21 fun facts about me
Personal
1. I studied Chemical Engineering in university. I didn't have a reason for it, nor did I have any plans as to what to do with my degree; I leapt into it simply because I never did well in JC for any subject that wasn't Physics or Chemistry.
2. I use self-deprecating humour often, but problems come when people who don't know me very well think I have got low self-esteem, or when people assume I will be okay with them insulting me however they like.
3. I don't like to travel. WOW, surprise everyone! I prefer learning about cultures through content created by the very individuals who live in that culture (like reading Humans of New York and the like). I think doing so provides a level of intimacy with a culture you can never get through tourism.
4. I hate cheese and mayonnaise. I do however love clear soup and I used to spend a lot of my time brewing pork ribs/chicken soup for my meals when I was in uni.
5. I hate being in the sun and I hate going on holidays in the summer. I tell this to a lot of my European friends in uni and they give me this look like, "are you even a real person?" LOL! I prefer when the monsoon season comes and the skies remain grey even when it isn't pouring heavily. I prefer to travel in autumn when your ears aren't freezing off and you can get around comfortably in just a coat and normal clothing underneath.
6. I'm the exact opposite of my father; I dislike flying. A lot of my colleagues tell me that flying gives them a sensation of indescribable euphoria. For me, I feel sick the moment a plane takes off and I continue to be for hours on end even after stepping down from a flight.
7. I've never had a traumatic experience before in my life but strangely enough, I'm guarded af. I don't trust people easily and I establish my boundaries clearly very early into knowing someone. This could be why I get along better with people who are open and honest about their feelings rather than the courteous and PR-ish types even though I'm the latter myself, because I trust the former better.
8. I'm really bad at small talk, it wears me out really quickly. I managed to do this throughout my freshman year and then drained out all the emotional energy I had for small talk for the next 5 years. I usually rely very heavily on others initiating the conversation while I carry on from there.
9. I've often joked that since some of my friends don't really consider me female (my behaviour is stereotypically masculine most of the time), and yet I'm still attracted to men, I ought to identify as a gay man. I sometimes jokingly say other gay men are my "姐妹" ("sisters").
On my hobbies
10. I had been into makeup since I was a pimply, sweaty teenager at 17. Personally, I don't think women need makeup to look good, in fact I believe health and hygiene are the key to looking good. Instead, I see makeup as a form of art and self-expression; they are like the clothes you wear to make a statement or to express your personality.
11. Although I exercise fairly regularly, I don't like physical activities. You will never see me sign up for a mountain hike or diving. I prefer bonding with my friends through coffee, food and loads self-entertainment doing stupid stuff.
On embarrassing things I did as a teenager
12. I said quite a lot of nasty stuff on the blog I had when I was secondary school (and my Twitter account, which is gone now), many revolving around traditionally girly girls or effeminate men and the stuff they do that irked me. Thankfully, I've grown out of that internalised misogyny.
13. I used to be a real creep towards the guys in JC that I considered cute, and when they didn't like me back I used to pull that "I'm such a nice girl, he's so shallow not to look past appearances!" I've said a lot about how I dislike so-called "Nice Guys" and their entitlement when I actually used to be that "Nice Girl" myself. Glad I finally grew up and stopped engaging in that sort of self-entitled behaviour towards men.
14. I didn't like one of my form teachers back in secondary school because I didn't agree with his teaching style. He was one of those idealistic young teachers who believed in learning for learning's sake, and vehemently disagreed with the heavy emphasis Singapore society places on academics, and this manifested in the way he taught us. I was getting a little anxious at the time because my grades were slipping and I just wished he would freaking just teach us properly and help us ace the exams god damn it.
It is only years down the road, and after being left on my own to move or die both in the early days of my career and in uni, that I realise how right he had been all along and that if you had been spoonfed knowledge early in your school days, you will likely need to be hand-held throughout your life as a member of society. I have also left the achievement-focused life behind, as I've learned the hard way that you can have all the good grades you want but outside of the classroom, you will still be nothing without mettle and soft skills. Thank you, Mr Tee.
On my Social Justice Warrior-ism
15. I unfriend people on Facebook who share or "like" hateful stuff. In fact I just did so yesterday. I'm an outspoken Social Justice Warrior so if they believe in the hateful stuff they share they most likely wouldn't like the content I post anyway, so it's a win-win situation. Plus, most people are too busy with their own lives to care if some insignificant person unfriends them on Facebook, so I don't think anyone is going to be offended.
16. Most of these people I unfriend are people I don't know very well, but a small percentage are colleagues. This doesn't mean I allow our working relationship to be affected just because they said one thing I didn't like. Admittedly I won't want some of them as a friend outside of work, but I am allowed to respectfully disagree with someone without wrecking our professional relationship. The only person I've completely purged from my life was someone who had trolled on my posts multiple times for years and consistantly displayed behaviour (online and offline) that pointed to serious character problems.
17. I've heard a lot of talk about showing bigots kindness and patience because their hatred stems from ignorance rather than a genuine ugliness in their hearts. We must listen to their voices and engage them, they say.
