Day 3

It pains me to admit it but my life until now has been devoid of romance. Perhaps that's why I have to live vicariously through fictional characters' like/love/lust experiences. So for me, the thought of liking/loving/lusting after someone has always been a vague concept. I suppose it's like someone who's never eaten pork pondering about the taste of pork. Then again, it's not as if one who's never eaten pork has never seen a pig. 

If I haven't lost you yet, to extrapolate the analogy back to the present topic, I'd say that even if I haven't experienced any of those l-words, I can certainly imagine what it would take to have those experiences. 

And so, I come to address Day 3's topic:

Eight ways to win your heart

1. Don't be a radical. Radicals... worry me. Being too far on either side of the spectrum is just overwhelming. It's all about flexibility, see? And if it's true about what 'they' say about everything coming down to money, religion and politics, I think I'd eventually start to argue with a person too stuck in one camp. I identify myself as a conservative-progressive, a Bhuddist-Christian, a stingy-mass-consumerist and the list goes on. As society progresses, it's imperative that views change.

2. To offset all that deep and meaningful mumbo-jumbo, here's a rather shallow requirement: Be fit. Before this year, I would've said that any body type would've been fine with me (even a little pudginess would've been okay!) but now... I'm more picky. It might be because the guys at college are fitness-obsessed but I've come to appreciate a fit body. 'Appreciate' in the sense that I enjoy how I can exercise with a fit guy, not 'appreciate' as in 'Helloooo eye candy!'. 

3. Be a conversationalist! Awkward moments should be avoided at all costs! There's a particular guy that I know of. For now, we'll call him J. Whenever J and I see each other, we're obliged to start a conversation since we're Facebook friends, have quite a few mutual friends, see each other outside of uni times etc. And so the transcript of a typical conversation between us would be as such: 

"Hey J."

"Hey K."

"So how's uni treating you?"

"Yeah it's fine. How about you?"

"Yes, it's pretty good."

"Cool."

"Yeah."

"..."

"..."

Don't even try denying you haven't had those sort of conversations that don't break past the safe topic of polite niceties (Ah! So many negatives in that sentence!). But on the off-chance that you haven't... leave a comment and we'll start from there... ;) 

...-cough-

But no seriously, I think it's important that the barrier of politeness is broken and a level of easiness is reached where absolutely anything can be breached and nothing (much) will be taboo. 

4. Be proactive please. To the man who'll be the object of my l-words (I'm still holding out that it'll happen soon. Maybe. Well soon-ish.), please show some interest in me. Don't be all cagey about how you feel. It's not as if I'm expecting a big ol' flag being waved in my face but being proactive on your part is certainly a nice indicator of something happening. 

5. BE MANLY! I find it attractive when I'm with someone who doesn't make me wonder why I'm re-living my high school days again. Don't get me wrong, a feminine touch does make the world go round (Feminists unite!) but there are certainly times when I'm thankful for the diversity that the opposite sex brings. So no half-hearted attempts there thanks. 

6. Be smiley. :D I like smiles. 

7. Be a practical romantic. I don't expect anyone to be writing sappy love poems or serenading me outside my window (that's just uber embarrassing). I'll be secretly delighted if there are thoughtful romantic touches made here and there, like waiting for me if I'm late. It's the small things that make me swoon. 

8. Finally, have a deep character. I'd like a person who was insightful enough to offer a fresh perspective on matters and didn't float around in the shallows. Otherwise, I might just start to think that nothing else but physical attraction was holding us together. And that would just be.. carnal lust I guess? Rowr! 

Anyway, a shout-out to Viv who invited me to High-Tea at the Hotel Windsor. Thanks, it was full of gastronomical pleasures and great conversation! :)

Day 2

In continuation of the 10 Day Blogging Challenge, here is Day 2's topic:

Nine things about yourself

(NB: I feel oddly self-conscious when I do these things since it reminds me of those high school quiz things. But let's just imagine it's for the sake of being reminiscent and all that shiz.)

- I have this big hang-up about raisins. Raisins and I just don't mix. I'd be willing to eat pastries with raisins in them but that's about as close raisins and I get in this tumultuous relationship of ours. I get really creeped out whenever I find raisins in savoury foods at college. Sausage curry with raisins? Beef curry with raisins? No. Just no.

Courtesy of Google Images

Maybe it's the brown wrinkles that turn me off. I'm not quite sure.

