her flight. It's funny, I've always been told to trust my gut feelings but I do question if they're always right? The last time I came out to Budapest I too held a similar feelings although nowhere near the ratio of desire as my sister - and like her, I went anyway. Since I have been here - almost since the moment I arrived, I have been loving it, I've learnt loads about my language, myself and life. (I just wish I could add Hungarian to that list)!

So, despite my deep feelings and my usual willingness to trust them implicitly, ultimately something else won inside me. It was in India that I learnt how to use this inner power to guide me in every decision I made and it never failed me. But now I know, there are really two sides of me - I am two minds in one, a head and a heart both of which deserve as much credit as the other and both of which have to work together - Like the elephant and the rider as Osho was famed for noting.

Who knows what is going to happen to Kate, the elephant wants to stay but the rider wants to go but ultimately should the rider not always be in charge of his elephant? Good luck Kate.

Down to business

After weeks of writing, typing, editing and re-editing, All-About-India.com now has a fully expanded and functioning section all about Goa with countless pages about everything to do with Goa from beaches to hotels, tours and food.

As was the prediction for June and July, traffic has decreased by roughly %30 but amazingly the website is producing record earnings...!? Still it is disheartening and demotivating to notice all your hard work seemingly disappear with visitor numbers. But I do know that it will pick up again - The rider just needs to give the elephant a kick up the arse and we together they'll climb a mountain lol.

So I shouldn't moan - instead get preparing for the busy season starting late September - The aim is for 1000 daily visitors by December. To reach this I have loads of work to do building links and writing content but I have absolutely no doubt that such a target is achievable In fact I get a funny feeling it might be rather conservative, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks to SBI

SBI (Site Build It) is the platform that has enabled me to create All-About-India.com. Without SBI I am sure that it would be lost in the Mecca of the World Wide Web, somewhere between a failed double glazing firm and a blog about mops. Instead the website flies high. To put this into context: Alexa is a website ranking company who now, out of 100,000,000 websites (Yes, 100 Million!), rank All-About-India at 541,000. Well in top 0.6% of all websites. So thank you SBI.

Final Exams

As I type my girlfriend, Juli is taking her final exam of university. An exam consisting of three years of knowledge - At least I hope she is and hasn't fallen asleep on the tram! For anyone wanting to know anything about hard work and what it really means to cram, a week in this house would be a fantastic lesson. Good luck Juli, you deserve to excel.

Life in Budapest

The happenings and going on in Budapest continue to amaze me with free festivals here, parties there and with out a doubt some the coolest bars and clubs in the world. It's great city and I recommend everyone to visit.

Work is maintaining it's usual habit of completely filling up the pages in my Diary one week and then leaving it empty the next. Me and Juli have our first joint student next week, the only girl who clicked on the '2 for 1' English lessons on the web, that's Juli teaching grammar and me... well, some other stuff.

And with that I would like to leave you with a link to a short story that has stayed with me over the past couple of weeks: The Howling Dog

Home Comings and Milestones

Well since my recent and sudden drop in English language students I have been able once again to focus my efforts almost entirely on my website (and of course my delicious girlfriend ;-).

As a result of this extra work the website has made it to 5 quite major milestones, including:

• May being the first month to draw in a steady average of over 500 unique visitors a day.. Quite an achievement that I must say I am incredibly proud to have reached.
  
  
• May is also the first month (although not quite over yet) to top the 10,000 monthly visitors mark
  
  
• The first month ever with over 20,000 page views
  
  
• And the long awaited attainment of over 200 pages
  

Okay, so that's only 4 achievements I know but I insist on the fifth being this years apparent ability of not only maintaining traffic levels but in fact growing them in what is actually the down season for travellers to India. If we compare this with last years statistics at the same time of year we can see avg. daily visitors hanging around the 30 mark for the entire summer.

And on a very optimistic note, if we do the math we can see that's a 1370% increase in traffic numbers in little over 12 months - quite astounding considering this 'snowball' shows no signs of slowing.

These figures can't help but make me look into the future, if we consider a rather conservative increase in traffic of just 500% over the next year, then All-About-India.com will be easily raking in roughly2500 visitors a day!. With a little more optimism than that and an already proved growth rate of 1300% the we can expect a whopping 6500 daily visitors with over 15,000 daily page views.

Does anybody know of a business that can or has grown by %1300 in a year?!

But we shouldn't get stuck numbers, they mean very little without concrete results so now let us move on to the latest pages, the most recent of which are all about hotels. You can check out the latest pages here: http://www.all-about-india.com/Best-Hotels-In-India.html

Plans for over 40 pages on this theme look set to be completed by the end of the summer with guides, reviews and links to the all the best hotels in India categorised into regions.

After that I really don't know... The scope of topics is quite tremendous so I would love to hear your suggestions, (you can add them to the bottom of this page). Many people have been talking about adding trekking pages and I have also had some requests from people wanting me to write about the best diving places in India (diving really isn't my thing so I could really use your help with this).

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And finally on a more personal note I would just like to say a big massive welcome home to my Sister and her recent return to the UK from what turned out to be a roller-coaster year in Egypt working with horses and of course all the other various excitements and dramas which ultimately make life what it is.

I just wanted to say that we are so happy to have you back and you should know we are all ready to give you all the support and love and help that you may need to continue your journey... And let us not forget.....


Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.

Thank you and enjoy your summer!

Oliver Wakefield

A Re-Cap

As All-About-India.com bounds arcoss the line into its 16th Month live on the web, I have decided to create this blog in honour of its fantastic success and also to thank those of you who have made it possible - I will get to you later.

So let me start by stating a few of the websites statistics starting with the many many visitors, people just like you, who are making use of and contributing to what has turned out to be a massive project. So here they are!


Current daily unique Visitors (average for the month of April): 451

Total number of pages viewed: 133481

Top 5 Pages Last month (April):

www.all-about-India.com/Population-of-India.html

www.all-about-India.com/Indian-Art.html

www.all-about-India.com/Poverty-in-India.html

www.all-about-India.com/Best-Beaches-in-India.html

www.all-about-India.com/Geography-of-India.html

One of the newest themes of the website is the potentially huge section on Bollywood which needs a shed load of work to get it completed. So if Bollwood is 'your thing' and you fancy contributing to all-about-India.com, then just contact me using this page and let me know your thoughts.

And of course, we love hearing about your stories which have kept us all entertained throughout these past few months.

As you can see from the stats, All-About-India.com is slowly but surely growing from a dingy into a cruise-liner and I want to get as many people as possible on board before we really set sail! Don't forget - It's your India!

Thanks

That reminds me.... I have to give a massive thanks to all of those who have helped me in creating All-About-India.com. For example my mother and her wondrous proofreading abilities and humongous thesaurus of a mind, my girlfriend Julianna (pumpkin), whose support and honest reviews have been priceless, not to mention her supreme grasp of English and Hindi when writing about the Indian Language. Also my father, siblings, friends and all those of you who have acted as guides during the never ending process of building a website. And thank you again for all those of you who have added your poetry, pictures, stories and contributions to the forums. Your kind words and comments are perhaps the most valuable of all.

Have a nice day :-)

Namaste

Oliver Wakefield