What the Folk!

Hey Y'all I just thought that it might be fun to get to know each other better and list some random facts about ourselves. I'll start.

1) I love families. I grew up very close with my extended family and even when I live far away from my biological family I seek to create family around me. I love to cook "family dinner" for all my friends. And to me there is nothing better than a house full of kids and dogs, and laughter.

2) Even though a branch of my mother's family moved to California in 1859 I am almost 100% Irish heritage.

3) I'm kind of a princess and not terribly "outdoorsy" and I HATE hiking. But I'm totally addicted to white water rafting and this always surprises people who know me a little bit.

4) I was recently reminded that when I was a teenager David Duchovney talked about my friends and I on David Letterman.

5) When I was 16-17 I performed as a stand-up comic for a while.

6) Barak Obama went to my college, Occidental College. I also went to Oxford University and used to often walk past the college where they identified the first living cell. I know this because there was a brass plaque on the outside of the building

7) Je parle Francaise et j'ai reside en Paris mais il y a longtemps et maitenant ma Franciase est tres mairde.

I have lived in 3 different US States and 4 different countries

9) I was raised in Los Angeles and have been around the Hollywood scene my whole life. I got a fake ID and started lying to my parents to go to night clubs when I was 13 or 14. By the time I was 18 and all of my college buddies wanted to go out to clubs and party I was "over it" and had moved on to sneaking back stage at rock concerts. At any given time I can still tell you toe key code to get into the green room at the House of Blues on Sunset.

10) I love and spend my life with one of the most talented musicians I know. He is also one of the most amazing people I know and we laugh together every single day. We also live with our amazing and spoiled dog Cali. And we have two separate houses becuase he needs a house where he can have guitar parts all over the place and I need a house where I can throw dinner parties. It works for us hahahahaha. We were not married in the courts but we are married in our hearts and often refer to each other by spousal names. (And we used to live in Colorado where there is Common Law so we might actually be married)

OK, now you guys go! I want to learn all about all y'all.

Great idea for a thread Emafer! I can't believe no one's replied to this yet!

Let's see, about me.....can't really think of 10 things I want to share at the moment, but we'll see what I come up with:

1.) I have a blue belt in karate and have a secret love for really bad kung fu movies. (Hence my love of Tongan Ninja).
2.) I majored in Biology and Spanish in college. I like to think I was fluent in Spanish at one point but sadly I have no one to practice speaking it with, so my accent is probably quite bad now. I work in science now and don't plan on using the Spanish degree for anything, but don't regret spending the extra time studying it for a second.
3.) I have an almost-unhealthy obsession with the X-Files and had a giant crush on David Duchovny when I was in high school. I also secretly wanted to be a bad-ass scientist like Scully.
4.) Of all the cities I've visited, my favorite (besides Chicago) is Toronto.
5.) I used to take lessons to play the organ when I was younger, but never really got into it and found it hard to be motivated to practice. Same with the clarinet. And the guitar (in middle school). Hmm, maybe if I tried it again now I'd stick with it?
6.) I am Polish on my mom's side of the family and English on my father's side.

That's all I can think of for now, I'll add more later.....Emafer, what interesting stuff! How on earth did David Duchovny end up talking about you on Letterman?

I did the 25-things meme finally today on Facebook and after spending all that time trying to come up with 25 things, I figured I'm not going to try and cut it down to 10 now. Might as well get my time's worth!

1. I went to three schools in two states my sophomore year of high school. Evans and Ragsdale were fine, but I hated Western Guilford. Bunch of rich rednecks and the most unwelcoming group of people I've ever encountered.

2. Technically, I'm still allergic to cats, but that hasn't stopped me from getting two of my own. I've completely overcome my allergy to Luna, but Lola can still make my eyes a bit itchy if I pet her too much and then rub my eyes.

3. I went to a private Baptist school from second through eighth grade. I'm now an atheist. They're not completely related, but I think because I had so much religion in my life during those years, it made me think about it much more than I probably would have otherwise. In the process of all that thinking, I came to realize that I just don't believe it at all. I'm perfectly fine with this and feel no desire for religion or a higher power.

4. I studied art history at university. Eventually, I realized that it wasn't the painting and sculpture that really got me going, it was the architecture. First it was Romanesque and Gothic architecture, then it was Italian Renaissance architecture (especially the private pallazzi). To this day, I love looking at buildings and so a simple walk around the neighborhood is a thrill to me. I always end up with a favorite building in whichever city I live in. I tried to find a picture of my current favorite building and realized I have yet to get a good shot of it. Maybe I'll get a picture today when I'm out.

5. Love of architecture aside, I think my dream job would have been art restoration. I wish I'd thought of it before I was just about finished with school. I would have had to take some chemistry courses and was just not ready for more school at that point. Stupid me.

6. I hate the phone. I particularly hate making calls. Receiving calls isn't so bad. It's not because I don't love you that I don't call you; I just can't bring myself to call anyone except my parents. Even they don't get very regular calls.

7. I had never been to the Netherlands (outside of a layover spent in Schipol) before actually moving here. I haven't had any regrets, though.

8. Despite number 7, I'm actually not a spontaneous person at all. However, if you give me a bit of time (even as little as a minute or two) to think about something, I'm usually up for it.

9. I love to cook, but I'm not as much of a fan of baking, just because I don't understand the science of it all enough in order to improvise as much as I can in regular cooking. Plus, there always seems to be a bigger mess to clean up after baking.

