The Magical Meme

I have not written on this blog for a while, and it was not for a lack of things to write about. Perhaps it is the normal winter slump, the nasty cold that I have, or my Fernweh that is keeping me away from the keyboard.

There is something special about this facebook meme that is getting people to reveal random facts about themselves; even people who normally do not take part in this tagging game. It is that special something that finally got me out of my slump. I won't bother tagging anyone, as most of you have done this already! (Don't let that stop you if you have not done this yet, though!) Here goes:

1. I love cooking with offals. Unfortunately, what offal I cook and when I cook it depends on hubby. He enjoys liver and oxtail, so I can cook those whenever I wish to. I save recipes with tripe (“Eck! Even my mother’s dog refused to eat that!”), and my favourite, chicken heart and gizzard adobo, for when he is away or when I am especially annoyed with him.
2. Since high school, I have justified impulse purchases of sale items by means of the number of chocolate bars I could have purchased with the money I saved. (“Look! I bought this shirt for 20 bucks less than the original price – that’s 40 chocolate bars at the dollar store!”) The only time I do not feel the need to do this is when I purchase books. Books are always worth the expenditure.
3. When I start humming loudly for no obvious reason, it is often a sign that I just relived an embarrassing memory. Hubby knows this and exploits it to no end, and I love him for it =)
4. I do not own a driver’s license, and plan to get one only when it is absolutely necessary.
5. Scotland Yard is my favourite board game, followed closely by chess (even though I am horrible at it).
6. The only movie I have seen where the dubbed German is better than the original English is “Ice Age”. Otto Waalkes outshone John Leguizamo as the voice of Sid.
7. I can roll my Rs using the front end of my tongue, but not the back end. Hubby tried to teach me numerous times but I usually just end up coughing.
8. I am a city-gal through and through. The only way I will voluntarily move back to suburbia is if it is extremely well connected to the city. My own car would not hurt either.
9. I do not have a middle name. I kind of wish I did. In Germany, middle names do not exist – they are counted as another first name that you are free to use when you like.
10. I love the cut-and-paste nature of the German vocabulary.
11. I think Tyler Connolly has a sinfully sexy singing voice.
12. I think Colin Firth is sinfully sexy. Period.
13. I am the black sheep on my side of the family. On hubby’s side I am the foreigner, which always makes for interesting get-togethers =)
14. My favourite beer is Erdinger’s non-alcoholic Weißbier. Very yummy and safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women to drink. It gives you a nice boost of vitamin B and folic acid.
15. During my last pregnancy, all I wanted to watch were violent and gory movies. Dramas and rom-coms bored me.
16. I do not understand how someone can be politically apathetic, even though I used to be exactly that.
17. I received a pot of orchids (my favourite flower and VERY difficult to maintain) for my birthday two years ago. It seems to have awakened the plant-whisperer in me as it is still alive and blooming. I am proud.
18. When I can, I purchase from the bakery and butcher downstairs. I love that community-feeling you get, the kind you can’t get from the large, generic grocery stores.
19. I never knew that homosexuality was taboo until I was about nine years old and my mother shushed me for mentioning that my aunt is lesbian.
20. I don’t care if my children end up being homosexual, as long as they give me grandchildren!
21. Sometimes I wake up with a very deep voice, especially when I am sick. I like to scare hubby with it, and make him think that he just spent the night with another man.
22. My favourite household chores are the ones I was never forced to do when I was a child – scrubbing the washroom clean and the laundry. I tend to drag my feet when cleaning bedrooms.
23. My singing ability makes William Hung’s voice sound like that of Luciano Pavarotti.
24. I like to sing. A LOT. I feel sorry for my family.
25. I have a Filipino accent that creeps in when I talk with my mother, or when I am flustered. Hubby finds it charming. It embarrasses me.

Joe the Delusional

Every now and then someone comes along that makes you slap your forehead in complete and utter disbelief. Joe the Plumber is one of those people. This man, after exposing himself as a liar and a tax cheat, has the gall to say “I don’t know if the American public deserves me”. If anyone is suffering from a delusion of grandeur, he is. That is all.

My Rediscovered "Vice" - Books

With the exception of the daily news, I have not watched television since Christmas. My DVD collection has remained undisturbed. I have neglected my blogs, the number of undeleted junkmail in my inbox grew, and my memory card is full of photos that have yet to be transferred to the computer, let alone edited. I have reverted from baking time-consuming, complex cakes and pies to quick and easy muffins and cookies. At fault is my passion for reading, which rekindled once my youngest learnt to sleep the whole night through.

I have always been a bookworm. Whilst other children snuck money from their parents to buy candy and toys at the local convenience store, I snuck money away from my lola (grandmother) to buy books from the book fair. Receiving my first library card at six years of age felt much more liberating than getting my driver’s permit at 18. Even after my mother profusely blamed my sudden need for eyeglasses when I was eleven with my nightly routine of reading for hours with the assistance of a measly 25 watt bedside lamp, I never stopped flipping those pages and devouring the words. Never mind shoes and handbags – the bookstore is the most dangerous threat to my wallet.
NB - This also happens to be a trait shared by hubby and his mother, who alone has over 3000 books and, whilst house-hunting, had to have specialists assess if the structure of the prospective new home was strong enough to support the weight. Throwing away/selling our books is unheard of in our family. In my opinion, owning a book possesses a certain seductive quality that owning, say, a Kate Spade handbag does not.

Oftentimes I found myself with a growing pile of unread books that I picked up on the sale tables of Dussmann and Hugendubel (or Chapters and Indigo if I happened to be in Canada), which resulted in a recurring New Year’s resolution to read them all before buying more. 2008 was the first year that I followed this through, which probably explains the number of books I received from hubby and his mom last Christmas.

Within the next month I had already devoured all four of them, plus one of the books that hubby received from his mom. (It may not seem like that many, but I read much more slowly in German.) On the next available opportunity hubby I packed up the kids and went on my first visit to Dussmann in months, where we made a lovely discovery – a riveting, growing book series that covers very nearly everything from Anarchism to The Meaning of Life to Wittgenstein: Very Short Introductions from Oxford University Press. I fear that I will find it impossible to restrain my purchases until I own the complete series!

Another recent discovery of mine is shelfari.com, a website that combines the social networking of facebook with the concept of the book/reading club. My initial attraction to the website occurred during my search for a library-like widget for this blog. A nice spillover effect from joining this site is that it enables me to be genuinely surprised on my birthday again. By compiling and maintaining an online wishlist, I need never be pestered about my birthday/Easter/Christmas wishes again (I hate dictating to people what I want to receive, which is especially tiresome in a family that refuses to give gift certificates on principle).