On September 4th, 2006, from a pink office building in south Shanghai, the first ever Flumesday post was scripted. That same day, with one clunky click, the site before you, Flumesday.com, was born. The first sentence of this seminal post read, “Exercising has become more rewarding in China as the iGallop, made by Singaporean company OSIM, has become an increasingly popular home machine.” Eek. We all get better. The post focused less on Chinese exercise and more on the innocent Chinese girl whose job it was to ride this thing in a public mall to demonstrate its use. Poor thing. She was riding this ab machine like she was engaged in the most passionate cowgirl sex anyone has ever witnessed. And this was how it started.

One year and 500,000 visitors later, I am still writing about things that I read or see in China (and America) that should be written about. And not just sex. I’ve written about Chinese basketball, drug culture, censorship, prostitution, cabbies, expats, dolphins, pigs, dogs, Bai Ling, online gaming, Jews, Muslims, the world’s tallest man, spitting, the Olympics, Yao Ming (a lot) and whatever else strikes my fancy on a given day. My goal when I began was to choose interesting topics that other writers or bloggers in China did not tackle. My hope was that people would find a perspective and tone on Flumesday that they could not find anywhere else.

My only disappointment is that at times, like now, there have been periods in which posting has been irregular. Sometimes, I am out of town. Sometimes I get busy with other things. And sometimes I just don’t feel like it. But the last few weeks, while the posting of new material has been infrequent, I have been putting more time and effort into Flumesday than ever before. You just can’t see it. Yet. In the next couple weeks, Flumesday will get a much needed makeover. While the look and feel of the site will remain pretty much the same, I am adding functions that will drastically improve the site for the reader.

Other than some new columns and perhaps some new writers, all posts will be linkable, Stateside posts will be archived, navigation between posts will be smooth, posts will be grouped in categories, all content will be searchable through an internal search function (no more Google search), Flumesday will get its own RSS feed, Stateside will have it’s own RSS feed, and finally and the coolest addition if you ask me, in the near future there will be a Flumesday store where you can buy t-shirts and other goodies, the proceeds from which will be donated to a worthy Shanghai charity.

While I’m excited for the year to come on Flumesday.com, on the very first birthday of my very first Web site, I wanted to say thanks to all the readers and commentators for contributing to the site and taking part in what has been the most exciting year of my life. I hope you keep reading. Happy Birthday Flumesday.

•First Flumesday Post: New Ab Machine Riding Dirty

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