80 Random Facts About Me

1. I sucked at math. Awfully. What always puzzled me was how zero could have no value. But today I understand completely. Zero has no value, of course. Drop it and it makes no difference to anyone. No? That's what my math teacher (who scared the bejeesus out of me) told us in school anyway. Not that he was a bad guy. Infact, in hind sight I believe he was a misunderstood genius who outta have been in some far better institution instead of stuck in a high school class teaching empty headed giggly girls. Another time, another place and he would have been an inspiring teacher one feels (especially with that habit he had of charging to the front of the class and banging his head against the wall when someone gave him a wrong answer, I still get nightmares where I hear thud! thud! thud! dully in the background. Inspiring no?).

2. I do this thing where when I'm talking to people, I take random phrases from the conversation and assign each letter a finger on my hand, sequentially. Then I see if I can spell out the entire phrase so that it's a multiple of five and uses all the fingers on my hand with no finger left to spare. And then if it doesn't turn out to be a multiple I try to make it a multiple by including/removing the spaces between the words, counting punctuation marks, etc. And then if it still isn't a multiple of five I see if I can modify the phrase slightly by using connectors, operators and all that jazz so that it does become a multiple. It can get quite exhausting sometimes. Also makes me lose huge blobs of conversation in a haze of feverish counting.

3. I think Plato was unnecessarily drastic. Just my opinion. Let's not have a fistfight.

4. I have an aversion to throwing things away. I often virtuously get up a pile of stuff that's just rubbish or that I don't need anymore and then on the point of lowering it into the dumpster, I'm seized by the conviction that I will definitely need all of them or at least some of them at some distant point in the future (like of course that broken heel from that Madden pair will come in handy as a hammer or something surely, and that day when I've just moved into a new house and I don't have a hammer handy and I need to put up my pictures won't I look back on this fateful moment and regret it dreadfully? One has to be provident). So I just cart around all the junk with me, from house to house, country to country. Bleddy nonsense.

5. When I'm driving or even just riding I tote up the numbers on license plates of cars in front of me. I know lots of people do it. But, I have a twist in my tail ;). Ever since I learnt from my infamous math teacher that all multiples of nine have digits that add up to nine, I've been fascinated by the concept. So, I need the numbers to add up to nine. By hook or by crook. Mostly by crook. Very dishtracting it can be! *shakes head at God's folly in foisting one more weird habit on her considering she's already weighted far beyond the average*

6. I can't remember people and names for peanuts. Social occasions involving distant family members always pass by in a blur of having my sister or my mum whisper names and relationships of mamas and mamis as they rapidly approach us. Quite stressful. Break into a cold sweat just thinking about it. It's worse than Board exams. Why does everyone ask you if you remember them? Sometimes, I think they feel somehow validated after they wrack the confession out of you that no, you don't, in fact, remember them. *Sigh*

7. I hate it when people around me feel uncomfortable or awkward. I feel impelled to jump into the breach and somehow make things okay. Uncomfortable social situations reach a new level of uncomfortableness for me cos I feel everyone's uncomfortableness on top of mine. The burdens I have to bear and all that.

8. I'm the most impulsively contradictory person I know. I change my mind in the space of a breath. Not just decisions like what shoes to wear today but major life decisions, or sea changes in opinions that I've held for the longest time. Vairry epiphanic, we are.


The writing finger writes and then pauses to decide whom to finger next. Muahahahaha. I hereby tag the scion of the And-Baffleds (payback! Hah!), Scout (if that tag junkie hasn't done it already) and....and....sheesh I can't think of a third person who deserves a tag. I option the third and shall wreak vengeance at a later date on some unsuspecting soul. Oh wait, wait I've got it...Brown Magic (the one that almost got away). All taggees pliss to do either the original (which was 80 random facts) or my much improved version :).


FINIS