Five things about me...

Finally, I'm doing as the blakkat prescribed. Here are the five 'random facts' about me.

1. I was a badass - in primary school.
In Grade 4, when I was nine, I was routinely chucked out of the class for disrupting it. I was called turbo tongue and motor mouth and an attention-seeker and all those other labels schools need because they don't actually know how to stimulate smart kids. I was never a nasty fuck-up - I was just exuberant, and they wanted to suppress that. It got to the point where I would sit down at 8.30am, open my trap and be shown the door mid-sentence. Our classroom was one of those portable units and 'outside' meant just that. I was often there in the rain. In Grade 5 our teacher divided our class into Row 1 - for the brainiacs, Row 2 - for the average people, Row 3 - for the dummies and Row 4 - for the naughty kids. Row 4 only had five people in it, and only one of us was a girl. Yep! I later saw a few of the Row 1 goody goodies in high school and bless me if they weren't on their way to becoming nail technicians. Real brainiacs they were.

On camp in Grade 5 there was a boys cabin, a girls cabin and a special scary hut called 'siberia', the camp equivalent of solitary or the brig (or perhaps Guantanamo Bay). I was sent there for the night for doing something - can't remember what - though I was allowed to dress up as a punk and do some pretty snazzy breakdancing during a dance routine to Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride at the special 'music night' before I was carted away*, so that was ok.

The next year I was separated from my entire friendship group, because they thought that isolating me might shut me up. It just made me talk to new people. The Principal of the school was a rabid patriot who made us sing the turgid 'Advance Australia Fair' every Monday morning. He hated me. He always just assumed I would amount to nothing and wrote the same crap in my report every year - "attention seeker who disrupts the class and shows off all the time" - when he didn't even know me as a student. Petty as it is, about a hundred years later when I graduated with my Arts/Law degree the first thing I thought of was to go to that pissy little place and ram my degree up his arse. Not bitter. Anyway, I am now a big nerd.

2. I love the Baltic States - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
I guess it's all those cheekbones, high-percentage proof white spirits and the former Eastern Block associations and the romance of the Baltic Sea. I think it started with Latvia's Maria Naumova winning Eurovision in 2002...





and continued when I discovered that Lithuania's capital Vilnius features a sculpture of Frank Zappa.


Not the most impressive statue, but nevertheless...

For decades prior to my liking for the Baltics, I was a card carrying anglophile, like most Australian teenagers of my generation. The early part of this blog still bears testament to this, though I was well into adulthood when I started it. I grew up with British comedy (The Goodies, The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, Alan Partridge, The Fast Show, Ab Fab and later, The Office and The Mighty Boosh), TV drama (Cracker, The Bill, This Life etc) and even sport, and of course, I loved their music. You can keep most of their musical output at the minute, but I do still have a penchant for UK pop culture. Thankfully I'm over wanting to live in London forever (God!) or marry some fop like Rupert Penry-Jones now.


Rupert

3. I am a multiple lapsed vegetarian.
When I was ten I made my first attempt at vegetarianism after seeing a documentary about seals being bludgeoned to death for their fur in Canada. I wept into my spaghetti bolognese, and vowed never to eat it again... after this one last plate. I then followed a three day regime of carrots, apples and celery until my mum intervened. Subsequently, at 18, 22, 27, 30 I had six month to two year stints at it, where I would check for rennet and gelatine (I still do - why would you put cow spine in yoghurt or cream - no thanks!) and I was no vegequarian - I was strict, but then I would lapse spectacularly and decide to go the whole hog, as it were.

I have to say, friends and family never made it easy, baiting me with dumplings and curries, relating tales of recent sightings of my meat-devouring ways - cheering when I gave in to succulent roasts. I acknowledge my part in my own meat-eating, but I was aided and abetted at every turn. My old-school dad, encouraged by my mum (who likes nothing better than a clean plate) said I was not a N****n (surname) if I didn't eat meat. I don't eat much meat these days, but I don't have a big guilt attack when I do. I think I've learned that phasing something out is better than anniversary dates and absolutism, which can only lead to failure. And I've discovered the delights of Chinese vegetarian restaurants, with their TVP and tofu and mushroom protein masquarading as meat - and tasting far better than the real thing. These restaurants have many haters (most of whom have never eaten at them) - people who say 'why don't you just eat meat?', or 'a true vegetarian wouldn't want to eat things that tasted of meat'. Well, duh, I like meat, and if I can have it without an animal dying for the privilege all the better for everybody concerned.

4. I am shit scared of heights, and also, embarrassingly, the dark. I am not in the least bit scared of spiders, snakes or rodents.

5. I love Rob Morrow, especially in Northern Exposure. Just the sight of his face makes me feel really happy and serene. Here:



6. A bonus fact about me: I was in a band for about five seconds of my life. I was the singer. My cohorts came to my birthday and sleazed onto most of my friends - that was our first and last public appearance as a group, and it was downhill from there. I still have aspirations, so look out.

* Just to clarify, I wasn't carted away for my breakdancing, though I probably should have been.