25 random things

Copying from my Facebook post...

1. I'm weird about personal data security. I refuse to give out my address and phone number when I shop at malls, I create a new "junk" e-mail address every year, I don't save passwords in my browser, and I flush cookies on exit. In fact, writing this list makes me a little uncomfortable.

2. I talk really fast. I also like TV shows where people talk really fast, like in all of Aaron Sorkin's shows (especially The West Wing). One time I gave a presentation at work to a large group and got asked to slow down twice. Afterwards I asked a friend if I had really been talking that fast, and he said no, I'd been talking at my normal speed, but that that was probably still too fast for anyone who wasn't used to talking to me. Unfortunately I can't help it; if I slow down I lose my train of thought.

3. I've never actually lived in Taiwan for longer than 3 months at a time, but I have an obsessive interest in Taiwanese history and politics. In seventh grade I wrote a report on Taiwanese history. It was required to be at least ten pages, but I seem to remember mine was nearly 25 pages long.

4. I was a coffee addict in high school. I would drink a cup of coffee every morning, and usually another cup in the afternoon. One day I had five cups of coffee before lunch, got really jittery and hysterical at a McDonald's, and swore off coffee. Now I only drink coffee at nice restaurants, with dinner.

5. I really enjoy travelling, as it takes me out of my normal routine and forces me to think and make choices and see things differently. I am not a fan of tours and avoid them when at all possible. I find that when I plan a trip I get a lot more out of the actual experience, so I spend a lot of time researching and deciding where to go and what to see and do. As of 2008, I have been to (I think) 35 countries in my lifetime.

6. My grandfather taught me how to ski in Tahoe (at Boreal Ridge) when I was ten. He was over 70 then, but still hitting the blue slopes. He was a good teacher, too.

7. In college, toilet paper was free, so we used it for everything. For every floor birthday, we would bake a cake, cut it up, and serve it on TP. I once set a piece of TP on fire trying to extract a burnt Pop-Tart from a toaster oven. We also liked to throw soaked wads of TP at windows on the other side of the courtyard. (Maintenance was generally unhappy with our floor, especially after we knocked down a wall and a bathroom stall during a birthday "showering".)

8. I spend a lot of time researching credit cards, hunting down online coupons, tracking plane ticket fares, comparison shopping, and doing other things that help me save teeny bits of money.

9. I was born in San Francisco (Kaiser, 4th floor, c-section, 30 days late) and raised in Marin County. I like fog. I even like the chilly Bay Area summers, and I love the beautiful autumn weather. I hate spring, mostly because of horrible pollen allergies.

10. I love sushi, and have pretty much loved it all my life. When I was four years old, I once horrified a local sushi chef by eating eight pieces of ikura (salmon roe) after a swimming lesson.

11. I am a big fan of red meat. I like many kinds of beef, including prime rib, ribeye, Korean BBQ, Vietnamese 7-course beef dinners, smoked tri-tip, beef carpaccio, and steak tartare. I also like venison, lamb, wild boar, buffalo, elk, and goat. I do not like raw horse, at least not as prepared by sushi restaurants in Taiwan. My sister and I, along with our two girl cousins, would regularly out-eat my brother and our three guy cousins at Korean BBQ, even though they cumulatively had 12 years and probably a couple hundred pounds on us.

12. Continuing the food theme: I like good food in general and eat most things (except cooked fish...why spoil good fish??). I feel like eating mediocre food is a waste of calories. My definition of good food includes cheap eats like ramen, pho, and BBQ, as well as expensive tasting menus and kaiseki sets. I used to think I could eat Japanese food every day forever, but I've become spoiled since returning to the Bay Area after college. Now I will randomly decide that I just must have Greek/Korean/Moroccan/Hawaiian/Afghan/Peruvian/Jamaican/whatever for dinner, and drive 30 minutes to get it.

13. In high school, I could not figure out how to light a bunsen burner with the scrape-y metal thing. I managed to get through regular chemistry without having to do so, but one day in AP Chem my teacher made me stay for 30 minutes trying to light my bunsen burner. I finally got my friend to light it for me with his lighter, when the teacher wasn't paying attention. Ironically I'm kind of a pyro, but I use matches. For instance, I used to like putting out matches with my fingers.

