Posts in category "Random"

Baby talk

One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cial­ly awk­ward. I nev­er under­stood how to talk to some­one who did­n’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pret­ty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how pho­ny it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voic­es, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mal­ly talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kit­ty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoop­sy, and the pokey of the bel­ly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­i­ty of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly does­n’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry sev­en years ago, specif­i­cal­ly about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in mono­syl­la­bles.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­plete­ly under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in anoth­er human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↩]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↩]

Meat slap

I’ve dis­cov­ered that bonk­ing my cat on the head with a pep­perette will not dis­suade her from eat­ing it.

Then again, I prob­a­bly would­n’t give up bacon if some­one slapped me with a pound.

Facebook Hater

Someone sent me this:

Hey there you face­book-hater,

I’m forced to con­tact you though the bor­ing medi­um of gmail, since you are too cool to be on face­book. I guess all the hilar­i­ous com­ments, and inter­est­ing videos and pic­tures that I post are not rel­e­vant to you. That’s fine, I guess if I was a tru­ly inter­est­ing per­son I would know how to make my own per­son­al­ized blog. My per­son­al life’s tapes­try is worth­less in your eyes, because it has been woven with the low class, and eas­i­ly obtain­able fibers offered by face­book. If every­one can do it, then is must be crass.

But I did­n’t email you to lec­ture you on your elit­ist, seclu­sion­ary stance towards all the peo­ple who would like to be your friend and share the inter­est­ing tid-bits of their ever-chang­ing lives with you through an easy, fun, and con­ve­nient social net­work­ing device, which can only invade your pri­va­cy as much as you let it…

It’s fun­ny cause I bare­ly said any­thing to him about Facebook. As usu­al, I just explained that I don’t hate it, but don’t think it’s nec­es­sary for me when I have a per­son­al domain that gives me com­plete con­trol of my con­tent (and pri­va­cy). This is my polite answer. But he saw through all that and quite ele­gant­ly summed up how I feel about com­mu­ni­cat­ing through Facebook in the first para­graph of his e‑mail.

Character study

By some, he’d be con­sid­ered a catch, but only because he fol­lows the rit­u­als of rela­tion­ships (even if it is with­out an appre­ci­a­tion for them), and is exceed­ing­ly nor­mal, some­thing more and more uncom­mon when com­bined with the qual­i­ty of being sin­gle as we get old­er.

He has a good heart. This fact becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly clear by his fourth domes­tic beer, which he drinks because he can’t tell much of a dif­fer­ence between brands and it’s cheap­er than import­ed; though he’ll hap­pi­ly stock his fridge with Corona when his friends come over. The alco­hol makes him slop­py, but nev­er abu­sive or acer­bic.

Sitting just out­side the main­stream is his taste in music. It’s nei­ther eclec­tic, nor par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. If one of his favourite bands hap­pened to have a sleep­er hit, he would­n’t care, or even notice.

There’s an even­ness in his deme­nour that makes you won­der whether he can tru­ly feel joy. If he tastes the same thing as you do when bit­ing into a piece of medi­um-rare steak, or if he real­ly appre­ci­ates her.

But he treats her well, and that’s all that mat­ters. Maybe not as well as you did, but it’s good enough to make her for­get.

When she’s with him, she knows what she was nev­er sure of with you. He’s uncom­plex, yet so unlike your­self that you can’t fig­ure out what it is about him.

Their hap­pi­ness is based on some­thing you were nev­er able to share with her. You’ll spend your whole life won­der­ing what that is, and he’ll nev­er know how lucky he is.

Happiness condensed

The weath­er’s been so hot late­ly that I’ve been eat­ing a tub of ice cream every three days. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been try­ing to come up with new ways of con­sum­ing it. At one point, I added some choco­late wafer rolls, and real­ized you don’t even need a spoon because you can use the rolls to scoop up the ice cream.

It’s best to do this with a pre­mi­um brand like Häagen-Dazs, because they’re real­ly dense (less air is mixed in), so they stay firm for longer. That means you don’t have to eat the ice cream quick­ly before it melts…but if you lived alone and had no one to mind the slurp­ing, a wafer roll dou­bles as a straw too.

ice cream

 

This one is Caramel Cone Explosion, my favourite Häagen-Dazs flavour: caramel swirls and sug­ar cone cov­ered in Belgian milk choco­late with roast­ed almost pieces, in caramel ice cream.

I also recent­ly tried If I Had A Million Flavors by Ben & Jerry’s, which is described on the tub, “A Collision of Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams mixed with Chocolate-cov­ered tof­fee, White Chocolate Chunks, Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate-Covered almonds”. Which is pure hedo­nism, real­ly.