In fact, in her blog of 15 January, there are some things that puzzled me, particularly the line:
N Being lazy is part of me. LOL. Ciao~ ^>w<^Now, I know that N is short for 'and', LOL means 'laughing out loud', and ciao is the Italian for 'bye'. But what about ^>w<^? Is this some new kind of texting abbreviation that I am not familiar with? In fact, she uses >w< quite often. For example, in her blog of 8 January, we find:
My plate. It was a buffet. LOL >w<. Didn't get the tamago sushiSo I asked her, and she explained that it is intended to represent a cat's smile (the 'w' is the mouth, and > and < are presumably the whiskers). ^>w<^ is also a cat smiley, but this time with the ears included.
It is interesting to see this kind of inventiveness occurring in blogs. I assume that only her close friends understand what is going on; but that is exactly the way language works, with groups of people developing their own special code that is likely to bemuse outsiders. And I suspect that this in-group sharing of experiences is rather closer to the spirit of most blogs than my efforts, which are aimed at a more general readership.