Now, I don't disagree with this and I respect the people who are noble enough to engage these bigots with a loving heart. But everybody has a limited amount of patience and kindness in their hearts and we'd very much rather give it to the people who deserve it. Why bother with the people who are filled with hate when I can just block, ignore and get on with my life?
People are surely going to frown at my attitude and say I am intolerant of differing views despite preaching all day about tolerance. Ah, that's right, I'm narrow-minded and intolerant. So maybe the bigots need to be educated and they need people who can do that patiently, but don't expect this patience to come from me. I don't intend to reward hurtful behaviour with my friendship.
18. I try my best not to judge people based on how society thinks they should act, but I believe everybody is prejudiced against certain types of characters to some extent.
Personally I am particularly biased against the kind of guy that is loud, obnoxious, acts like he thinks he is better than everyone else and places a heavy emphasis on masculinity (most of the time this involves treating women like sex objects, bullying other guys they deem "less than" them and degrading women who aren't pretty, skinny and unopinionated).
I (and some of my female friends) have had these types force their misogynistic unpleasantness onto me uninvited and turn hostile when I tell them to stop, or even when I just wish to stop interacting with them, many many times. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to hate them and want to avoid them. I get a very bad impression of guys who exhibit such characteristics and get instinctively wary of them.
On my friendships
19. I was such a brat in my teens I'm surprised that people wanted to be my friend then and still stuck with me till now. :D
20. If there was something 24 years of life has taught me is that friendship should be saved for the people that deserve it. Yes, there are people in life who will reject your kindness in their pursuit of social status and to fulfill their desire to be part of some "cool gang" (some of these people are near the age of 30 no less). You can only accept their decision and move on. Your name is not "Bob The Builder" and you cannot be engaging in Project Fix-A-Trainwreck every now and then and try to "love" a toxic person into respecting themselves. The only way a toxic person can be fixed is when they want to fix themselves. Seek out emotionally healthy people and form emotionally healthy bonds with them instead.
21. The one time I lost a friendship to betrayal, I spent a good 2 years reeling from the emotional after effects of it. I don't harbour any more bad feelings towards any of the parties involved, but my biggest takeaway is that a friendship takes two hands to clap and how someone reacts to me is determined by how I make them feel. Doesn't matter what your intentions were, if they somehow sense that you're resentful of them, they're going to react accordingly. That incident has made me cherish my existing friendships more and caused me to put in extra effort into ensuring seeds of resentment don't sow between us.
1. I studied Chemical Engineering in university. I didn't have a reason for it, nor did I have any plans as to what to do with my degree; I leapt into it simply because I never did well in JC for any subject that wasn't Physics or Chemistry.
2. I use self-deprecating humour often, but problems come when people who don't know me very well think I have got low self-esteem, or when people assume I will be okay with them insulting me however they like.
3. I don't like to travel. WOW, surprise everyone! I prefer learning about cultures through content created by the very individuals who live in that culture (like reading Humans of New York and the like). I think doing so provides a level of intimacy with a culture you can never get through tourism.
4. I hate cheese and mayonnaise. I do however love clear soup and I used to spend a lot of my time brewing pork ribs/chicken soup for my meals when I was in uni.
5. I hate being in the sun and I hate going on holidays in the summer. I tell this to a lot of my European friends in uni and they give me this look like, "are you even a real person?" LOL! I prefer when the monsoon season comes and the skies remain grey even when it isn't pouring heavily. I prefer to travel in autumn when your ears aren't freezing off and you can get around comfortably in just a coat and normal clothing underneath.
6. I'm the exact opposite of my father; I dislike flying. A lot of my colleagues tell me that flying gives them a sensation of indescribable euphoria. For me, I feel sick the moment a plane takes off and I continue to be for hours on end even after stepping down from a flight.
7. I've never had a traumatic experience before in my life but strangely enough, I'm guarded af. I don't trust people easily and I establish my boundaries clearly very early into knowing someone. This could be why I get along better with people who are open and honest about their feelings rather than the courteous and PR-ish types even though I'm the latter myself, because I trust the former better.
8. I'm really bad at small talk, it wears me out really quickly. I managed to do this throughout my freshman year and then drained out all the emotional energy I had for small talk for the next 5 years. I usually rely very heavily on others initiating the conversation while I carry on from there.
9. I've often joked that since some of my friends don't really consider me female (my behaviour is stereotypically masculine most of the time), and yet I'm still attracted to men, I ought to identify as a gay man. I sometimes jokingly say other gay men are my "姐妹" ("sisters").
On my hobbies
10. I had been into makeup since I was a pimply, sweaty teenager at 17. Personally, I don't think women need makeup to look good, in fact I believe health and hygiene are the key to looking good. Instead, I see makeup as a form of art and self-expression; they are like the clothes you wear to make a statement or to express your personality.
11. Although I exercise fairly regularly, I don't like physical activities. You will never see me sign up for a mountain hike or diving. I prefer bonding with my friends through coffee, food and loads self-entertainment doing stupid stuff.
