100 For 100

Image: Planet Oddity

Now that I have your attention....

Apparently when one has reached 100 blog posts, it is the custom to post a "100 for 100" blog post listing 100 things about oneself. Therefore, inasmuch as the current post is one's one hundred and first published post, let us begin.

1.       I was born in Melbourne and grew up in Melbourne, Los Angeles and Auckland

2.       I’ve also lived in London and in Greece (Thessaloniki and Santorini)

3.       When I was little I had very curly hair like Shirley Temple

4.       Back then all I wanted was long straight hair with a fringe

5.       When I was a kid my career aspirations, in order as I held them, were: inventor, scientist, vet, zoo keeper, air stewardess, artist, diplomat, language teacher, librarian, archaeologist, anthropologist, writer. I was yet to realise my actual destiny of “middle manager in a financial corporation”

6.       My personality type is INTP

7.       As a kid I was fascinated by ESP and I seemed to have it. A long journey of reading, thinking and perceiving ensued and finally I was reluctantly forced to give up belief in the paranormal

8.       I do still believe that we are capable of very smart perception from tiny clues and this creates some of the results we call ESP, telepathy, etc. The rest of the results are coincidence and selective memory bias

9.       I was baptised a Catholic and loved Sunday School and my New American Bible as a kid

10.   Fortunately however my family is not very religious

11.   At age 13 I decided not to do my confirmation as I had decided I no longer believed in God

12.   When I was a kid I was scared of bees and cats

13.   Then I got stung by a bee and it wasn’t so bad so I was no longer scared of bees

14.   Then I got scratched on the face by a cat and it was terrifying so I continued to be scared of cats

15.   Until my sister adopted a cat when I was 11 and he was gorgeous. I’ve liked cats since then.

16.   I felt like a grown-up when I had my kids, but maybe even more when I got my dog

17.   We have a dog and a cat

18.   I love birds of all kinds and am fascinated by them; they have language, society and beauty. And they can fly!

19.   I used to have budgies but birds in cages are a bit depressing when you get too busy/lazy to let them out and clean their cage often enough

20.   I have recurring dreams involving giant waves of water. Most are scary but not all, and in many of them I know I am dreaming.

21.   When I was a kid I had fantastic, wonderful dreams about flying. I used to go to sleep willing these dreams and sometimes that would work.

22.   I miss those dreams

23.   I learned French in high school, Spanish at university, and Greek while living in Greece. I was previously fluent in French, and then Spanish, but for some reason I can only hold onto one foreign language at a time. So these days I am fluent in Greek but can no longer speak French or Spanish.

24.   I did a course in Mandarin with my sister a few years ago but it was, like, really really hard. I cannot pretend to have learned Mandarin, though I was interested.

25.   That third tone in Mandarin is a bitch

26.   I am now one quarter way through this list

27.   I love internet technology these days but I was a late adopter.

28.   I loved my typewriter as a kid

29.   PCs started to become big while I was at uni but I decided I would not partake of the computer world – ever

30.   I worked briefly as an English language teacher at RMIT in the nineties. I had an email account with the job but I didn’t know what email was for and so I ignored it.

31.   I am bad at networking and managing my career

32.   I am good at writing, Indo-European languages (not “languages” as I found with my Mandarin experience), logic, analysis, mentoring , and organising and managing stuff

33.   I am fascinated by physics and cosmology, but when the physicists talk about multi-verses, time crystals, worm holes and the like I can’t help but feel they’re just making shit up now

34.   I skipped the last year of high school because I had very good marks and at that time in New Zealand you were able to go straight to uni from Year11 if your marks were good enough

35.   I have a Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology with a minor in Spanish, from the University of Auckland, a Cambridge Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults from RMIT, and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia (now FINSIA). That sucker took me 4 years to complete part time

36.   My first job was stacking books at a public library. I loved it.

37.   My second job was working for a summer at MacDonald’s. That was good experience and I liked it sometimes. They rotate you through all the jobs till you’ve learned them all then they stick you on the one you’re best at. Mine was being on the till serving customers, which I liked.

38.   While I was at uni I worked part-time at a shoe shop in Auckland, and I loved it.

39.   When my family moved back to Melbourne from Auckland, I stayed to finish uni then stayed another year working full-time at the shoe shop.

40.   During that time I made great friends, got briefly into nightclubbing and got really into clothes and shoes

41.   After that I worked in cafes, bars and restaurants for a few years. I loved that too. In your twenties that’s all fun and cool.

42.   I still miss some aspects of waitressing sometimes – I used to really like serving customers (except the nasty ones), and I liked the simplicity of the job. (It is simple – but it is not easy).

43.   I went backpacking to Europe with my cousin and her friend when I was 23, and stayed in Europe for 4 years. Time. Of. My. Life!

44.   I lived and worked for a year and a half at the Red Lion pub in Twickenham. I adored (platonically) the Irish manager Gerard, and made awesome friends with whom I am no longer in touch – Eve, Geni, Nicole, Teresa, Keith and Tom, plus our regulars Ray, Bill, Brian, Nipper, Pete, Alan, Pat, and the rest. We were like a family.

45.   My favourite countries are Turkey, Greece, Mexico and New Zealand

46.   The only food I really didn’t like while travelling was German food.

47.    My favourite TV serial was Life on Mars, and my favourite comedy is Modern Family

48.   I also love some voyeuristic doco series (Miami Ink, Deadliest Catch)

49.   I am fascinated by time travel and love any movie or story that features it, but I always get frustrated at the problems with the logic. I keep looking for the “perfect” time travel story but have not found it yet (Life on Mars comes close).