14. I used to go to bed in the clothes that I expected to wear the next day (usually jeans and a t-shirt). I developed this habit in high school because I commuted from Marin to San Francisco. By sleeping in my clothes I could get up at 6:30am and be out the door at 6:50am. I continued to do this through freshman year at MIT, until I realized I could probably wear pajamas to class anyway.

15. When I got to college I had never done dishes or laundry before. After about a month I took a big bag down to the laundry room and asked a random guy what to do. He was surprisingly helpful, although eventually I learned to ignore his directions regarding "'darks" and "lights", since nearly all my clothes (including socks) were black. I still hate housework, especially laundry. It just never ends.

16. I have bad vision (-7.0+ in both eyes). I started wearing glasses when I was eight, and contacts when I was eleven. I started to show symptoms of corneal oxygen deprivation, and have had to wear RGP contacts since college. I really really hate the glaucoma test they always do at the optometrist's where they blow a little pouf of air into your eye. It always takes me like five tries because somehow I can hear when the machine's about to shoot the air out, and I close my eyes just before it does.

17. I used to be obsessed with driving and cars, probably because I used to race my fellow commuters from Marin to San Francisco every day while driving to high school. Later on I realized that fast cars are expensive. I still enjoy driving my '98 Subaru Impreza.

18. One of my favorite authors of all time is Madeleine L'Engle, even though she has some pretty strong Christian/spiritual themes and I'm neither Christian nor spiritual. I've read every one of her non-religious books, and I spent 15 years tracking down a copy of "Ilsa", her 1946 novel which was never reprinted. After six years of eBay alerts, I finally secured a copy last year for the low low price of $188.28. Crazy, I know.

19. I read really fast in general. In fifth grade we had a reading challenge, and I read over 250,000 pages during the school year. My teacher accused me of cheating, and proceeded to quiz me, but since I'd actually read all the books, she got really frustrated trying to trip me up. I was not fond of that teacher. I compulsively read anything that's put in front of me, including Nutrition Facts on cereal boxes and trashy magazines at doctor's offices.

20. I have a tendency to spend lots of money on things that I then keep forever. For instance, I bought a top-of-the-line Pentium Pro 200 my freshman year, which I proceeded to use for the next 8.5 years. My Latitude C600 laptop which I bought in 2000 is still in service. I used two cell phones until they physically stopped working (granted I accidentally ran one of them through the washer).

21. My first boyfriend died of a drug overdose. We broke up when we both headed off to college, and this was during his Ph.D program (biophysics), so we hadn't been close for a long time, but we were still friends, and I was pretty creeped out when I heard the news. That was over four years ago.

22. I was the oldest of a group of eight cousins who all grew up in the Bay Area, and so I ended up "being in charge" a lot. I often got blamed when the other kids were "bad" or broke things, for not watching them closely enough. One time when I was 12, my 8-year-old sister and I babysat for my 2-year-old cousin and her 10-month old brother. My 6-year-old brother was there too, but he pretty much took care of himself. In retrospect, I am amazed that nothing too bad ever happened, probably because I was horribly strict and not above spanking. I also made up a lot of projects and games to keep everyone entertained.

23. I have been a huge 49ers fan since before I can remember. This was a lot easier in the '80s when they were really, really good. I still have semi-wearable sweatshirts and t-shirts from their last Super Bowl win in 1994, because after they won my mom and I ran out to the nearest gas station and bought a whole carful of "49ers Super Bowl Champions" paraphernalia.

24. I'm not good at sports but I enjoy playing them. In high school I played softball and in college I played ice hockey, both very badly. Now I play basketball, also badly. I actually managed to be okay at tennis for a few years in high school but I lost it entirely when I went to college.

25. I like stuffed animals and am always running out of places to put them. When I was a kid my parents would take us to Reno and while my dad gambled, my mom would take my brother and sister and me to the midway. We got really, really good. My sister was the expert at the bowling ball roll, while my brother mastered the horse racing game and the quarter toss, I played the rubber ball shooting games, and my mom cleaned up at the metal claw machines. My sister could also play Skee-ball without rolling the balls (she would toss them directly into the holes). We often got banned from games but would come back after shift changes.