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Writing about science after a long hiatus

In an effort to find additional meaning in my life (ha!) and curb AKA shut away my anxiety, I did my best this past month to write more. Write anything! The end result was an article for Nerd Rage on a recent study that showed that Tawi-tawi has more commercially important reef fish species compared to Palawan or Cebu. The study was conducted by a team from the Mindanao State University-Tawi-Tawi College of Technology and Oceanography (MSU-TCTO), the University of the Philippines-Diliman, and the University of the Philippines-Mindanao.
Why this study? First, because the author offered me a copy of the pre-print article so that I could  read it and start working on my article before the fianl published work came out (hai Richard!). Second, because I find Tawi-tawi fascinating 🙂 I’ve only been there twice – both for work surveys – so I’m always game to learn more about the area.

A glimpse into Bongao’s “tabuh” (wet market):

Researcher Ting Nanola surveys the Bongao “tabuh” for commercially important reef fish species
Read my article and Richard’s journal paper! They’re fun 😄
As I anticipated, the headline caused a good-natured argument/trashtalk among the local fisheries scientists. Richard Muallil is the study’s lead author and is based out of MSU Tawi-Tawi, while Rodulf Balisco is based out of Palawan State University.
The article’s getting good traction, mostly because of Richard’s network, but also because it’s a study on Tawi-Tawi. We really ought to pay more attention to the Philippines’ southernmost province.
Here’s to writing more and promoting the critical work of Filipino scientists to fellow Filipinos.
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Brewing my best food writing at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

Food writing is definitely NOT one of my strengths. I love to eat good food of course, but eating and casually recommending restaurants to anyone who asks is miles away from actually writing about it. So when The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf teamed up with Writer’s Block Philippines to offer a food writing workshop featuring, of course, the pretty impressive menu of the 26th St. Bistro by the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, I knew I had to go. I’d already attended WBP’s travel writing workshop and I was sure that I was going to have a lot of fun with the food writing workshop, even if it meant being in BGC at 9am on a Saturday.

brew your best food feature poster

CBTL offered ten free slots to to those who submitted the best new articles for the Brew Your Best Year website. The articles had to be about career and finance, fulfillment, health and wellness, and discovery. Because work meant that I didn’t have much time to write, I submitted a modified version of this blog post on the non-academic things I learned in grad school. So happy it still got chosen <3

Continue reading “Brewing my best food writing at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf”

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Floating with the tide: how a biologist ended up on an island resort and stayed there

My name’s on the cover! (it’s the article in the middle) Unfortunately, they misspelled it. *facepalm*

I got published! This isn’t the first time this has happened but I’ll never stop getting excited over seeing my name in print for something I’m proud of writing.

The title of the article is Floating with the tide: how a biologist ended up on an island resort and stayed there. What’s in it: how I ended up in my present job, what I actually do for a living, how responsible tourism works in a private sector setting, and the challenges I face in an environment like this. And it has pretty pictures too! 😀

You can read/download the PDF copy here. I don’t have a scanner so I photographed the pages instead (desperate much?).

I’m hoping that this will lead to more writing gigs in the future *crosses fingers*

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Ten lessons about writing that every scientist should learn (via Alternative Hypothesis)

I’m going to say something and it’s going to hurt: sometimes, scientists are not the greatest communicators. There, I said it. I’ve watched scientists I look up to give seminars on the importance of coral reef fish and throw around words like “pomacentrids”, “acanthurids”, and “scarids” (damselfishes, surgeonfishes, and parrotfishes to the non-science nerds) when their audience consisted of tourist guides, waiters, and cooks. This was a lost opportunity as their audience was genuinely interested in what they had to say. The goals of science (for me at least) are to 1) figure out how the world works, and 2) to share that information with everybody.

The post I’m reblogging is a list of 10 tips that scientists need to remember when writing. After all, our writing is a failure if no one can understand what we’re trying to say.

Ten lessons about writing that every scientist should learn... Yesterday, I spent the day at the horse races, taking in the pomp and pageantry of the biggest stakes card of the year. I find the racetrack fascinating, and not just in that girlish horse-crazy sense. For starters, it’s the only place I know where it is normal to see small men wearing outrageous colors and women wearing birds on their heads. Second, I love the wordplay of the racing form, with horse names like Two Horn Unicorn, Tiny Giant, We Ta … Read More

via Alternative Hypothesis