- You know those dreams that you have when you wake up suddenly after falling or dying etc.? Mine's about running around on the oval of my first primary school. There were these tree logs that separated the playground and the oval. I'll be running over to the playground but I'd trip on the log. End of dream sequence. And then I found $20. Har har har.

- I have this, well, star-crush.

Courtesy of Star News

This (fantastic-looking) guy is called Cha Seung Won. I can't tell you what his likes and interests are because my crush isn't that deep and meaningful at all (insert disinterested hair flick). But he's pretty much the coolest being ever. This isn't even my inner, irrational fangirl-self gushing. He's so cool. Just go watch Blades Of Blood. 

- Until early last year, I had the *absolute pleasure* of having a Nokia 3315 accompany me on my day-to-day going ons. In retrospect, our relationship was probably based on pure need. Oh, I could attempt to stave off the need to use it for as long as possible. I could satisfying the need in the privacy of isolation but it knew that at some point, I would have to use it. And how it reveled in my weakness! I used it to answer the numerous calls from the parentals in the middle of a busy cafe, and it cackled away as it basked in the mildly-judgmental looks dished out to me. But at last, I was able to ditch it for the so much more respectable Nokia E71. And so far, our association has been built on mutual respect and all the goodly stuff of a healthy relationship. 

- I like admiring legs.

- I'm one of those romance junkies. Not the Mills and Boon-type but I mean, romance plays a big part of whether or not I'll like a particular film/book. Case in point: the Harry Potter series. Sorry, but the whole Ron/Hermione thing just ruined it for me. It also makes me sad when I'll be reading a book and there's so much obvious chemistry between Character A and Character B but the author has no romance between them! Like, come on! I don't want to be reading in-between the lines! That's far too subtle for me!

- My favourite word is probably 'extemporaneous'. Perhaps because it's so extemporaneous. I'm not sure.

- Although winter means wet and gray days, it also means no waxing. Hence, I like winter. The world would be a happier place without waxing kits.

- I went through an Argyle-pattern obsession. It's still kind of there but I think it mostly died with the realisation that hyper-preppiness isn't the best style.

(D, I hope you don't mind but I did steal your Feedjit widget. Thanks.)

Day 1

Since F decided to do a 10 Day Blogging Challenge and I was lacking inspiration for a new post amidst my blogging revival, I thought I'd also participate.

Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.

"I'm excited to see you wearing something other than tights this winter! :P Bye! (Bye)"

"Let's murder Steven and Jenny together. Screw their contract (or lack thereof)." 

"I wish I could see you without a shirt. It will be my winter mission to somehow catch a sight of your supposedly tank self."

"The present! Ack! It's happening. Kind of. Argh! It's doing a breha x100."

"Seriously dude. Cooking sesh. It needs to happen sometime soon. Like pronto."

"Could you please, please, please wear those pinstripe shorts before winter kicks in? Please?"

"I'm sitting on the couch that you farted on. Also, do you have anymore Mt. Fujis lately?" 

"WHERE ARE YOU? We should make plans to meet up but I know we won't. We suck at keeping in touch." 

"I found out that Koreans sometimes put honey in foods. NOT SUGAR." 

"There have been far too many humping starfish moments that I need to tell you. It'll be worthy of a full-body movement."

F, I lack creativity to make this post seem less of a clone of your post. :(

Random Thoughts On... leggings ≠ pants

I'm not about to deny that I'm a lemming – that would just be plain hypocritical of me. However, I will say that I reject the disturbing fashion of wearing leggings as pants. IMO, this is one of those cases of a lemming movement ballooning up a misplaced idea. 

Before anything else, I'll just clarify that I do like leggings. Really, I do. I can see their positive attributes as warm skin-tight coverings. They go great with boots in the winter and are handy to run in when it becomes too cold to show off one's legs. Wait, rewind to the sentence before last. There it is: leggings = 'skin-tight'. So what does that mean? It means that the silhouette of anything being worn underneath the leggings can be seen very clearly. 

So next, I come to the (disturbing) fashion trend that's sweeping through the world:  

I feel like miniature people should go running around Nicorette-style saying, "No (insert name) no! No (insert name) no! Noooooo (insert name)!". In what way is this flattering? Does every passerby really want to see whether you're wearing briefs, bikinis or a g-string? Do I want to observe how floppy your bottom is? No! A resounding no! Please put on some pants, for my sake and yours. And no, jeggings are not pants. You can still see an outline of just about everything. 

And for those poor, unenlightened souls who find it tasteful to wear extra-extra-tight tights (it's possible), please don't. 'Silhouette' is just a poor euphemism in that case. 

