So, who am I?
Linguist-in-Waiting is a Ph.D. candidate at times, doing research in psycholinguistics. He is fascinated with how language is processed in the brain, and his specific interests involve discourse processing. He looks at linguistic phenomena that cross sentence boundaries. He runs experiments in labs in the university, and he measures weird stuff like how fast people read words and phrases, after asking them what gender they identify with. He hopes to graduate within the next two years and be a stellar researcher in his field.
At the same time, Linguist-in-Waiting has a great itch to travel and see the world. He has been to 23 countries so far, and he has a goal to see 100 countries before he dies. He loves backpacking and taking photographs, and he loves riding chicken buses in Latin America as well. Traveling is his way of detox, when a semester passes by which is filled with academic stress, he travels so that he can recharge his brain.
Linguist-in-Waiting has Filipino citizenship, but due to the fact that his parents are part of the diplomatic corps, he had the experience of growing up in several different parts of the world. At the age of 3, he moved to Denver, CO and lived there for two years, learning English on the way by watching Sesame Street, returning to Manila at the age of 5. One year later, he moved to Honolulu, HI and started his elementary education, moving back to Manila again after one year. At the age of 13, he moved to Osaka, and stayed there for 4 and a half years, learning Japanese along the way. He moved to Guam at 17 and lived there for a year, where he finished high school.
Eventually, he returned to Manila when he was 19 and enrolled in the University of the Philippines and started his college degree. He finished it in 3 and a half years, and graduated with Latin honors. Finally, he moved to Buffalo when he was 23 in order to start his graduate school program. He has been living in Buffalo since then.
He loves traveling with a passion, but perhaps due to his being an INTJ, he cannot see himself traveling full-time and not getting sick of it eventually. He would love to be a lab researcher someday, and being part of academia as a full-time job, because it gives him the freedom to travel whenever the academic year is not in session. In the past, he has been to the following countries and territories (he counts countries and territories by means of Internet top-level domains): 1) Philippines; 2) USA; 3) Japan; 4) Guam; 5) Qatar; 6) Austria; 7) Greece; 8) Italy; 9) Vatican City; 10) Taiwan; 11) Czech Republic; 12) Ecuador; 13) Colombia; 14) Peru; 15) Denmark; 16) Hungary; 17) Slovakia; 18) Canada; 19) Mexico; 20) Chile; 21) Guatemala; 22) Honduras; and 23) Germany.
This blog was originally intended to be a diary of his life in graduate school, but as the days passed, this blog became a place for his travel chronicles, his rants, and his daily life. In short, he can be a very secluded and introverted person, but this blog is in essence a shortcut portal to his brain. It's just easier to write than to talk.
Questions? If so, you can send him an email to liw@linguist-in-waiting.com
