Greetings to Malaysia

A few minutes ago the special software attached to this weblog has proudly registered the 1000th individual visitor from Malaysia.

I like to take this opportunity to send special greetings to Malaysia, combined with my thanks for your continuous high interest in this humble weblog from Ireland.

Many years ago, when I was based in South East Asia, I spent quite some time in your country and learned a lot about its nature, history, people and culture.
In those days I did not notice much interest in Ireland among my Malaysian acquaintances, and of course I did not mind. One did not expect to be noticed much or seen as important when one came from Ireland. The fact that one spoke English made things easier, and there was this invisible but ever-present bond between people who had once been part of the British Empire but then fought for their freedom and independence and achieved both.

There are about 28 million people in Malaysia - seven times the population of Ireland - and after recovering from a twelve-year-long civil war (1948-1960) Malaysia became one of the original Asian 'Tiger' economies, developing fast into a modern industrial nation.
The 'Tiger' image was borrowed by the Irish some years ago and thus gave us the 'Celtic Tiger', even though - in contrast to Asia - tigers are not native to our part of the world. (Maybe this is one of the reasons why it did not work out for us...)

But Malaysia, even in these difficult economic times of global recession, is still going strong and it suffers a lot less than Ireland, because it did not make the mistakes we made. And the Malaysian people - especially the younger generation - are very open-minded and participate actively in the ongoing and increasing communication around the global village.

Right from the start of this weblog Malaysians were the fourth-largest national group of readers and visitors (after people from the USA, Ireland and the UK), and this has not changed in the 16 months Views from the Emerald Isle has been in existence.

I am delighted to have such a strong readership in South East Asia, and especially in Malaysia, and hope you will keep reading in the future and share the news and views with your families, friends and acquaintances. Feel also free to leave comments or to ask questions. My door and my inbox are open to all sensible suggestions.

The Emerald Islander

1000th British Visitor

The independent automatic tracking system Flagcounter has just registered the 1000th individual visitor from the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland (UK).

Though the number of British tourists visiting Ireland is down now significantly - due to 'credit crunch', economic crisis and the more than 20% drop in value (and spending power) of the Pound Sterling to the value of the Euro - I am pleased to see that our neighbours to the East and North are still visiting this humble weblog as frequently as usual.
And you are of course as welcome as always, regardless of crisis and 'credit crunch'.

Since I began writing this weblog nearly 14 months ago, UK visitors have been constantly the third-largest group of readers, with a current share of 12% of individual visitors*.

The largest amount of individual visitors - currently 41.7% - come from the USA, which has been in the lead from day one, followed by readers from Ireland, which make up currently 19%. Given the fact that the Republic of Ireland has only about 4.2 million inhabitants (compared with over 300 million in the USA), the share of 1/5 shows that our own people take a fair interest in what I have to say.

More surprising I find the fact that positions 4 and 5 in the ranking of individual visitors are held by Malaysia (currently 9.9%) and Singapore (currently 4.6%).
Although I visited these two countries in South-East Asia regularly when I was based in Hong Kong and Thailand, this is a long time ago and I don't usually write about that part of the world on this weblog. The interest of these Asian readers in Ireland and my writing is appreciated even more and they are most welcome. I read Asian weblogs myself and think that knowing more of and about each other can only improve the state of the world and the spreading of new ideas in the interest of global peace and prosperity.

Very recently the system also registered my first ever readers in Uruguay and Venezuela, and I can only hope that my Views from the Emerald Isle will find even more interest everywhere in future. Everyone is welcome here, regardless who they are and where they are based.

At present the various tracking systems I use here have registered visitors from 113 different countries - from Afghanistan to Vietnam - plus 58 computers registered by the EU organisation.
There were also 763 'hits' whose identity and nationality could not be identified by the tracking systems and thus are listed as 'unknown origin'. Maybe some of them come from various intelligence agencies like the American NSA and CIA, or the Russian FSB (the successor of the KGB), who have the technical capacity to hide their IP addresses and surf the web frequently.
Well, who ever they are, they are welcome to this weblog, and I hope they will find it worth their while to come here and read what I have to say.

The Emerald Islander

* Every single computer in the world has an individual IP address (or registration number). This unique IP address is the basis for counting individual visitors. Repeat visits by the same reader, or someone else using the same computer, are not counted. They are however registered in the overall statistic by a separate system that counts the number of 'hits' the weblog receives from any visitors.