On a side note, the weather's been nice! I've been half-expecting Melbourne to turn freezing cold on me but I've been able to get away wearing short-sleeves with a scarf. Yay! 

(Also, what's with Blogger's new format? I can't seem to keep the text of this post in tandem with the others.)

Hiatus No More

Ah, good lord. It's been almost a year since I've last updated. It's slightly embarrassing how much of an undedicated blogger I am compared to all the regulars. But on the upside, it's allowed me to personally evaluate how much I felt I changed since then. Personal benefit = 1.

One thing I should probably bring to light is my past boy-craziness. It's way too shameful to imagine how incredibly boy-crazy I was last year. To my defense, I did attend an all-girls high school for 6 years. I guess that cringe-worthy 1 year of lasciviousness had to happen. In any case, with that chapter safely behind, I think it's a-okay for me to say that there are times when I do enjoy the entirely platonic company of the opposite sex more than the time spent with my own sex. I can't help but bring to mind the irony of saying such a statement since I seem to remember I ridiculed a certain someone in high school for saying it as well. I'm sorry Y. I'm not sure if you remember telling me that but I now know where you're coming from. It just took me a few years s'all.

So updates! I'm living at a college this year. It's sort of more like a faux-college since it has ties with the Lutheran church but it's a place to eat, sleep and socialise. So close enough. I've made some great friends who, I'm pleased to report, are Asian! Yes! I haven't strayed too far from the PLC days! I have been welcomed back into the Asian fold and I'm there to stay. Actually, living at college really does remind me of home since the building's basically all Asian (Ha, take that all the nasty teachers in year 10. We really can work together successfully!). We've had our run-of-the-mill late-night chats, our Munchkin-playing days and our cheese nights. And to boot, it's not even that noisy.

Adelaide's growing on me. It might just be because I'm situated in the nice part of Adelaide - the northern side. It's full of green lawns and nice foliage. The walk to uni is a pleasant one, even if it is uphill one way. There's even a 24-hour bakery to satisfy any late-night hunger pangs (which doubles as a lucrative munchies spot for all the college revelers). I'm still not a great fan of the opening hours of the shops and the lack of Woolworths and Coles in vital areas. How is it that there's only an IGA and Foodland in North Adelaide? Why are they so over-priced? Gah!

Uni is busy. I don't know how, but I'm already behind in Contracts notes. Fingers-crossed I'll be able to catch up during the holidays. Physiology is great! I'm half in love with the term 1 lecturer. She's American and has a voice that's reminiscent of the narrated science clips on Youtube – so incredibly calm and collected. Biochem is so-so. I'm not too keen on the lectures but the material itself is interesting. How is it that the nerd/dork factor in my Biochem lectures is so high? Tank tops that show one's midriff paired with jeans and sneakers, anyone? Forgive the hypocrisy. Personal style still = 0

Random Thoughts On... Justin Bieber vs. Jesse McCartney

As any Borders lover will know, the third level of Borders Chadstone has comfy armchairs scattered around the place. Now, any lover who has been there recently and has a good geographic sense as to where everything is positioned will remember that there are two particular armchairs near the children and young adults section (adjacent to the escalators). Two days ago at around 2pm you would have found me happily ensconced in one of these armchairs reading a racy Sara Douglass novel. However, my reverie of romantic fantasies was shot when I overheard the following conversation, triggered by the key word, "Twilight",spoken by a squealing tween:

Tween: "MOMMYYY!!! THE TWILIGHT SERIES IS ON SALE FOR ONLY $25.99!!!"

Tween's Mother: "Darling, please try to be quiet."

Tween: "But Mommy! It's the Twilight series and it's on sale!"

Tween's Mother: "Darling, $25.99 is a bit much for one dvd like that."

Tween: "Gosh! It's Twilight! I need to have it!!!"

Tween's Mother: "...No."

Tween: "GRAH!"

(Tween stalks away and I breathe a sigh of relief. The tween's mother continues to read until the next disturbance.)

Tween: "OH MY GOSH. OH MY GOSH. LOOK LOOK MOMMY. IT'S A JUSTIN BIEBER BOOK."

Me: 'Holy Flying Shite. They make stalkerish books about Justin Bieber now. What is this world coming to.'

Tween's Mother: "That's nice darling."

Tween: "Can I have it? Can I have it? Please mommy?"

Tween's Mother: "..."

Tween: "Please? It's a book! I'll be reading!"

Tween's Mother: sigh. "Fine."

