100 Things About ME!

It was about time I did one of these....

1. Cheese is my drug of choice.
2. I am a vegetarian.
3. I was raised Catholic, but I now consider myself Buddhist. However to this day if I walk into a Catholic Church I will bless my self on auto-pilot with holy water.
   
4. I often therefore feel like a hypocrite in Catholic Churches.
5. I lived in the same house in The Blue Mountains of Australia until I was 21 years old.
6. Since then I have lived in Sydney, Nepal and China.
7. I adore travelling, but I never left Australia until I was 20 years old.
   
8. If I won the lottery I would buy a house and then not live there- I'd be too busy travelling
9. I am in love with a French-Canadian photographer, who happens to be my best friend. And my boyfriend. How lucky is that?
10. I spent a summer putting together high security locks by hand for my locksmith father.
11. Having a locksmith for a father is unbelievably convenient.
12. But he never taught me to pick a lock properly- locksmith code of ethics, or something.
13. I was Young Australian of the Year for the City of the Blue Mountains in 2001. And I vomited at the award ceremony. It may have had something to do with the amount of sangria consumed at a graduation celebration the night before.
14. The week before I had my appendix removed in the 7th grade I dreamed about myself lying unconscious on an operating table.
15. I am somewhat OCD.
16. The Boyfriend would have a lot of trouble with the word "somewhat" in that last sentence.
17. I love snakes but I hate spiders.
18. My favourite colour is green
19. I HATE that any microsoft program re-sets itself automatically to spell-check with US English every time it is re-started. I consider it to be insidious cultural imperialism.
20. After living with a Canadian for two years I have started to say 'elevator' instead of 'lift'. And it kills me.
21. My favourite movie is 'All About My Mother'. 'Office Space' comes a close second.
    
22. I don't have a favourite book- there are too many great ones out there.
    
23. I have taken a few books with me to every country I have lived in. These include: Dante Gabriel Rosetti's collection of poetry, and "Violence and Compassion" by the Dalai Lama and Jean-Claude Carriere, "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho.
24. I am hopeless at writing emails.
25. The longer an unreplied-to email sits in my inbox, the more stressed about it I get- but the less likely I am to reply to it. It is overwhelming.
26. My first tooth fell out when I was doing a handstand and my aunty smacked me (jokingly) on the bum. It took the whole family 10 minutes to find the tooth in the shag of the carpet.
    
27. As an adult I was horrified to learn that my parents flushed our baby teeth down the sink after the Tooth Fairy had come- I always imagined my parents had them them nestled in cotton wool in some secret place, fondling them occasionally in the still of the night whilst they reminisced about our childhood. Seeing that in writing now, I realise that it looks sick.
28. When I was 8, my sister and I asked for the Easter Bunny's autograph to prove his existence. It never occurred to us that "E. Bunny" was written in our father's hand-writing.
29. I am allergic to chocolate.
30. Actually I am allergic to many things- beef, cheese, tomato, wheat, buckwheat, rye, salmon, broccoli, avocado, aspartame, sodium nitrite, oranges, mandarins, cream, whole milk, and the list goes on.
    
31. Some of the things I am allergic to (like wheat, cheese and tomatoes) I eat anyway. As a result I am sick a lot.
32. But I never eat chocolate.
    
33. I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 4 years- the entire duration of my bachelor's degree. I am still not entirely over it. It's an awful condition.
    
34. I make the best Vegetarian Lasagna in the world. And I'm not even boasting about that. It's just a fact.
35. I met The Boyfriend in Kathmandu, Nepal. In a pizza parlour. I really love Pizza.
    
36. Five years later we are living together in Shanghai. And I still love pizza.
    
37. I fell off a football goal post when I was 14 and broke one of my vertebrae. I didn't go to the doctor about it until 18 months later.
38. My beer of choice is Cooper's.
    
39. The Boyfriend's beer of choice is Stella Artois.
40. We have agreed to disagree over this.
41. The day my Godson was baptised I had not done my laundry for two weeks- and as a result was forced to stand in front of the priest and the rest of the congregation in a beautiful dress but no underwear.
    
42. I am a complete clutz. I trip over everything.
43. I once slipped on a banana skin while walking down the street.
44. I can never remember the dates for daylight's savings changes- and inveriably turn up early or late for something at least every year (the worst being the year I was late for my niece's baptism).
45. I am an artist.
46. It took me 26 years to say those last four words. I still stumble over them at times.
    
