Naimbag na aldaw sa lahat! (Good day everyone) [Ilocano/English]
For those of you who are new to Forward Flight, I started this blog on April 25th, 2018. This blog is a personal journal that records my thoughts and experiences of my travels in the Philippines. I created this as a way to keep in touch with those in Texas because back in 2010 when I visited for two months or so, it was hard for me to get a hold of my family and friends. In 2015 when I visited again for a short time, communication was easier but not as easy as it is now.
Fun fact, the Philippines is the second most known country to use social media! The first is Singapore. During school, I had to sit through a seminar about journalism and media. They had gone over this fact with us but to prove my point here is a website that covers it. Smartinsights.com Philippines (Slides 106 - 142)
Based on the weibsite, (Slide 39 of 153) an average Filipino spends 9 hours and 29 minutes on the internet while in the U.S an average person spends 6 hours and 30 minutes on the internet daily. I found this interesting but as I was sitting through the seminar I could voice my opinion on the matter and in my personal life, I didn’t start to use social media as much as I do until I started to go to school in the Philippines.
When I first got to the Philippines in April, I was still in vacation mode. So, I paid more attention to nature and I enjoyed a good book while relaxing at the house. I remember my first day of school and how nervous I was. I didn’t want to speak because I knew that the other students were not as fluent in English as I was and I didn’t understand almost any Ilocano, Filipino, or Itneg. I later found out there was also Gay lingo that I needed to be familiar with as well as a dialect difference. The Ilocano my family spoke in San Emilio was not the same as the version spoken in Vigan City. Most words were the same but some words I knew did not line up with the words that the people around me knew.
Originally, I would use Facebook to get a laugh out of my day and I still do but since so many people use Facebook in the Philippines and Facebook is cheaper to use than sending text messages, I prefer to use Facebook messenger to message my classmates and call them as well.
When I lived in Texas, I didn’t add people unless I had physically met them or they had my sister added to their Facebook (which meant that they were family). Now, I have to add people because that’s the source of communication. Most Filipinos have more than one Facebook, which is what I had to resort to.
I have literally never had to be in so many group chats. Back home if my friends added me to a group chat I would eventually leave because there was no purpose unless we were planning an event and even then, we’d stop talking on it after we were done planning the event. Now, I’m in a group chat for anything and everything. I try my best to clear the group chats because I don’t like having so many open.
Individual messages are awful too. I enjoy having conversations with everyone but due to my anxiety, it’s not easy for me to keep the conversation going. Before I started to go to school in the Philippines I would purposely stop responding to all my messages on messenger if I had five or more unopened messages. It was overwhelming. Now, I have ten or so messages unanswered or buried due to me not seeing a notification or me muting a group chat.
It truly is frustrating being in as many group chats that I’m in but most of the time the Ilocano is spelled different ways and even then, I can’t fully understand Ilocano so I can’t understand what people are saying in the group chats. Then, whenever they announce something someone gets upset with me because I didn’t see the announcement. I always have to remind them that it’s not that I didn’t see the announcement, it’s that I didn’t understand it because of the language barrier we have.
What I am glad about is that people are willing to work with me. Many of the group members will try and explain what they can or direct me to someone who can help. I hope to be able to help them in the future with any of the English questions the may have. I have a friend who usually corrects my English instead of my Ilocano which I find is funny. It confuses my classmates whenever I mess up in English. What they don’t realize is that when a person learns or tries to learn another language, or languages in my case, they use different parts of their brain so it’s hard to keep up with different memory cards.
Earlier I wanted to talk about more than one website and how the Philippines is active in social media more than the U.S but now that I think about it, that may not be true. I may not have used as much social media but I’m only a small portion of the population in the United States. There are a lot of statistics on that website that I linked up above so click on it and check it out!
I want to cover more but I also like to keep these short so that I can spread them out and not bore you guys to death. If you’re checking in with me from the U.S, thanks and I miss you guys! If you’re checking in from the Philippines, please! Message me some time. I need to practice my Filipino and Ilocano. If you want to try and learn English you have to help me learn Ilocano or Filipino. Fair?
I hope to hear from any of you soon! I try to keep up with my messenger. If I don’t answer you within a week please tag me in a post and say that you messaged me or message me again to bring your message to the top.
Thanks for listening! Talk to you next week!
DJ/Cho/Nar
--
Keep up with me with the following:
Ask Questions Here
This will send me an email with your questions you don’t have to leave a name. I will post the answer to the blog!
This is mainly for communication so go ahead, add me. Message me every once in a while so that I remember who you are. Otherwise, I'll delete you at the end of the year when I clear through my facebook lol.
I follow anyone who follows me! This is mainly pictures of where I go!
Wattpad
If I don’t write a post here there’s probably a chance that I have written something on my Wattpad because there I post poems! They are shorter reads with more meaning. I am currently working on two poetry books but the more important one that ties into this travel blog is called ‘A Barrier Meant To Be Broken’. Below are the last five poems I wrote on there as of this post being queued.
A Barrier Meant To Be Broken
No comments:
Post a Comment