Serendipity vs Stupidity

The year 2008 ushers me a new life that hovers between serendipity and stupidity. Looking at these 2 words makes me wonder: Where is the serenity that I thought comes with growing wiser?  Let’s have some play of words here. In serenity, just a little dip [mirror, please] of stupidity–then one has to rely on ser-en-dip-ity.

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely…that’s according to Wiki. Mr. Google seems to think hightly of Wiki as ‘he’ would always take you there first. Go and find the Prince of origin yourself.

Everytime I search for something, stupidity stares me in the face–today, plugins…feedfooter–making me feel I am reading words I thought were English but they sound “Greek” or some sort of mathematical transcription to me. If I’m inside the classroom being graded, I’d probably get an F in flying colors. The serendipity part of it though, I came across a blog: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/make-the-scrapers-work-for-you/#comment-33414 where they actually discuss the reality of blog scraping [this far, I think I understand]. At least I can justify to myself sometimes feeling on the verge of insanity. In some crazy ways, I am coming to terms I could make the scraper work for me !

There was also an interview with WP Matt Cutts by S. Spencer, which would have been interesting and informative if only I could understand half of what they’re talking about. Again, I used to trust my knowledge of the English language, and I seldom doubted my level of comprehension; however, I couldn’t seem to go beyond the word “link“. Should you be interested, you’re better off reading this yourself: http://www.stephanspencer.com/search-engines/matt-cutts-interview 

Serenity may not come yet until I learn the FeedFooter plugin or something to that effect. Second in the wish list is using some link within my site, but I’m not sure what link in that interview [should not be more than a hundred at least] is good for google PR. I don’t even care about page rank, I only want to declutter this blog. This may have to wait until I get to the Philippines…what year???

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Different Names of the Philippines?

Technically the Philippines has only one name–the Philippines. In some ways it is as complicated as the Netherlands, if not more, since Holland (even if it is just a region) is also used to mean the whole country of the Netherlands. Who knows if it has also suffered some spelling ‘butcherization’ (lol-don’t ask me) as much as the Philippines. Also, ask WiKi…if you want to have the precise info.

Manila, just like Holland, is well-known enough as much as the country itself, but not to mean the whole country as well. Probably most people recognize Manila for its pollution and Philippines for its corruption (tongue-in-cheek: coming from a Filipina and a ManileNa by choice who is a Negrense by birth…from Negros Occidental, which brings the question shouldn’t we Negrense be called _______ instead?).

Somewhere in this blog I’ve touched on this topic as Bob Martin’s mentioned the different ways the Philippines is being referred to, which could be ‘touchy’ from PI to Phils [as well as the shortened ‘Pinas to most Filipinos] and other spelling or understandable misspellings: Phillipines (named after King Philip but there’s a Phillip variation), Phillippines (there’s a double somewhere), Philippine (nevermind the 7,107 islands), and many more (not counting typographical errors) that possibly stuck to one’s memory…after all, it’s not just the U.S. or U.S.A. It’s good enough that somebody even recognizes it as a part of the globe.

Consequently, Filipinos are thought to be Philipinos, Filippinos, etc. other than ‘Pinoys‘. Let’s not forget that the language is the lackluster Pilipino that is even outshined (yes, outshone) by Tagalog. One thing though that I’m very particular…my young nieces and nephews are always reminded: if I can’t make them speak Pilipino, they should know the intricate differences of the basic identity of their parents’ country of origin–the Philippines!

Added spelling [or misspellings] of Filipino variation I just came across that I haven’t included in my previous list: Philippino! This one makes a lot of sense to me; after all we are from the Philippines. I understand that ph and f are sound variants…but why in the same family of words? I should probably delve further into this nonsense in my ESL blog. Are Filipinos that complicated animals? Opssss! Hhssss! Grrrlll!

Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com

Digital is my Second Language

I am just thinking through my mouse…mouse musings? I thought English is my Second Language; then Digital is my Third Language (DTL). I like DSL…it gives me the feeling of ‘speed’ although in reality it’s far from that.

Just as I was starting to have some familiarity with my dashboard, I’m now back to square 1. Now it really looks different. Do you realize how irritating it is to look for the Edit button after you hit Publish? When I finally found it, my head was ready to explode…my eyes, oh I can go on whining! Hitting the tags won’t take me to WP anymore; it takes be back to my post. I miss watching my ‘coconut’ float somewhere at WP.

My energy is zapped; how can I ever get to learning Feed Footer, etc…? My tired ESL brain was initially defaulting to [Foot Feeder]. I’d better give my mouse a rest. My cross-wired brain is turning weird now or maybe I’m getting cross-eyed…what’s the difference? If my brain turns out to be brian, should I blame my fingers or my brain? Maybe, Brian? An error is an error…is an error…! Stop!

*Originally posted @ https://zylla3.wordpress.com