12 Years of FG

Frozen Garlic has hit a major milestone. I started writing this blog 12 years ago. Elections in Taiwan is a very niche topic, so I never expected a wide readership. Further, it’s written in English, and most of the people who are most interested in this topic prefer to read about it in Chinese. And the nature of the electoral cycle means that I go several months at a time without writing anything. When you don’t post any content, readers stop reading. When I started, I thought I was writing as much for personal expression as for the benefit of any readers.

Today, WordPress informs me that the blog has achieved 500,000 page views. In our modern world, we are used to seeing extremely large numbers, so half a million might not seem like a lot. However, I have done a lot of data entry over the years. In the old days when we had paper surveys, it only took a few minutes to enter the data for one survey. However, when you need to do that a thousand times, it starts adding up. That was a job for a team of RAs, and it took several days to plow through the pile. My database of candidates in Taiwanese elections is currently at about 69,000 candidates, and I have put a great deal of time and energy into that over the last decade. I think 500,000 is an enormous number.

I’d like to thank everyone who has spent several minutes plowing through one of my long, poorly edited screeds over the years. I hope it has been as informative and interesting for you as it has been fulfilling for me.

I’m going to start planning a small party for February 2034 when I should hit 1,000,000 page views.