AsiaPundit is pleased to announce the commencement of the new round of Asia Blog Awards. The awards are based on the Japanese financial year, which ends on March 31, and nominations are now open for the April 1-June 30 period, full-year awards are to be based on the quarterly contests.

Details are below, nominations for the below categories can be made on the individual pages linked below until the end of June 16 (Samoan time).

Awards are at present limited to English-language or dual-language sites.

Region/Country Specific Blogs:

• Best China Blog
• Best Hong Kong Blog
• Best India Blog
• Best Indonesia Blog
• Best Japan Blog
• Best Korea Blog
• Best Malaysia Blog
• Best Mekong Blog (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar/Burma)
• Best Mongolian or ‘Stan’ Blog (Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan)
• Best Philippine Blog
• Best Singapore Blog
• Best South Asia Blog (Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet)
• Best Taiwan Blog
• Best Thai Blog
• Best of the Rest (Bhutan, Timor Leste, Brunei etc…)

Non-region specific awards:

• Best Activist Blog
• Best BGLT Blog
• Best Bridge Blog
• Best Business/Economics Blog
• Best Design
• Best Diarist
• Best Essayist
• Best Food Blog
• Best Group Blog
• Best Humor Blog
• Best Original Reporting
• Best Photo Blog
• Best Podcast
• Best Satirist
• Best Sex Blog
• Best Travel Blog
• Best Video Blog

Podcasts, photo and video blogs must be based on original content — which means a site such as Danwei.tv is acceptable but TV in Japan is not (although it is an excellent site).

Some categories may be deleted or combined if they lack a full slate nominations - and some may be added should it be warranted.

Winners will be judged in equal parts on: (a) votes, (b) technorati ranking and (c) judges’ selection.

While judges will naturally have biases, they will hopefully offset imbalances in other areas (such as inevitable cheating in the voting and inflationary blogroll alliances in the Technorati ranks).

The names or sites of the judges will be public.

Judges will be ineligible for nomination. As the awards largely intend on providing exposure to lesser-known sites of merit, we are hopeful that authors of ‘A-list’ sites that tend to dominate such contests will disqualify themselves by being judges.

The contest has been endorsed by previous ABA host Simon who is also serving as a judge (thereby disqualifying Simon World).

Traffic — the most telling and accurate measure of a site’s populatity — may be a consideration in future awards. However, at present, there is no clear or universal way to accurately measure and contrast traffic (sites such as Sitemeter, Statcounter offer results that cannot be compared, while services such as Alexa.com do not work for sites that are not hosted on independent domains).

This is all imperfect and will be tweaked in future events (with transparency, of course).

Most importantly, this is intended to be fun.

Technorati Tags: asia, asia blog awards, east asia, northeast asia, puppy, southeast asia

Noodlepie has a ranking of Vietnam’s 18 top soft drinks. AsiaPundit endorses the number-four ranking soursop juice and regrets that he has not had access to soursop juice since leaving Southeast Asia (soursop mixes very, very, well with gin.).

Beverage: Nuoc Mang Cau/Guanabana Juice (Soursop Juice)

Ingredients: Water, 35% guanabana (soursop juice), sugar, citric acid

Appearance: Ooh… this chap looks like a ready to go Ricard only with a more viscous body. I like.

Aroma: I’m getting a 1970’s punk-era cornershop sweetshop in Macclesfield, shelves behind the counter stacked with sweet jars. One kid in red bondage trousers is ordering a quarter of rhubarb & custards while his accomplice, decked out in a Siouxsie and the Banshees Happy House t-shirt, is stealthily nicking a bag of fizzbombs, a sherbert fountain and a pack of Chocolate flavoured HubbaBubba bubblegum.

Taste: Sits squarely in sweet territory, but fruity, syrupy sweet, not over sacharine yukko, barf, barf, sweet. The sheer thickness of the liquid is slightly off-putting. This might work better diluted with water, but it’s the fruitiest quaff I’ve sampled thus far.

If this drink were a politician it would be… Kenneth Baker. A bit slimey.

Our survey said… 7 out of 10 points. That’s 6 points for the promised-on-the-label 35% fruit goodness in a can and 0.5 bonus points because the name guanabana sounds like birdshit banana. I’ll award a further 0.5 points as, by rights, soursop should be dictionary defined as:

Soursop - noun, derogative 1. That filthy soursop from Accounts stank the whole bleedin’ place out. Someone who has just farted long and loud and without apology mid-way through an important meeting to discuss the relocation plans of a medium sized, Norwich-based, IT Consultancy. Non-farters present are commonly observed shuffling photocopied agendas, fondling cufflinks and checking PDAs. The soursop remains placid with a stoney expression that belies an inner feeling of immense relief.

Cost: 3,600VD or sod all.

Check out the numbers 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 (again), 3, 2, 1.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, vietnam, southeast asia

The 2005 Human Security Report has listed the top 10 ‘Warmongers; (as Harry describes them) since the end of World War Two and and two Asian nations make the top 10:

Peacefully rising China and gentle Thailand fall into a crowded seventh place with six international armed conflicts each.