On embarrassing things I did as a teenager
12. I said quite a lot of nasty stuff on the blog I had when I was secondary school (and my Twitter account, which is gone now), many revolving around traditionally girly girls or effeminate men and the stuff they do that irked me. Thankfully, I've grown out of that internalised misogyny.
13. I used to be a real creep towards the guys in JC that I considered cute, and when they didn't like me back I used to pull that "I'm such a nice girl, he's so shallow not to look past appearances!" I've said a lot about how I dislike so-called "Nice Guys" and their entitlement when I actually used to be that "Nice Girl" myself. Glad I finally grew up and stopped engaging in that sort of self-entitled behaviour towards men.
14. I didn't like one of my form teachers back in secondary school because I didn't agree with his teaching style. He was one of those idealistic young teachers who believed in learning for learning's sake, and vehemently disagreed with the heavy emphasis Singapore society places on academics, and this manifested in the way he taught us. I was getting a little anxious at the time because my grades were slipping and I just wished he would freaking just teach us properly and help us ace the exams god damn it.
It is only years down the road, and after being left on my own to move or die both in the early days of my career and in uni, that I realise how right he had been all along and that if you had been spoonfed knowledge early in your school days, you will likely need to be hand-held throughout your life as a member of society. I have also left the achievement-focused life behind, as I've learned the hard way that you can have all the good grades you want but outside of the classroom, you will still be nothing without mettle and soft skills. Thank you, Mr Tee.
On my Social Justice Warrior-ism
15. I unfriend people on Facebook who share or "like" hateful stuff. In fact I just did so yesterday. I'm an outspoken Social Justice Warrior so if they believe in the hateful stuff they share they most likely wouldn't like the content I post anyway, so it's a win-win situation. Plus, most people are too busy with their own lives to care if some insignificant person unfriends them on Facebook, so I don't think anyone is going to be offended.
16. Most of these people I unfriend are people I don't know very well, but a small percentage are colleagues. This doesn't mean I allow our working relationship to be affected just because they said one thing I didn't like. Admittedly I won't want some of them as a friend outside of work, but I am allowed to respectfully disagree with someone without wrecking our professional relationship. The only person I've completely purged from my life was someone who had trolled on my posts multiple times for years and consistantly displayed behaviour (online and offline) that pointed to serious character problems.
17. I've heard a lot of talk about showing bigots kindness and patience because their hatred stems from ignorance rather than a genuine ugliness in their hearts. We must listen to their voices and engage them, they say.
Now, I don't disagree with this and I respect the people who are noble enough to engage these bigots with a loving heart. But everybody has a limited amount of patience and kindness in their hearts and we'd very much rather give it to the people who deserve it. Why bother with the people who are filled with hate when I can just block, ignore and get on with my life?
People are surely going to frown at my attitude and say I am intolerant of differing views despite preaching all day about tolerance. Ah, that's right, I'm narrow-minded and intolerant. So maybe the bigots need to be educated and they need people who can do that patiently, but don't expect this patience to come from me. I don't intend to reward hurtful behaviour with my friendship.
18. I try my best not to judge people based on how society thinks they should act, but I believe everybody is prejudiced against certain types of characters to some extent.
Personally I am particularly biased against the kind of guy that is loud, obnoxious, acts like he thinks he is better than everyone else and places a heavy emphasis on masculinity (most of the time this involves treating women like sex objects, bullying other guys they deem "less than" them and degrading women who aren't pretty, skinny and unopinionated).
I (and some of my female friends) have had these types force their misogynistic unpleasantness onto me uninvited and turn hostile when I tell them to stop, or even when I just wish to stop interacting with them, many many times. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to hate them and want to avoid them. I get a very bad impression of guys who exhibit such characteristics and get instinctively wary of them.
On my friendships
19. I was such a brat in my teens I'm surprised that people wanted to be my friend then and still stuck with me till now. :D
20. If there was something 24 years of life has taught me is that friendship should be saved for the people that deserve it. Yes, there are people in life who will reject your kindness in their pursuit of social status and to fulfill their desire to be part of some "cool gang" (some of these people are near the age of 30 no less). You can only accept their decision and move on. Your name is not "Bob The Builder" and you cannot be engaging in Project Fix-A-Trainwreck every now and then and try to "love" a toxic person into respecting themselves. The only way a toxic person can be fixed is when they want to fix themselves. Seek out emotionally healthy people and form emotionally healthy bonds with them instead.
21. The one time I lost a friendship to betrayal, I spent a good 2 years reeling from the emotional after effects of it. I don't harbour any more bad feelings towards any of the parties involved, but my biggest takeaway is that a friendship takes two hands to clap and how someone reacts to me is determined by how I make them feel. Doesn't matter what your intentions were, if they somehow sense that you're resentful of them, they're going to react accordingly. That incident has made me cherish my existing friendships more and caused me to put in extra effort into ensuring seeds of resentment don't sow between us.
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