Tweet Tweet.

Sooo apparently my sister Gen has joined Twitter. Because she's witty, funny and generally awesome, this is actually A Very Good Thing. I like her writing style but she doesn't update her blog very often (I mean, who has the time to write when you have a toddler wreaking havoc all up on your mid-century style furniture?). We share the same twisted sense of absurdist humor and have sent each other strange and hilarious crap over the years, so I can only look forward to the nonsense she'll undoubtedly tweet.

Mmm hmm.

Although Twitter has achieved a huge increase in popularity over the past couple of years, lots of people still have no idea what it is, or how people use it. The vast majority seems to think that it's only used for informing the Internet about what snack food item you just shoved down your throat but if they looked a little closer, really it's much more than that. I basically use Twitter for:

1. sharing interesting/funny photos, links and videos
2. keeping updated on various niche subjects, issues and news
3. seeing how clever people can get within the 140-character limit (it's amazing sometimes how constraint leads to creativity, and I'm not talking about abbreviated words)
4. discovering new music and art

I don't follow any major celebrities, musicians or athletes. A handful of friends are on it and it's nice to see what they're up to. The rest of my follower list mostly consists of random interesting individuals from all over the world, a few artists/groups, and some organizations devoted to important causes. And yes, I stay away from Trending Topics and people who only tweet about where they are and what they're doing at the moment -- and yes, what they're eating, unless you link to a photo. I love photos of food.

Try a tweet or two. You might like it. And uhhh, yeah.

Shameless Plug Time: Follow my sis (@genevieve_rocks) and me (@RanGamboa) on Twitter.

Farewell, Meat. It Was Nice Knowing You.

It's now three full weeks into Lent and I've succeeded in sticking to The List. Among the four items, the most consistently significant sacrifice for me would be giving up meat altogether (instead of only on Fridays) and eating only seafood. It's something I do every year. And I'm happy to report that I've been largely true to my word, annually abstaining from burgers, steaks, chops and wings until a massively gluttonous Easter Sunday lunch.

But somehow it's different this year.

A couple of days ago I mentioned on Twitter that I was considering giving up "land meat" for good. After all, I'd basically been doing so every year for weeks at a time. So I put some serious thought into it, weighed my options, played some more Sushi Cat, and decided to officially become a pescatarian. From eHow:

A pescatarian is a person who refrains from eating land animals and birds, but includes fish, mollusks, and crustaceans in addition to fruits, vegetables, plants, legumes, nuts, and grains. This is a common form of "vegetarianism" and is generally considered a very healthy diet ... Pescatarians can enjoy low-fat protein sources that are high in fish oils, which contain Omega 3 fatty acids -- the "good fats" that reduce inflammation.

People become pescatarians for several different reasons, whether ethical, environmental, political or health-related. I subscribe to a combination of all of them, but I'm doing this mostly to improve my health and physical well-being. Plus, I love love LOVE seafood.

[via]

Don't get me wrong ... I will definitely miss eating certain pork, chicken and beef dishes (Kobe steak?! Say it ain't so!) -- not to mention the multitudes of delicious Filipino meals I've eaten my whole life (adobong manok, we had some good times, didn't we?).

[via]

The good thing about this is that I can almost always substitute seafood for the meat and it'll taste similar, so I won't be missing out entirely on the flavors. That makes me feel better.

So. There you have it: Come Easter Sunday, I won't be carving up any rib eyes or filleting any chicken. Most likely, I'll be digging into some succulent, moist salmon and sautéing some jumbo shrimp. Bon appétit!

On Hair Clips, Chaos & Memories.

Photos from the past month are up on Flickr.

My room is trashed. Yesterday I wrote on Twitter: "I think RadioShack, Linens N Things and my campus library had a wild drunken #threesome in my room and left me to clean up after their mess." Looking at it from my vantage point at my desk, it seems even worse than it did then. The mess flows haphazardly from the bed (which is surprisingly made) down onto the floor, cascades up onto my desk, end table, bookshelf and has somehow found its way into my closet.

I don't usually leave my room in this sad state. Ever.

