10 things about me meme

[vilakins]

I was tagged for this by kerravonsen most recently and other people before her, including zoefruitcake, I think. I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you want to post your own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts, go right ahead and I'll be very interested to read about them.

10 weird habits/things/little known facts

1. I call the cats 'sweetness', 'darling', 'cutie' etc but am incapable of using those sorts of words on a human.
   
   
2. I can do the Bewitched twitch.
   
   
3. Though I hardly ever have to, I can get by in Yiddish, in which I seem to have a Polish accent.
   
   
4. There are a lot of foods I won't eat, but the ones that cause me the most trouble are pork/ham/bacon (which are in almost everything in NZ so it's easier to say I'm vegetarian when I'm on a course), and olives and shellfish which seem to brand me as somehow non-cool.
   
   
5. I studied Latin at high school--and enjoyed it.
   
   
6. I have a physics degree but I only ever used it in a holiday job I had once doing experiments at a nuclear research institute.
   
   
7. I can dream and think in German. I also don't have an accent in it; people assume I'm German till my first mistake. It usually takes me about 3-5 minutes to make one. :-P
   
   
8. I buy all my clothes (and many other things) by mail order because I hate shopping with a passion. About a third of my clothes are from the men's section.
   
   
9. I can bend my fingers back at 90 degrees to my hand.
   
   
10. I don't watch or read the news. I don't want to know about the horrible and depressing things people do to other people. I am much happier that way. Documentaries and articles about the things that interest me are another matter though.

Comments

[the-summoning-d.livejournal.com]

Cool. I know what you mean about shopping; I hate it too. I buy from charity shops, mostly. Or steal clothes from friends/relatives. Mainly male friends/relatives.

Also, I think and dream in French sometimes.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I used to buy from a really excellent 2nd-hand shop near where I worked. So far I haven't found another as good. I do not count the recycled designer places a friend shops at where the clothes have only been worn once by rich bitches; she still pays hundreds per item. [rolls eyes] I'm always amazed she'll be seen in public with me.

What was really weird once was dreaming I was doing a crossword where a French word fit the clue. I looked it up when I woke up--and it was correct and I didn't even know I knew it. It was sitting in a file somewhere and popped up during the night-time defrag.

[babel.livejournal.com]

Hey, now. There is nothing weird about #5.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That one was a 'little-known fact', not a weird one. :-)

[kerravonsen]

I can do the Bewitched twitch.

Really? I'm impressed.

and olives and shellfish which seem to brand me as somehow non-cool.

I dislike olives too. And while I like crustaceans, I don't like bivalves.

I don't watch or read the news.

I tend not to either. I figure that if something really important happens, my friends will tell me.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

But I often don't want to be told. When people start talking about horrible murders, almost always of women or girls or babies, I stop them and say I don't want to know. I can't understand why people want to talk about things like that but they seem to get some sort of pleasure from it. [feels ill thinking about it]

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

I've dreamt in Japanese before, and always wake up going, "Why am I not REALLY that fluent?" But of course it could just be my dream convicning me I'm better in it than I really am. @_@; (I will never be mistaken for Japanese though, haha.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Maybe you are! I've used German words and once a French word I didn't realise I knew in dreams, but I obviously had them stored away somewhere. Perhaps the files are easier to access in dreams.

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

ditto 9 and partially 10, as I do read it online but not in great detail

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's a bit easier on line because I can avoid the worst stuff and just do a search on what interests me.

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

You got more direct use out of your degree than I have

Ancient History and Classical Archaeology with Archaeology and Prehistory, since you ask.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

But you enjoyed getting it, right? :-)

[lizamanynames.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is some acinating stuff, espacially about the German. I think in French, sometimes, and once or twice when I was taking it, in Cree.

I rather love shopping - but hate doing it alone. TFor me, the point of shopping is to get together with a freind (or two, or six), look at pretty and cool things, try on/sample/listen to pretty and cool things, and talk talk talk talk talk, sometimes about the pretty things or inspired by the pretty things.

