Entropy is as beautiful as it is destructive.

Today, I was shocked and ashamed at the same time during one of my classes. Apparently, I have a classmate who is pure Filipino, but was born and raised here. Of course, my initial tendency, being a recent immigrant myself, was to somehow seek and establish a connection with this brother-by-ethnicity. I asked him if he still spoke the language fluently, to which he answered that he never did, since the only exposure he got to the language was through his parents' conversational usage of it at home. He could understand it, sure, but as far as speaking it was concerned, he was bound by the American-tongue-tendencies of flat R's, "aeuh" instead of the open mouthed "a" phonetic of Filipino pronounciation and an overtly present inability to spew out the filipino fricatives of "K" and "G" with all the crassness we can muster.

Of course, I admitted that I was a bit disappointed, seeing as how of the people I know who've gone abroad, I was the only one with no Filipino connections outside that of family. I also expressed my severe longing for being able to talk in Filipino, with all its nuances of language, like "lang", "diba", and, of course "nge". He said that it was cool if i talk to him in Filipino, since he was able to understand it, after all. And I felt more-or-less happy.

But then, the moment i wanted to tell him something in Filipino, I ended up with my flat "r"'s, with my aeugh's and augh's and my disnticntly fil-am accent. I was appalled at myself. I mean, I still converse very fluently in Filipino on both Y!M and in the house, so why couldn't I converse it properly with my Filipino Classmate?

Worse, the moment my other classmate, let's call him Bob, came up and talked to me to ask for help, I involuntarily spewed out a ton of "like"'s and "cuz like"'s. Fine, I had been saying these interjections even in the Philippines, but my goodness, to have let them take presidence over "aaah" in all its mouth-gaping glory?

I fear I just might be turning into a 90210-ian. or something equally as shallow and inarticulate.


Now, in some weird thought-process of mine, I felt that I could somehow remedy these mannerisms by reacquainting myself with several high-faluting words I find extremely useful in conversation. So, to somehow comfort myself, I looked up several words on notsovictor's blog entries- they're always a good source of vocab-words..

sesquipedalian: multi syllabic
altruistic: charitable (a very loose definition indeed)
clandestine: surreptitious
surreptitiously: secretly, slyly

*phew*. Of course, none of this like matters if I still can't speak straightly and fluently. Cuz like, what good is there in learning these words if like, I still keep inputting awkward interjections like "like", right?

-_-' OyFoydge.

Oh well, for now. I guess it's part of my assimilation into this strange, strange culture. It really does seem to be one thing when viewed from a distance (a.k.a. impunctual cable shows), and when it's actually being inculcated into your fiber-of-being, vocabulary and all. However, amidst the blaringly American influences that were simultaneously being taught to me, and realized in me (meaning I've had it all this time; for example, apparently I have a somewhat "american accent", who knew), my Filipino-ness, in all its beautiful 'crassness' and 'culture' came crashing back down to discover Balut, fresh and warm and ready for eating.

And no matter how much these Southern Californians may try to make me like mexican food (aren't like mexicans and like filipinos like similar like aren't like filipinos the like mexicans of like asia? uh no.), no one can ever stop me from liking under-developed duck fetuses.

And likewise, no one can replace my innate love for "minor key love songs", for pronouncing "hour as "our" instead of "ower", for finding 10 dollars expensive, for finding Southern California weather relatively comfortable, for keeping conversations with my prof at a minimum because i cannot, for the life of me, call him by his first name (and would rather call him "sir"), for never finding free-way traffic heavy traffic (have any of them ever seen EDSA during peak hours?) and for being able to mutter "gago!" when zach does something particularly inane- knowing that he doesn't know what I'm saying, and if he did, he wouldn't get the context of why it's funny and playful rather than down-to-the-bone insulting.

Some things will forever remain Filipino in me, and I am "hella-proud" about that.