No Apostrophe? Gaaah!

Madames et Monsiours (et Mademoiselles. Je ne vous ai pas oublié!). I would like to introduce you yet again to someone. This is Georgia Dominique Rockport:

Georgia is my Samsung G-800 mobile phone (Factoid: Yes, I name my gadgets!). She was given to me by my dad after he got the new Nokia 5800. Et je l'aime beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup! ( I love her very very very very much!). Why? I'll tell you.

She's got a 5 megapixel camera ( Yes! 5 megapixel camera on a phone!) with effects. So yes, you can adjust the brightness and contrast of your photo. Yes, you can have your photo in sepia or black and white. Yes, you can adjust lighting settings. Yes, you can even do panaoramic and mosaic shots. But if you aren't satified with what you've taken, there's always the built in photo editor to save the day.

Oh! But there's more! There's also the music player which, if used with the earphones can play just as well as an iPod!

But where do you store all those files? The huge memory of course! And no, that's not including the optional micro SD card.

You think she's perfect? Not quite. You see there is one thing that annoys me about using her. One little thing I sigh about everytime I text. And that is that it's a pain in the bum to put an apostrophe into your text.

To put an apostrophe into your message, you have to press and hold the asterisk key and scroll down to Symbol. Then, you choose the panel with the apostrophe and press 5. Then, you press ok to return to your message. What it is, basically, is a whole lot of work for something that took me just three presses of 1 in my previous mobiles (Yes, from Nokia). Whatever. I'll just sigh and go through the process, I guess?

What was that? You wouldn't do that? You would just let it go and continue composing your message? And you're asking me why do I bother with it? It's such a taxing process so why do I go through with it? Why do I allow myself to follow all these steps just to get one measly, insignificant apostrophe? Well, that's just it. I don't consider it insignificant. To me, it's the difference between can't (can not) and cant (insincere language) or won't (would not) and wont (likely). And no, it's not just the Grammar Police Constable in me talking!

You still don't get it? Well, consider how in America students have been failing English exams and getting rejected essays because of this. How? They get so used to text and chat language it seeps its way into these pupils' academic writing. So yes, they actually turn in school essays that say "Its gr8." And this is in a country where English is the primary language. I shudder to think at how it's affected students in the Philippines, text capital of the world. A country where English is the secondary, not primary, language.

This is why I bother with an apostrophe. And for that matter, spell almost everything out fully as much as possible. I wouldn't want to see big, bloody, red marks on my thesis because I said that communication is a "2-wy prcss". I don't want to get misunderstood by people. But most of all, I bother with an apostrophe because i want to respect the language I'm using. Language has
feelings too!

I'm not trying to convince you or anything. In fact, if you want to condemn me for this, no prblm. be tht wy. fyn by me.

Global Schizophrenia

So for my second post, I think it's pretty fair to introduce you to a couple of my friends. These ones I'll introduce you to happen to come from all over the world (I can hear you say "Ooooh!").

Here we go....

Pailin Isabella Meena Fields, 21, is the daughter of half-English, half-Indian contractor and columnist Damien Fields and Thai flight attendant Chermarn (nee Chugathorn). She was born and raised in Sydney, moved to Bangkok at 12 and moved again to Manila at 16. She's a bit of an over-achiever winning many awards for her academics and writing. She takes a bit of an interest in cultures of the world (due maybe to the fact that she's a Sydneysider). She also worked as a model in Thailand and the Philippines.

Her big dream is to change society through her writing.

Sunita Bhagravi Shilpa, 58, is a lawyer from Kolkata, India who moved to Australia with her husband and three children. She is a very powerful lawyer in court but also a typical Indian mother. She grew up in a very traditional Indian home and would like to pass on her culture's traditions to her children. Unfortunately, her biggest fear is that the children mentioned above do not appreciate these customs having grown up in a Western country.

Eugenie-Adrienne Lombard, 27, is an actress from London, England. She is a French national, having French parents and being born in Paris. She also writes poetry and teaches French in her spare time.

What's common about these three women? Well, this. You may think it's crazy but actually they are all one person --- me.

I really don't know what else to call it but global schizophrenia! My weird uh... hobby of collecting alter egos from all over the world. All of these personae have their own back stories with mixed parantages (seen with Pailin) and spouses (Pailin and Sunita) and all sorts of things a non-fictional person has.

And to answer your question, yes! Apparently, I found the time to create all these!

I don't know. Maybe it's my love for writing that got me into this. In writing, you create worlds just by your thoughts and words. But of course, you have to know your world before you can expound on it. I guess my writer world's just a little multi-culti, that's all!

But why this, you ask? I'm 21 and upper-middle class. Isn't my writer world supposed to consist of the mall, boys and parties? Shouldn't I be more engrossed in who's on the cover of Cosmo? And for another, shouldn't I focus more on what's going on in my neck of the woods? Why should I listen to say, some Brazilian exalt samba? Does it have any practical meaning in my life?

We live in a world where , despite advances in cultural diversity, everyone is still a little racist. Admit it. We've all had a laugh at black/Latino/Filipino/Tongan/insert nationality here jokes (or if you're Filipino, Bisaya/Kapampangan/whatever jokes). Ok. Whatever. But it still shows us how people are unwilling to see another race, nationality or province/state as just like their own. We exclude their stories from ours just because they live on the other side of a border. But if we realise it, they're like us. They laugh. Just like us. They cry. Just like us. And yes, they even think chocolate rocks. Just like us. If we actually took time to appreciate each other's culture for what they are (That's good and bad), we'd see kindred spirits, not aliens we must drive away. And that's when nations have peace.

So really, the greatest foreign policy is global schizophrenia!!!

PS: If you are from any of the nations/cultures of my personae and you find it offensive, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean any harm. You have a lovely country.

Just Intros

I'm new here on Blogspot. So, yeah, I think it's apt to introduce you to myself.

My name's Alexis and I like to talk, or in this case, write!

That's basically all you need to know to see why I started this. I like to write.

And yeah, it's also because of a bunch of my friends being here too (Doesn't it all start like that? With friends nagging you to get a *insert account here*??!)

Warning: A lot of the things I put here are drivel, random blahness, and whatever I think of from the top of my head. If you want my more....uh... mentally-processed work, visit my Multiply. I'll also post them here for those of you who don't want to bother clicking the link.

Next time, I'll show you my rather schizophreniac side! Don't know what I mean? Guess you'll have to visit again to find out!