Tween: "OH MOMMY I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I HAVE A JUSTINE BIEBER BOOK. EVERYONE'S GOING TO LOVE IT. I mean look at it! It even has a poster of Justin Bieber and quizzes..." She proceeds to unfold an A3 poster of Justin Bieber.

I feel that I can safely speak for a large majority of the Y generation when I say that Justin Bieber and Twilight are some of the more disreputable vices of the tween generation. Such things threaten the equilibrium of society and the sanity of every individual over the age of 17. But wait a sec. I suppose it wouldn't be entirely fair to cut in at this point in time and say, "When I was your age, I was never like that". Surely we must also have some sort of shortcoming that accompanied our growth pains.

So on we go to the timeline of our lives.

Perhaps the closest thing we had to Justin Bieber was Jesse McCartney. To be honest, I wasn't on that bandwagon but then again, I was the dork back in those late primary school-early high school days. And just as a refresher, here's some eye candy (if you can call it that):

But hey, at least he wasn't a pre-pubescent kid who had yet to go through the puberty blues. What you saw was what you got. Instead, you have Justin Bieber who has yet to go through the throes of puberty unscathed:

Yes tweens, that cute baby fat is likely to melt away. Sorry darlings.

And perhaps our equivalent to the Twilight series was the Saddle Club or even Harry Potter. I don't think it takes any genius to find the big differences between these series. Twilight has a sequined Edward Cullen, a constantly breathy Bella and a baby destined to be soul mate of an overly-muscular werewolf (lolita anyone?). Instead, Harry Potter has a serpentine Lord Voldemort, wands and broomsticks. The Saddle Club had horses, saddles, girls interested in horses and benign bitchiness. Yes, I might be biased but come on! Harry Potter and Saddle Club win in being healthy G-rated fads for kids who aren't yet teenagers. Furthermore, in our day, headlines like, "Girls ask me to bite them on the neck -Robert Pattinson" or "Young fan asks Twilight star Robert Pattinson to 'Bite Me'" never made the news. All we had was, "Thousands line up to see 'Wizarding World'".

It is quite worrisome to think that these tweens will grow up and enter into society as adults. There is no way in telling what their EQ will be like but rest assured, at least the more grounded Gen Y will be there to take all the managerial positions and rule the world with a grip as strong as Hagrid's.

Random Thoughts On... boyholism

One of the things that makes me wish I went to Melb Uni (mind you, I haven't checked out Monash's campus) is the availability of on-campus food. The many eateries on the Melb Uni campus wow-ed me because not only did it satisfy me gastronomically but also economically. I could spend less than $7 for a decent lunch! Instead, if I wandered to Adelaide Uni's Mayo, I could purchase a 'large' serving of either pasta or a curry (which, I should note, has made me frequent the second floor of the Law Building quite often) for $7.20. So like any (lazy) Uni student who didn't bring a packed lunch , I trundle over to Rundle St. (yes, I hope you noticed that sneaky usage of rhyme) for a comparatively expensive lunch fare.

It was on one of these food-foraging expeditions that I happened to be crossing North Terrace, the street that separates Adelaide Uni to the rest of the city. As a healthy girl, fresh from the gender-homogenous confines of an all-girls high school, I kept my eyes peeled for eye candy. Lo and behold! I wasn't disappointed. Coming towards me was a handsome guy with brunette hair fluffed in the cool winter wind. As my eyes appreciatively (but efficiently) violated this blissfully ignorant boy, I realised something that made my face look somewhat like this:

(thanks to Marshall Vandruff, whoever you may be)

I'm a boyholic.

I'm addicted to ravishing the silhouettes and selves of the various specimens of the opposite sex. You can be assured that if a member of the opposing gender were talking to me, in the first three seconds of the conversation I would have assessed

a) his legs

b) his nose

c) presence of body hair

d) height

e) everything else

I blame my habit on the lost years of high school when I should have exercised raging hormones to their fullest extent. But no matter, those years will never come again and I still possess this grave affliction.

The good news is that I have found a rather successful solution. Said solution comes in the form of being immersed in my Biology and Chemistry classes. In a week, I would have almost 9 hours of contact with Zelda-talking, ponytailed and scrawny guys. Because of them, my aesthetic appreciation of the other half of our race has dwindled and now, most males may be safe from my once avaricious and rapacious gaze.

(Please note, not all Science male students fit the aforementioned stereotype. In fact, there are quite a few blonde and Ralph Lauren model-esque guys in my lectures of whom, I should note, are not safe from my oggling)

And then they all lived happily ever after.

(or so they think)