50.   I am fascinated by the sea and tales on the high seas – Sinbad the Sailor, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Moby Dick, The Bounty, The Perfect Storm, historical stories, tales of exploration, shipwreck and cannibalism. Aar!

51.   My favourite book of all time is A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. That book has everything.

52.   I have struggled with my weight all my life. I was on my first diet before I was ten. As a child I fluctuated between slim and chubby. As an adult, I dieted and exercised furiously in my late teens and twenties and was slim for a lovely but brief approximately ten-year period.  When I was living in Greece I wore bikinis, short skirts, slim jeans and basically whatever the hell I wanted, and I was always, always hungry.

53.   During that time I met my husband and warned him I am really a fat person and he refused to believe it.

54.   I showed him!

55.   I am now more than halfway through this list. This is harder than I thought.

56.   I need time on my own every single day. If I don’t get it I am miserable and crabby.

57.   When I was living and working in Santorini I loved walking to work in the mornings and I usually liked swapping hellos with all the shop-keepers and donkey-wranglers along the way. But sometimes I would change my route so I didn’t have to do it.

58.   When I was a kid the country I most wanted to visit was Greece. Well and truly achieved that goal

59.   I always wanted to visit India, Egypt, Japan and China. Haven’t got there yet and probably won’t now.

60.   I used to really want to try parachuting and hang-gliding. I no longer want to do either of those.

61.   I paraglided in Bali and that’s close enough

62.   I am pro-choice

63.   I am a fence-sitter on many things as I can always see the logic and the right to both sides of an argument; but I never, ever, ever wavered once in being absolutely against the war in Iraq

64.   I don’t understand why George W. Bush has not been indicted on war crimes

65.   I’m a realist though and believe Australia had little choice but to support the US in that war (even without John Howard’s obvious enthusiasm). I attended an anti-war rally not because I thought for an instant it would change things but because I think you have to show the government sometimes you don’t agree with what they’re doing.

66.   On the other hand Iran is nuts and there is no way they should have nuclear weapons. I’m not saying the US should start a war but something’s gotta be done there.

67.    If ever I go out with friends to something I like to go on my own and meet them there. I panic if “stuck” in someone else’s car/company for hours.

68.   I love travelling by train

69.   I hate travelling by bus

70.   I always loved flying but in recent years I am a bit of a nervous flyer

71.   I am a bit of an anxious person and I have always worried. When I was a kid I used to lie awake at night worrying about things.

72.   I used to think I was an optimist until I read Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism. I now know I am a natural pessimist!

73.   I am, however, very good at making decisions and feeling positive about which way I’ve gone. I make decisions quickly, I don’t dwell on decisions I’ve made and I rarely think I’ve made the wrong one.

74.   I am now three-quarters of the way through this list!

75.   I am worrying that I have left out really interesting, massively important things about me on this list

76.   But I do often go back and edit/improve my blog posts so if that happens I will do the same here

77.    I love chocolate, but not high-quality Swiss chocolate so much as Cadbury Dairy Milk

78.   I don’t like chocolate ice-cream or chocolate flavouring in general. Just chocolate.

79.   My favourite drink is water. It’s what I have always drunk in huge quantities all day.

80.   My favourite cocktail is a margarita (with salt), followed by a gin martini

81.   My favourite colour is midnight navy

82.   My favourite number is 8

83.   I love white gold but can’t afford it so I wear silver. I’m not big on yellow gold.

84.   I have always loved reading. As a kid I loved Enid Blyton especially the Famous Five.

85.   I think there are much better books for kids now, but I did start reading The Magic Faraway Tree to my kids recently and was surprised that they absolutely love it.

86.   I didn’t read to my kids when they were babies because it felt silly. But I did talk, rhyme, and sing to them all the time. Same thing.

87.   I love poetry. As a teenager I loved the old romantic stuff especially Tennyson and Blake. My favourite poet now is Dorothy Porter.

88.   I love Indian novels.

89.   When I was in primary school in America I was a finalist for my school in a penmanship competition

90.   I love walking. When I walk I look down and I love the sights on the ground. Sidewalk cracks, ants, seeds and leaves from trees overhead – it’s a fascinating tiny world down there.

91.   I am always thinking “logistically”. For example, I have always gone walking with only one Walkman/iPod earphone in, so I can hear traffic and rapists. I always place books spine-down in my bag. I can spot a precarious situation a mile off and get twitchy until I fix it.

92.   I believe this has tended to keep me safe

93.   But I did my share of stupid dangerous things while young

94.   When I was young I wanted to try most things and I decided to do it. But I didn’t always find those experiences.

95.   I am glad for the ones I did find and glad for the ones I didn’t

96.   I snore and talk in my sleep

97.   When I was pregnant I read heaps of pregnancy books and I read a few baby books too. People scoff at that but I got a lot of help and information from those books. I love you Robin Barker!

98.   I was always a night-owl but since having kids have learned to love early mornings more

99.   I have always been scared of electric windows and locks in cars, because what happens when your car crashes into a river or you’re trapped in flood waters and can’t wind down the windows? When I bought a new car I asked the salesman if I could get it with wind-up windows and he thought I was crazy. But I’ve learned now from Magnetoboldtoo to get an ice-pick for the car.

100.    I love the sky and have always loved lying down and gazing at tree leaves, clouds or stars.


So that's me. Thanks for reading all the way down to 100!  ;-)