2009 highlights, 2010 wishes

Harking Back 2009, Buoying For 2010...

Our ride in the World Wide Web became a little bumpier as more and more people came to know about the Benefits of Honey website. The past year saw a few ugly incidents that actually got me to whine a bit. First of all the 2009 highlights, I accidentally stumbled upon a new honey website which had almost all its existing pages blatantly replicated from Benefits of Honey. To my chagrin, when a query was sent to the lady website owner, I received only a nonchalant reply informing "the pages have been taken down until my lawyer has a chance to go over them." With that she never responded again. And lately, when I visited the site again, no pages appeared; it had stopped to exist! Figuring how many more such people could be out there creeps me out.

It dawned on me that as the word about Benefits of Honey got around and the site became more popular, the odds of getting "hate-mails" would also go up. For instance, mails reacting to our articles - "of course, you are sponsored by a honey company!" Seriously, such mails actually kind of got me to contemplate if I might as well start to sell honey online someday... Another visitor wondered if I could be more ridiculous by writing about bugs as natural coloring in our foods , when the world was tormented by much bigger issues such as H1N1, joblessness, political chaos, terrorists, etc. Passionate living makes everyday matter and every habit count, doesn't it?

Not to our surprise, beekeepers were a common group of visitors to our site. One beekeeper actually analysed our page on honey bees and picked on almost all the information presented and produced a lengthy and sarcastic critique, whereby for instance "drones do no work at all...all they do is mating" was corrected as "drones can generate heat", and "colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees", as "colony sizes can go up to 100,000." I think it's really acceptable if one is particularly fastidious about wording of facts, but not if they come across as scornful, and fault-finding. Another beekeeper got terribly offended by my article on food fraud and berated me for aiming at beekeepers being agents of fraud in adulterating honey with sugar. That really threw me off and to date; I remained clueless as to why he had gathered that I had something against beekeepers. Coming from a background in beekeeping, these people definitely have many aces up on their sleeves. Honestly, as I possess neither credentials from beekeeping nor medical science, when given such scrutiny by these professionals, I do feel flattered to say the least.

As it turned out, my mailbox in 2009 continued to receive slamming notes from those who reported that they had suffered severely from honey allergies , reprimanding that I have failed to magnify the danger of honey, and suggesting I was too unscrupulous in promoting the benefits of honey. Sometime in the middle of the year, I reckoned that it was not getting more meaningful to add more postings on the page. Then, sadly, there were the ones who literally demanded me (I supposed it was out of their dire desperation) to tell them the remedies for all sorts of sickness, including bone cancer, breast cancer, heart diseases, etc, I had to disappoint them by informing them that honey, though was absolutely curative in its properties and a precious super food for daily consumption over the long run, it was not a panacea or an antidote for terminal diseases. Yes, it had the power to enhance our immune system functioning, but it was not meant to immediately fix health issues resulted from decades of abusive dietary habits.

Despite all these little upsets, I've every reason to be grateful for 2009. There has been so much gratification in learning and writing about honey and health related areas, but nothing topped receiving valuable notes and feedback from visitors and honey buffs - my precious 2009 highlights. A greeting from you was enough to make any unpleasant event become dim and insignificant. Sincerely, all your encouragement and postings are as good as gold to me. Coming from a culture where you need to plough for every small and big result, and nothing is to be taken for granted, they are everything to be cherished. Indeed, while the World Wide Web can spawn a lot of "evils" and people can write thoughtlessly and insensitively, hiding behind anonymity of the web, but on the positive side, it does also at the same time open up a whole new world of genuine sharing, discussion and debate. The great freedom in connecting and sharing in the virtual social space is truly awesome.

I am so indebted to those who had so cheerfully shared their amazing experience with honey, their knowledge about honey, health, and medical science, took time to post comments on this website, sent me honey recipes, and shared amazing stories with the rest of the world how they have benefited from its articles, and of course not forgetting, the many beekeepers who so willingly shared their experience in beekeeping and knowledge about bees. Unsolicited, one visitor who was not even a honey fan wrote me a long list of ideas how my site could further advance and reach an even bigger audience; another dropped a mail to advise how I could fix a serious html bug in my website. It's so incredibly cool to be able to build all these precious relationships in the social virtual space. What a privilege.

Bracing for 2010, I look forward to another season of growing in wisdom about healthy eating with you all. Continue to join me on this journey of discovering more and more about the golden, living liquid.

There is really no sugar like honey.

Have a fascinating, brilliant 2010!

Cheers to our good health,

Ruth

Share My 2010 Wish

Why not post and share with us your New Year Wishes! Beginning with me, my hope is that whatever pleasure we have lost from indulging in our most favourites (e.g chocolates, candies, fries, sodas, etc) will be replaced many times over by the wonderful blessings and opportunities that avail because of our excellent well-being.

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