MANY Malaysian bloggers treat blogs as their online diary by writing about what goes on in their life.

Be it a happy occasion, or a simple line on how boring their routine is, the blog also becomes a faithful "listener" for them. Yaya believes blogging makes a person more open to expressing their thoughts.

The blog is a good way to flush out negative thoughts from one's mind, as discovered by free-spirited blogger Yaya Azura. She believes bottling up bad vibes can be destructive in the long run, thus blogging is a great way to let out some steam.

"Blogging makes a person more open in expressing their thoughts. I first wrote on blogs to express what I feel inside," said Yaya.

She conceded that her earlier posts tend to describe her emotions at a particular time. However, once you offload your thoughts, you will forget about your worries and boredom and you can move on to more exciting things, said the blogger, whose friends see her as a happy-go-lucky person.

The 31-year-old IT executive has been blogging for three years on different blogging sites.

"During the early days, I wrote mostly on my life and daily grumps. Nowadays, I try to write about anything under the sun and things that are fun and easy to read."

"I now keep three separate blogs on Yahoo! 360, Friendster and Blogspot," said Yaya.

She is currently sticking to Blogspot as it is a widely-used platform. Yaya said, "Yahoo! 360 is interesting as it incorporates Friendster and Blogspot feature. Unfortunately Yahoo! is not making any efforts in fixing the bugs, so most of my blogger friends migrated to Blogspot.

On her preferred blog, http://aiyaks.blogspot.com, Yaya also includes her take on food, movies, interesting e-mails, and her creative camera phone shots. She also documents her holiday experience in foreign lands and include YouTube videos that she likes.

At the same time, Yaya also airs her opinion on issues like the recent fuel hike and the latest iPod release. She also feels strongly against restricting or banning bloggers, although of late, there are some political individuals who tend to produce angst-filled blog posts.

Being a blogger has also led Yaya to meet like-minded individuals.

"I read my circle of bloggers' blogs through balairaya360.blogspot.com. We started off as strangers, but now we are friends who hang out together. We have fun blogging on almost anything," said Yaya of her online community.