47. I love camping, and miss it terrible here in Shanghai.
48. I used to work at one time in Sydney as a nanny and a maid. Now that I live in Shanghai I have a maid of my own. It makes me very uncomfortable.
49. When I was 21 my boyfriend was 15 years older than me. I don't recommend it.
50. I have always had a green thumb, but since I moved to Shanghai every plant I look at dies.
51. I have to cut the entire pizza into separated pieces before I can eat a slice.
52. I always buy Nokia phones- not because I think they are better but because they are the only phones I know how to use.
53. I have really white skin. I once got so sunburned I couldn't wear pants for a week.
54. I cry more when animals get hurt on tv than when people do.
55. I had my first pedicure at the age of 26
56. For some reasons watches tend to go slow when I wear them but work fine when I take them off. My mum has the same problem.
57. When I was a child we had a giant labrador called Harry. He was my hero and I used to ride him like a horse
58. I remember the day Harry died when I was 8. Years later my grandmother died, but I don't remember that day at all.
59. I have a degree in Archaeology and Linguistics. That's kinda useless.
60. I hate mosquitoes, and once I hear one in the bedroom I will be awake all night until I hunt it down and kill it.
61. I never kill any living creatures except mosquitoes- I guess it comes from living in countries where they carry deadly illnesses.
62. As a vegetarian I will still cook meat for The Boyfriend or guests, but raw chicken terrifies me. Salmonella, you know.
63. When I was in Kindergarten my older brother in the sixth grade made me perform Billy Jean on the school bus. Every afternoon for about a week. I still know the words.
    
64. I once hit a cow while riding on a bicycle in Nepal. It was particularly bad because cows are holy in Hindu countries. Thankfully it wasn't hurt. I can't say the same for the bike though.
65. I love karaoke.
66. My brother Richard conducted a Pavlovian experiement on me when I was a child. He'd tickle my feet and if I laughed he would punch me. To this day I am not ticklish on my feet.
67. With the exception of my feet, I am extremely ticklish- I have been known to black out/stop breathing/pee/vomit if I am tickled too hard.
68. During the middle of winter in Nepal (where my house had no hot water) I didn't shower for two weeks.
69. I fell asleep while watching Soderbergh's 'Schizopolis'. The Boyfriend has never forgiven me for it.
70. I'm terrible at remembering anniversaries or people's birthdays. It's not that I don't know when they are, it's just that I never know the date on any given day.
71. The first song I ever bought with my own money was Martika's 'Love Thy Will Be Done' in primary school- on 'cassingle'
72. I have always wanted a remote-controlled car, but never had one.
73. I am pathologically afraid of owls.
74. I hyperventilate in road tunnels, but love caves. Even caves with tunnels. Go figure.
75. Until this year I had never had any clothes dry-cleaned.
76. I have 24 teeth. Adults should have 32. I had 8 adult teeth removed just to fit the teeth I have into my mouth. Plus two years of braces. I didn't smile with my mouth open for two years.
77. Sometimes I feel compelled to bite The Boyfriend on the arm when he least expects it. I can't explain that.
78. I get very angry at bad drivers. Of course I consider myself to be a great driver. Don't we all?
79. I have a great sense of direction. No, really.
    
80. I am the Queen of Shortcuts. They are not always shorter, but I will rarely admit that.
81. I love frogs.
82. I have two rabbits called Marcel and Francis. They are named after Marcel Duchamp and Francis Bacon, and both are house trained.
83. When we were kids my mum made us recite our multiplication tables if she cought us singing the jingles to television advertisements. She figured if we could learn the ads we could learn the tables. It never worked.
    
84. I am a really atrocious morning person. I hate everybody before 10.30am, and I even consider that too early on most days.
    
85. If I don't set an alarm I will not wake up before midday. No matter how much sleep I've had.
86. I used to have nightmares about having to pee in front of people. That was cured after a year of public peeing in fields beside highways in Nepal with bus-loads of men watching me.
87. I hated coffee until I went to East Timor in 2000, where I was force-fed it religiously. Now I can't live without it.
    
88. I have a ridiculous capacity for storing useless pieces of information. But I can't remember my multiplication tables or how to do any kind of division.
89. I consider myself to be a good photographer. But living with a professional photographer tends to make me doubt my own judgment on that.
90. I once had 23 pets at the one time in highschool- mice, fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, a turtle and a duck.
91. The duck was lame so it's name was Forrest (Gump). It used to swim in circles.
92. I had pet mice for years as a kid. They were all named after members of the Adams Family and they all died of cancer, except Wednesday, who died in a mining accident (She was digging under her water bowl and the tunnel collapsed).
93. Regardless of the fact that I had so many pet mice, if I see a mouse in my house/apartment I will scream like a girl and climb on top of furniture.
94. My car (in Australia) is 46 years old. Her name is Daphne and she is a Morris Minor 1000.
95. I grew up as a biological kid in a foster house. My parents fostered about 15 kids over the years. My younger sister and I (both biological children) thought we were the unlucky ones because we only had one set of parents.
    
96. I love cooking but I hate cleaning up afterwards.
97. I was interviewed live on national news when my dad was arrested in East Timor. Boy, is that a long story.
98. I am hopeless with money, and cannot save.
99. I freak out when people stand over my shoulder. School was tough- what is it with teachers doing that?
    
100. Writing 100 things about myself is really hard, and I secretly doubt anyone will actually read this far. Did you learn anything?