LOL!!!

These three little letters seem to evoke quite a reaction at times, so I thought I'd explore this a bit with some observations on their use on Twitter and the Internet.

What does it MEAN?

The first thing to note is the meaning of "lol" seemed to be vying between two camps for some time.  It is now most definitely settled as an abbreviation for "laugh out loud".  Its rival, "lots of love" now seems reserved for those who use the Internet and "text speak" less...

I'm sure we've all heard the urban legend of the mother who texts her son to say something along the lines of "Your Grandmother just died, lol Mum".  A quick search reveals about 2,746,728 people trying to pass this off as original and actually having happened to them.  It smacks of being just a *tad* fabricated and I rather prefer this little spin on the original:

However, just in case anyone born before or around 1872 is reading this blog, PLEASE NEVER USE LOL TO MEAN LOTS OF LOVE.  That includes you, Mutti.

Is it VACUOUS?

Language purists hate "lol".  They say it's vacuous, it's sloppy and if we are to believe the Daily Mail [warning, clicking the link will quite possibly give you cancer] it is even putting the future of English at risk! On the one hand, clearly if the likes of the Daily Mail hate it, this is a darn fine reason to use it at every opportunity. Lol.

What I think people are missing here though is that "lol" can indeed be vacuous, but as with all language it depends on context and usage.  My perception is that when someone shoves "lol" at the end of a sentence of their own to signify that it is supposed to be funny, that often does make them look quite vapid.  It is particularly bad if the sentence is inherently really not funny.  An example I have seen on a dating site went something like this:

I'm looking for a guy who is intelligent and nice lol

Erm, yeah, what is possibly funny about that, other than the fact you come across as being about as bright as Brunswick (below), who could quite easily get a part time job as one of those nodding dogs in a car?  The usage actually evokes the entirely separate word "lolling" in the sense of hanging or drooping, a little how I imagine the mouth of the user.

I *AM* bright, honest, lol.

So when is it OKAY?

Well I personally think the use of "lol" as a signifier of amusement in relation to something said by someone else it is absolutely fine.. and in fact perhaps indispensable.  It is really a modern day signifier of a little grin or a chuckle.  Of course no one is actually laughing out loud: "lol" has suffered from over-use inflation and we need to use a much stronger term for that.  It is just a way of saying I found what you said funny, or this made me smile.

Part of the problem is that we don't have an emoticon for a laugh.  We do have a whole range available to us, but as yet, I have yet to see one that signifies a person laughing.  It's difficult to imagine how one would look.

:)  Smile

:(  Sad face
:/  Grimace

:D  Big grin

:o  Astonishment

:o))  Jaw dropping

:p  Stick out tongue

o_O  Staring at someone

 \o/  Huzzah (arms up in the air)

I love the \o/ emoticon and do it real life regularly

However, there just isn't a laughing emoticon.  Therefore we have to use something.  LOL-Haters don't seem to object to "haha" or "hehe" or "teehee" - I really don't understand why they are any more or less acceptable than "lol" to be honest.  Personally I would say a lower case "lol" on its own, just with nothing else can still appear as vacuous in a response - I'd say that adding something with it lessens this, e.g

I poured orange juice on my cornflakes this morning

Response A) "lol"
Response B) "lol - you big twit!"

I am not sure why, but the second just has a bit more weight about it and is less likely to be seen as an utterance of Brunswick.

Degrees of LOL

If "lol" doesn't actually mean you are laughing out loud, how can you signify that you found something really funny and approached this level of amusement, beyond the stage of a mere smile or a chuckle?  Well of course there are other splendid abbreviations at our disposal, mainly invented by 13 year olds and adopted with great enthusiasm by the likes of me.  A vague hierarchy is, I would suggest, something like this:

lol  a smile or chuckle

LOL stronger and verging on a vocalised chuckle (Of course the use of capitals indicates an emphasised version of any of the below)

pmsl  "piss myself laughing" (highly unlikely to be literal, fear not)

rofl  "roll on floor laughing" (again, permit us some hyperbole, please)

lmao  "laugh my arse off" (contact A&E if this happens in real life)

lmfao "laugh my f*cking arse off"  (the mind boggles: will there be baby arses?)

lmfaooooo reserved soley for the use of @SteMcCormick (no, I don't know what it means either, but he seems to like it)

lolololololooooo you may add as many letters as you like to signify your amusement: it's just added emphasis

Bahahahahaahaa (or a variant): gays seem to use rather this a lot. It first struck me as being quite sheep-like. I have therefore now (appropriately) adopted its usage myself.

There is - as you see - a whole wonderful/ murderous (delete as appropriate) range of ways of expressing your amusement.  "Actual LOL" also remains however probably the best way of saying you did what "lol" is supposed to signify.


Does any of this matter?

Of course it bloody doesn't.  If you don't like "lol", don't use it: simples.  If you do, lol away.  If it offends your sensibilities, however, you may well be disappointed with people on Twitter.  I have previously blogged on the playfulness of the language used in tweets.  Twitter is, like it or not, in large part informal, fun and a place where many people let their hair down.  Language changes, evolves, and the reality is that "lol" seems here to stay.  If you want to judge me for using it, feel free.  I'll just lol back.  I won't be using "lol" in a work letter, but then the beauty of language is the fact that we employ different vocabulary, rules and styles when we communicate in different contexts.

Oh and one final thing by the way, the OED has now officially accepted its usage. So there!! \o/

Gym- A Malaysian neccessity

Living in Malaysia makes the gym a real neccessity because theres JUST TOO MUCH good food in this country. Even if you do not cook at home, you can easily find good, glorious, delicious food almost everywhere. Some good food are cheap too. I, for one, have scrumptious meals daily at home and outside. Too scrumptious to rejected lol. Hard to resist the food cooked by chefs in my family ;)

Therefore, a gym really comes in handy. Eventhough there are times when gym feels like torture camp or I just dont have the time to gym daily, at least i know i do gym and it wont allow me to be a fatty fatty fatty person who gobbles food like a glutton and does not gym at all.

