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