Oh, and get lunch at a take-out counter in the mall or near the shops, and then do it all over again for aother few hours. XD

My love of shopping is, I think, my only definitively "female" trait. That I have the exact same approch to music, movies, and video games as I do jewlery and shoes makes me think that it's an arbitrary distinction anyway.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

and then do it all over again for aother few hours

You are a minion of Satan and are describing hell to me, aren't you. [is frightened into being good]

I don't get the whole thing about shoes (or ponies) but I do like jewellery. I even started making it.

[lizamanynames.livejournal.com]

...I don't get shoes either. I hit up the local Goth shop, and weird tribal and/or import stores - and of course hobby/comic/gaming/geek shops.

Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I think of it, there's some shopping I like: craft markets and the Trade Aid shop which has cool ethnic stuff.

[kalinda001.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting list of things.

experiments at a nuclear research institute
Oooo that sounds very interesting...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It was! I did experiments with radioactive isotopes and had fun with the sheer nutters and assorted eccentrics who worked there. They couldn't hire me permanently due to a staff ceiling, but just as I was going overseas, they offered me a job. Too late. I don't think I regret not taking it since I had such a wonderful time in Israel and Germany and travelling around, but sometimes I wonder.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Weird? I am impressed! Absolute agreement with the news! But seafood - hmm, not common thing here, just sweetwater fish. Nuclear physics...oh dear. As I have said: I am VERY impressed!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Don't be! I once thought I'd make a success of my life but it all fizzled out. My only success now is my B7 fiction which has a limited readership.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Ha! Limited but eager and very grateful!!!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I think that you may have made more of a success out of your life than you realise. How about your relationship with Greg, for instance? I'm sure that a lot of people would envy you that.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

True! That is the miracle in my life. :-)

[florencisalesas.livejournal.com]

It is very curious how we, human beings, are.
I am just the opposite of you - even I think it is great you are as you are - in 1), 4) and 10) and half the opposite in 8) (I hate shopping but I love the existence of shops - for me, they are the heart which makes bomb the blood of the city - and I love walk by the city and look the showrooms and daydream about this book, that CD, this toy or that pencil :) Intenet is killing - here, at least - lot of shops of more than 200 years old and our cultural identity dies a bit with it :S)
All those numbers when you say something about language fascinated me (that one about Yiddish with polish accent is fantastic! I envy you for this :D)
As I said you before: it is incredible how different we are but how we can give us so ones to each others, just by this reason :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The shops never lost my custom though because they never had it. Before I bought on the internet, I made my own clothes. I hate buying clothes in shops, esp the ones where they look at people like me as if I shouldn't have the presumption to even go in.

I don't think there's any danger of shops here dying, and anyway we have hardly any history and culture to lose.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Good on you for knowing the languages you do. :)

I must confess clothes shopping has become less an ordeal since the Asian shops arrived - I'm on the skinny side and most of the 'Western' shops assume you're well built and buxom. :(

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Um... only up to a certain point. All the best clothes are designed for thin people.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the 'best clothes' are all these synthetic fabrics too, which makes me wary (I prefer clothes that can 'breathe').

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Me too. I made the mistake of not wearing a cotton shirt today and felt ill from the heat by the time I got home.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Ouch. :( Apparently we're having a record summer at the moment (which isn't always good!).

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I usually love summer, but I'm not handling this heat well, having to live and work in it. The only respite I get is in the car. We have to have the windows open till we go to bed just so the temperature will stay below 28C inside and I get eaten alive by mozzies. They even bit my forehead yesterday.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

I sympathise - the mozzies love me (especially my legs) too at the moment. :( The flies have been bad this year as well...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Today was lovely; just a few degrees cooler so that open windows and a fan worked well. More of those please!

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was cooler today, wasn't it. :) Tomorrow we're supposed to have the cool winds again too...

[jecono.livejournal.com]

What is the Bewitched twitch?

I'm also very impressed by your knowledge of languages!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's from an old US TV program where the witch made things happen by twitching her nose (really more a mouth twitch that also moves the nose).