Building a discipline to follow a scheduled gym routine is not easy. I just want to cheat sometimes. Sleep on the gym chair also can :p

Fatty

Food which are fattening but when you look at the picture, it is simply irresistable and makes our salivary glands 'meleleh air liur'.

Pic 2: Butter crayfish at SiFu restaurant , Cheras Mahkota.

Pic 1: curry chicken, PanDi, pj

Just a minute ago I read:
THOSE who think they have no time for healthy eating, WILL sooner or later have to find time for illness

That surely is a slap to the face!

Obrien's thursday

Thursday's special at Obrien's was a caesar salad and a cup of either irish cream coffee or hot latte.

One of the best caesar salads i have tasted. I love croutons and there were plenty of it served. The salad portion was huge too.

In addition to that, tf and i had the triple decker sandwich. Glorious sandwich, i must say. I'd rather have OBriens than Subway. I was sochungry that I managed to finish most of the triple decker and left a tiny slice for tf.

Tf wanted a pie

Stroll

Some shots from a recent Saturday walk around the neighborhood...

I don't usually share more than one or two, maybe three, pictures per post, which has helped me to really have to choose images that resonate with me, or that prompt some writing. So this post is out of character. I'm actually working on creating ebooks for download with walking tours of our world here, with short descriptions of the scenes I run across. This is a very basic sampling of that concept:

This charming girl was sitting on Klapparstígur with a sign that reads, "I am a French woman," in not-so-grammatically-correct Icelandic. The two men are local down-and-outers. I have no idea what her purpose was, but she was having fun.

~.~

I'd seen this tourist down on Austurstræti with her friend/companion. Here she's taking a rest on the way up Bankastræti, with the Government House in the background.

~.~

Up the hill, at the intersection of Skólavörðurstígur and Laugavegur, a wacky girl band was collecting money for the Red Cross, which made everyone smile.

~.~

Even though I love getting shots of color and life here in the city, I'm also fascinated by dereliction and decay, especially when examples can be found right close classic tourism areas. I knew the family that lived in this house on Baldursgata, just off Skólavörðurstígur, in the early 90's and it's sad to see how dismal it has become. The graffiti reads, "Correct me," while the shockingly large asp that's growing from the crack between the foundation and sidewalk is both a testament to neglect and to Nature's tenacious will to thrive.

~.~

Just a bit farther down Baldursgata is another house in a very sorry state. It burned in November, 2008, just after the bank collapse, which gave it the suspicious smack of arson, especially given its recent history. A sad sight, for sure.

~.~

The interesting thing about this location is that it clearly shows how decay doesn't have to mean ugly. I've passed by this backyard shed on Kárastígur (where our favorite hostel, Our House, is located) a hundred times and have always loved the remote Eastern European feel of this scene.

~.~

After all this walking I needed some nourishment, so I stopped by the Noodle Station and got to listen to the romance victories and woes of these American (Canadian?) girls at the next table. We love Noodle Station!

~.~

After eats, I spotted an acquaintance of mine who looked so retro-metropolitan cute that I had to ask her to pose for me.

~.~

And finally, to wrap up this post with another splash of red corrugated iron, is this shot of a classic wood-frame house peeking over the fence of a very weathered home on Frakkastígur, which I'm sure many of you have passed on your travels through town : )

~.~

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Sweet life

"If you cannot be a pencil to write anyone's happiness, then you should at least be a nice rubber to erase someone's sadness"

"In the first year of marriage, the husband speaks and the wife listens. In the second year of marriage, the wife speaks and the husband listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbours listen"

"You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have"

Wonder

If you haven't yet or haven't in a while (especially if you live here!) be sure to go up to the top of the Hallgrímskirkja tower. It's a stunning view in any weather, even on windy, stormy Sundays like the last one. We live so close to the tower, literally only a couple hundred yards away, and cross in front of it almost every day which means we forget to take advantage of it! So when on Sunday, which was Óðinn's 6th birthday, he suggested going up into the tower on our way home from Amma and Afi's house on the other side of the church, I couldn't refuse. It had been too long since the last time and was such a fun and simple adventure on his big day.

That kind of "local's complacency" is one of the reasons I began this blog: I noticed that I saw things here on our hill (Skólavörðurholt - basically the triangle in front of and to the sides of the church, down to where Skólavörðurstígur and Laugavegur merge; this map is very cool) that the natives did not, or that they'd become so accustomed to that there was little wonder left in them. I did the same thing in Santa Cruz: I didn't go to the beach, only a mile away, nearly often enough. And when living in San Francisco as an adult I realized that I was starting to take for granted the stunning landscape and architecture that other people dreamed of being able to see with their own eyes. 

As an example, my mother saw the photo below with this wonderful paved design and couldn't figure out where I'd taken it. I'm sure most of my readers who've been up into the tower have taken a similar picture, and would recognize it right away, but for someone who walks over it many times a week, it becomes a practical blur.

Even though I've always felt a deep childhood connection to this part of Reykjavik (where my parents were raised) it is still totally new to me because I grew up in California. I discovered early on that even though we all adore a good landscape photo, we still love those photojournalistic/street images that remind us of our own personal experiences in a new place. To be able to say, Ooh, I've been there! I've seen that, especially with the little hidden gems sprinkled throughout a town or city, is a fun and intimate feeling. Maybe this concept of renewed wonder in the familiar is what is needed for people to really start collaborating on creating sustainable communities. When we stop to appreciate what we already have, finding ways to maintain our neighborhoods in a healthy way easily emerge.