Six Weird Things About Me

There is no rest for the wicked. I am being punished for making fun of the most powerful man in the world (see previous post). Claudia has tagged me to do this. Okay, Claudia, YOU asked for it. Here it is......



THE WEIRD ANATOMY OF A MAD SCIENTIST

1. SQUIRRELS: First the obvious. I am obsessive about squirrels in general and grey squirrels in particular. I have not dressed up like a squirrel and climbed trees but it may be just a matter of time.

2. FOOD: I like “white food”. Favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla. Favorite non-alcoholic beverage is soya milk which is white in color. My comfort food includes full cream milk, Ambrosia rice pudding and soya bean curd, all of which are, you guessed it, white. I prefer white chocolates to dark. I even discovered a wonderful exotic white drink in Spain called Horcata which is made from tiger nuts.

3. TV : I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the best conceived, written and acted shows ever. I know the show has its fans but most of my friends who know me as a mostly serious, semi-over-weight, middle aged guy are flabbergasted when I extol the virtues of the economic use of words in Buffy or even worse when I sing songs from Buffy the musical. I am also reduced to tears by some of the more poignant episodes.

4. GRAVEYARDS : Regular readers will already know about my interest in spooky graveyards, tombs and catacombs. We can’t all be Egyptologists and discover tombs in pyramids. I get my kicks of learning history through the stories of the departed.

5. BANANA : I am a banana. That’s what they call Chinese who cannot speak Chinese or whose English is better than their Chinese mother tongue. i.e. yellow on the outside but white inside. To be fair, I can speak some Cantonese but only to the extent of being able to order food in a restaurant which is something I can do even in French and German. It’s one of my regrets that I did not practice it enough when I was young and now have lost its use.

6. MIRACLE. I’m not sure it qualifies as weird but it is unusual. I used to suffer from recurring lower back spasms and occasional slipped discs. When an episode occurred, I could be incapacitated for a very long time. The problem was that its, frequency had increased over the years from once or twice a year to once every month. After a particularly bad episode that left me paralyzed in pain for 3 hours on a stair landing, an X-ray was done and the doctors told me I had scoliosis. My right hip was an inch higher than my left. Over the years, my spine twisted to the right, resulting in a rounded back, flat feet and chronic pain. The doctors taught me some exercises to help control the pain but warned that it was likely to progressively get worse as I aged. From then on, I lived with chronic back pain with an occasional paralyzing spasm every few months. However, about 5 years later someone from church who has a ministry of praying for the sick had just given a talk and offered to pray for all who were at the meeting. As she prayed for me, God acted despite my own lack of faith and I felt my bones realign and immediately the pain was gone. By the end of the week, my wife noticed that I had developed the small of the back which had been missing for years. Most importantly, I have no pain since then (7 years ago) except one occasion after lifting an extremely heavy weight improperly. Today, I am pain free and no longer have flat feet. Praise God.



I am going to tag dave, le nightowl, squirrel and nancyle.