In other sections, Burma solidly beats India for the country with the highest number of conflict years - with Ethopia, the Philippines and Israel rounding out the top five.

But it’s generally good news for east Asia, which hasn’t had a major inter-state conflict since the 1970s.

Full report here (pdf).

Technorati Tags: asia, cambodia, china, india, myanmar, vietnam, south asia, southeast asia, thailand

Sigh, a new Vietnam-based mail-order bride site has lowered the bar significantly. Option “add to cart.”

(h/t the not worksafe asian-sirens)

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, vietnam

When I lived in Taiwan from 1996-98, it seemed as if Japanese popular culture was making the biggest impact on East Asia, but now South Korea looks to be stepping in as the driving force of the entertainment industries of not only Northeast Asian countries, but also in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan:

South Korea, historically more worried about fending off cultural
domination by China and Japan than spreading its own culture abroad, is
emerging as the pop culture leader of Asia.
From well-packaged television dramas to slick movies, from pop music to
online games, South Korean companies and stars are increasingly
defining what the disparate people in East Asia watch, listen to and
play.

It was a busy week, here are some items of interest that Asiapundit missed from yesterday and last week:

Daniel Drezner asks whether the liberal paradigm - that markets bring democracy - is failing in China.

At Diacritic, a look at how Vietnamese language press - both domestic and overseas - covered Prime Minister Phan Van Khai’s US visit.

Brad Setser has a good analysis on CNOOC’s bid for UNOCAL (one key point: "China’s oil firms have cash and customers but not enough oil: their current interest in stretching their wings abroad makes a certain amount of commercial sense.")

The Ordinary Gweillo points to an Economist item that explains last week’s shoe incident.

Ian Lamont also weighs in on Microsoft’s banning of democracy and other words on sections of its China blog portal - also keep checking Ian’s other blog a site on his developing thesis based on content analysis of China’s state-run news agency Xinhua.

Via China Digital Times a the Guardian spins a tale of two massacres. Plus a long piece from the Online Journalism Review on blogging in China.

Spirited discussion on China’s ‘new left’ continues at Simon World.

A roundup of yesterday’s news at China-e-lobby.

ESWN ponders the reliability of reports on bird-flu deaths in China.

Disappointment. After only recently discovering one of the best essayist blogs in China, Richard Willmsen announces he’s leaving China.

Taipei is taking the ‘love hotel’ and moving it upmarket.

China’s Nurse Ratchet may sometimes be acting in the people’s interest. CSR Asia notes authorities are shutting how-to suicide sites. Also, a good number of questions raised on China’s suicide statistics.

The FEER’s Traveller’s Tales blog informs us that the June issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review has been banned in Beijing "because of the content on pages 44 and 55-59." My copy arrived Thursday, page 44 is an item on poaching with a similar thesis to this one. Pages 55-59 contain content similar to what got the Economist banned a earlier this month. Btw Hugo, when do I get my password for archive access?

China may be viewed in a better light than the US globally, but lets forget about ‘Old Europe’s’ opinions and be thankful that the US is held in high regard in Asia’s other rising economy. (via the Acorn)

The Swanker starts on Rebecca’s request with a post on the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Malaysia’s LoneStar and Lucia Lai also oblige. As does Alan in Canada. And Roger L Simon.

Nicholas in Canada alerts us to addictive Malaysian curries.

Sepia Mutiny brings news that Australia’s Handi Ghandi has bowed to pressure and changed its logo: "their solution is to make Gandhi a Punjabi rapper. Apparently they felt that was the polar opposite of a nonviolent vegetarian."

Maobi points to a report saying that Malaysia is terror free (translation, not on-guard).

New Mongols alerts us to a new Central Asia blog. Also at New Mongols, a look at Taiwan’s changing view of Mongolia.

Lost Nomad helps us realize that South Korea’s riot police look a lot less threatening out of uniform.

Via NK Zone, in spite of a looming return of famine, Pyongyang’s range of restaurants is growing.

Kenny Sia’s new quiz: Which Malaysian blogger are you?

Cowboy Caleb alerts us to a Singapore Press Holdings reporter who is having an ethical dilemma about blogging and privacy. My view, anything that isn’t password protected is public.

Singapore’s mr brown brings us news that Mr Miyagi has joined him as a Today newspaper columnist.

The Singapore government may try to stop the use of Singlish in the city state’s media, but the People’s Action party has no power over DC Comics.

Over at XiaXue, Wendy has decided to post the private e-mail addresses from her critics. She knows, of course, that they will now be bombed by hate mail from her readers, making her appeal for sympathy seem more like a quest for revenge. Very bad form Wendy.

Tom Vamvanij has noted some creative translating by Thailand’s (usually respectable) Nation Media Group.

Reacting to China’s latest blocking of blogs, Instapundit says boycott Chinese goods. CSR Asia responds.

Naming a child something like this almost makes me want to call welfare services.

Finally, despite having too much on my plate already, I have accepted Dan’s invitation to become a contributor to the Shanghaiist. While he has literally offered to pay me in peanuts, even in ‘beta’ form the site is attractive enough to make me want to join. Still, Dan may want to consider James Goldsmith’s proverb.