It's probably because I haven't really "settled in" quite yet. I mean, I physically moved here at the end of last month, but when you share your room with a 3-year-old, her stuff ends up quickly and completely kicking your stuff's ass. In addition to piles of pastel-colored clothes, my bedroom was overrun with Veronica's Eric Carle books, balloons, Hello Kitty hair clips, and a crazy assortment of toys and various knick-knacks that she happened to bring in from other parts of the house.

It is no secret that I am unabashedly anti-knick-knack.

So I tried to fight it at first, and fight it hard. I systematically re-arranged my closet to accommodate two wardrobes and designated a proper drawer for the crayons. I stacked up library books and notepads according to size and slyly rotated toys in and out of use. I thought I was being clever, but I thought wrong. It was too much. Turns out that I'm not very good at winning battles of attrition when the theater of war was confined to my bedroom. Socks and gloves appeared in random places. There was a never-ending hunt for scrunchies and barrettes:

1. ME: "Well, where did you put it last?"
2. VERONICA: "I don't know."
3. Repeat every hour or so.

But here's the thing: It was actually kind of refreshing to let go, to revel in the chaos of happy disorganization. Strangely, the near-constant mess was a way to connect with Veronica, to remember what being a child was like, to be care-free about things that really didn't matter that much. So I learned to accept the mess and even enjoy it a little. Because in light of the precious limited time we had together, the mess didn't matter that much at all. In fact, it became a symbol of her visit and the joy it brought me.

Veronica is traveling with my sister and her baby today, so she couldn't take all of her things with her due to luggage constraints. My bedroom is still filled with knick-knacks, toys, books and clothes -- and I know I'll find a hair clip before long. But I have been slow to clean up my room. I know I'll have to soon for practicality's sake, but it can wait for a couple of days.

Just ... not yet.

Kc Nhhya C Nnay.

This past weekend, my mom got an email from a younger family friend back in the Philippines and called me over because she was having some trouble deciphering it. At first I was puzzled as to why she'd ever need me to do that, but it became pretty apparent. She laughed when she saw me try to read it:

ate
susan
svi poh ni nny
pasencia
na poh kc hind poh cia mksgot agad kc my alga xiang bata 8 mnts
ngyn poh pde dw poh kc aalgaan dw poh mna nung aswa ng kua qoh
tta susan svu n nny
sna dw poh mgksma clang dlwa n ate mariet
kc nhhya c nnay................
pkzvi nlng poh kung kailan,,,,,,,,,,,,
thnks
ngtz poh alwys,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Oh man.

This is obviously text-speak*. I'd seen it in extremely small doses here in the States, but this is straight from the source! Almost every single word is abbreviated or chopped up. In an effort to decode the syntax:

1. the addition of an h at the end of po and qo (which is supposed to be spelled ko in the first place!): maybe to "round" out the word a little; Tagalog can sound sharp and jagged when it needs to be
   
   
2. generally omitting as many a's as you can: this makes sense to me, since we use that particular letter very frequently
   
   
3. replacing b with v, and si with c or xi: probably purely aesthetic; it definitely makes the language more colorful and -- dare I say it -- exotic
   

The email is even phrased like a text message. I myself have enough trouble reading regular written Tagalog as it is, so it took us a minute to figure things out. Once we got the hang of it though, it wasn't too bad and was actually kinda fun to read.

*I have a hunch lots of Tagalog-speaking Twitter members probably tweet like this too. I dunno, I'll have to check.

Is That Supposed To Tell Me Something?

Thanks to TweetStats, I can do some completely unnecessary (but fun) metrics on my Twitter account. If you looked at the top five words I use on Twitter, namely:

1. good (13)
2. time (12)
3. weekend (9)
4. coffee (9)
5. damn (8)

you might assume that I have the Best Weekend Nightlife Ever and I continuously combat the after-effects of being hungover with caffeine while complaining about it. Sadly, that is not the case. I need not explain further.

Just for kicks, it made a Wordle out of my tweets as well:

Twitter Wordle

It's actually kinda interesting to see how often I use certain words when constrained by just 140 characters. Is that supposed to tell me something? I could see some Ivy-league psychology department doing some research on the correlation between the frequency of words used on Twitter and academic standing -- or something like that. Sounds almost feasible.

Anyway, try it if you're on Twitter; it's a good way to waste even more time.