25 things

I've written 25 things about myself to post on my Facebook page. It seems this is something going around among Facebook users for a while. You probably are not so interested in knowing this much about me, though.

1. books - I love books. Reading is the most favorite of any activities. I can give up eating and sleeping for reading.

2. work - I love to work, but I cannot work when I am hungry or sleepy. Which is approx. half the time I spend in the office.

3. language - I study French. I tried Spanish and German and Chinese in the past.

4. childhood - Admittedly, I had been a weird kid. I always had to try and see.
My mother used to tell us, when my sister and I were around 3 or 4, not to stick your head out of the 2nd story balcony, because if you fall, your skull got crushed like an egg. I was sooo tempted to try, but did not want to die. So I diverted my interest to see and understand how things got crushed. Some months later, I came by a few perfect glass bottles to experiment. It was so hard to resist the urge to see it with my own eyes - do they really crush? How? When I made sure no one was watching, I dropped them on the street from the height I can manage with my arms (not very much) - the bottles, instead of crushing, were broken into pieces with huge noise. Of course, I was too little to understand that egg shells (or a child skulls) and glass are different materials, although both are easily breakable. It turned out that one of my friends' mom was watching from the window, and she made me clean up all the mess I made. Hahaha.

5. attachment to things - I get very attached to my gadgets, like mobile phones, iPods, computers. Not so much to other things like bags, shoes, stationeries...

6. sleeping - I sleep extremely deeply. Once I was in a hospital on 14th floor, and we had a fairly strong earthquake in the middle of the night (or so I heard). The whole wing was a chaos, nurses running around, things fell off from the shelves (according to others). Of course, I didn't wake up.

7. movies - watching movies seems to be our family trait - my grandpa, my father, passed down to me. Grandpa is too old for it now, but my dad and I watch most of the good films in theaters.

8. food - I love eating meat, as much as I love fish. I don't eat much of raw vegetables because it makes my body cold.

9. history - learning about the world history is one of the best things happened to me during my high school years. I still craves for more.

10. friends - I have several very very very close friends. I am not a group person, and I am so bad at keeping in touch with people that I meet at places.

11. coffee - Coffee is my addiction. Not caffeine, because I can easily live without tea or diet coke.
"Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour" (Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.)--Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord

12. colors - Since childhood, I am drawn to colors. I love looking at things in different shades of colors, like paper, colored pencils, yarn, book covers or shoes. I love flower shops, not so much because I love the flower itself, but because I love the diverse shades of colors exists in just one flower, more so in a bouquet. I don't particularly like a bouquet of crimson roses or just white flowers, because it is not so interesting to look at.

13. happiness - I believe "we are happy because we smile", rather than we smile because we are happy. Happiness comes to you if you smile. One day I was on a train feeling really grumpy. Felt like nothing would go well and everything was making me so unhappy. Then this girl, or woman rather, came on board from a station. She was smiling a most beautiful and shining smile I'd ever seen. Her smile was truly infectious. At that instance, a realization came to me - if you have this smile, everyone wants to be nice to you, everyone wants to laugh with you, help you and make you happy! She had that smile. OK, she was probably smiling because she had something happy that day. But nevertheless, I want to be that person who smiles brightly when things go wrong and encourage people. Who has a shining smile to attract all the happiness in the world.

14. crafts - I have a very good eye-finger coordination. Combined with my ability to focus on one thing hours at a time, I can work on some most intricate crafts. I am also good at drawing and coloring things on paper exactly as they look.

15. sports - I have a very very bad eye-arm and eye-leg coordination. Tennis is the most unsuitable sports for me. I like swimming, skating or skiing, though.

16. money - Recently I discovered that actually I am scared of thinking about money, and what activities related to it.

17. singing - I used to sing in gospel choirs several years ago. People told me I had a very strong voice, which I rarely use.
In gospel singing, if you are a soprano, you have to hit extremely high notes with your normal voice, without using falsetto. During our practice, the instructor always told us "If you believe you can hit the note, you can. Believe in yourself". He pushed us really hard. I never dreamt that something physical like hitting a note out of your range can be done just by "believing". Actually, you can.

18. voice - sometimes I am told that I have a clear nice voice. I like my voice when I hear in my body. I don't like to hear it in recordings. I don't like it at all.
I am attracted to people with nice voice. Deep or husky voice for men, smooth alto for women. However good looking, if the person has a strange habit of speech or sounding, I can't spend too much time with him or her.

19. looks - it seems I look like a cartoon character. Maybe that's why babies love me.

20. eating - I love eating. I love people who eat a lot (in a healthy way), and who eat gracefully.

21. hospital - I spent a fair share of time in hospitals before I became 20. I learned a lot about life, people, doctors and nurses, and about myself.

22. architecture - I once wanted to become an architect, I studied it a little, but I wasn't confident enough to believe that I would not produce anything garbage in the span of my career. Because you see so much garbage on streets. Everyday I am thankful that I wasn't the ones who made those craps. I am a coward.

23. japanese - the only thing I don't like about being a japanese and female is that it limits how and where you can travel, in a non-political sense. What I mean is, it's pretty scary when you often chased or followed in cities you don't know very well.

24. brain - I think I am a right brain person. But I don't know.

25. optimism - I am definitely an optimistic person. I also believe that people are good by nature.