10. I will try just about any type of meat. I would probably try most foods, in general, no matter how strange. Except for insects. There are very few insects that I would consider eating, because I really really really hate bugs.

11. I used to draw and paint all the time. I even drew all over the top of my desk in my Trig class in high school one day. The next day, I came in to discover my desk top covered in paper with a note addressed to whomever had defaced the school property. (It was in pencil and would clean easily enough.) I was mildly embarrassed.

12. Since moving to NY in 2000, I think I've only done a grand total of four paintings or drawings. Two paintings for the bathroom in our last house (one actually painted on the wall more as decoration than art), one painting for our current bedroom, and one pencil portrait. I think about giving it all a go again, but then panic. I think I expect too much of myself.

13. I really like the color orange.

14. I have two tattoos: the Newcomb oak tree on my left shoulder and Icarus falling on my back. I used to have my navel pierced, but I finally gave that up a year or so ago.

15. Despite living in the land of bikes, I've yet to actually try riding again since moving here. I think it's been 20 years since I've ridden a bicycle. I'm not actually afraid; it's just that when I go somewhere that's a bit far away, I'm inevitably going to buy something and we don't have a basket or bag for the bike yet. Plus, I just like walking.

16. I'm probably the world's most boring drunk. I have a high tolerance and I simply just get a bit more chatty when I've had a bit to drink, but I don't get wild and crazy.

17. I failed my way through two languages in college (Russian and Latin) before ending up back at French (which I'd studied for four years in high school) in order to fulfill my language requirements. When we got to the subjunctive tense in French class, the professor said we weren't moving on until everyone understood it. It seemed pretty straight forward to me, oddly enough, and so the exam went smoothly. When we got the grades back, I had the highest grade in the class, while most other people did horribly. Everyone else had to retake the exam except me, and no one could get a grade higher than mine (I think i got a 97). I was amused that I had done so well considering my usual brain block when it came to learning a foreign language.

18. Good lord, I'm still not done yet? I've been on a magazine cover twice. Of course, I was probably 10 or 12 at the time and it was for the University of Central Florida alumni magazine, for which my dad was the staff photographer. He used me as the model for the Halloween and Christmas covers.

19. Twenty years after receiving a mixtape from my first boyfriend (thanks Arion), I ended up becoming online acquaintances with the singer for Leather Nun, a Swedish punk band that was included on that mix tape. The internet is a crazy thing.

20. I really hate hot weather and start to feel ill and very sweaty at temperatures as low as the low/mid 70s.

21. I flew to NY specifically to see a band from New Zealand. If timing had been right, I would have flown to London to see another band from New Zealand. I like New Zealand musicians, and so should you! (The Phoenix Foundation, Fat Freddy's Drop, Age Pryor -- just a few you should check out.)

22. Phil Rickman is my favorite author and writes my favorite books. I'm not going to even pretend that something more highbrow and classic is my favorite. He's a very talented writer, though, and writes the best and most realistic dialog I think I've ever read. He also writes good ghost/supernatural/murder mystery stories.

23. I am the world's worst procrastinator.

24. One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph of my grandfather when he was in the Navy during World War II. The photo was taken in New Orleans at the Court of Two Sisters restaurant. He looks just like my dad in the photo. The last time I saw my grandfather before he died was in New Orleans when he and my grandmother came to visit me while I was at Tulane. We went to lunch at the Court of Two Sisters and he told me about having been there all those years before.

25. It often takes me an hour or more to fall asleep every night. I don't nap during the day, because I just end up feeling sick when I wake up.

I love this. Val, you have to finish yours up, girl! And Indy, I love all those details SO MUCH. (Totally with you on the phone thing.) I'm too shy to pester you with questions -- oh my god, I have so many -- so reading that was an unalloyed delight. One of these days I'm going to gather up my courage and ask you about why you moved to the Netherlands, but I might have to have a large glass of wine before I feel brave enough. Is that literally Dutch courage?

Totally unsurprisingly, I got MASSIVELY INSANELY WORDY, so please forgive me. For Christmas, I would like the gift of being succinct. I can't edit for toffee. Anyway, here we go:



1) I was born in Singapore. My family had just moved to Malaysia where healthcare wasn’t particularly fantastic, and my mum had had a very tricky birth with my older brother (the idiot had somehow managed to get the cord wrapped around his neck several times, and had flipped upside down). Singapore has superb hospitals, and as I ended up being a c-section baby, it was a smart choice. My mum laughs about how she knows I wasn’t switched at birth because I was the only tiny pink non-Chinese baby in the nursery.

2) I have three passports: Canadian, American and British. The Canadian is from my mum, who grew up in Toronto. The American is from Dad, who’s from Boston. The British one I earned for myself by living here in the UK for long enough. If I had to keep only one, it’d be the British – extremely useful and, patriotically speaking, the one I feel most attached to.

3) I really love the colour red. Not fire engine red or brick red or burgundy red, but a true crimson, scarlet, ruby red. It makes me so happy. I love wearing my basic London black clothes, but with a wine red scarf tied around my throat, or a pair of cherry red ballet flats: just a flash of colour amid the drab.

4) Like Indy, I too am an atheist. But I’m not particularly attached to the word atheist. It’s always struck me as entirely inadequate to express my utter joy and wonder at how the universe works. Atheism is often perceived as a kind of empty box that delineates only an absence of belief, whereas for me, science is a thing of unending beauty and mystery. I love the idea that our existence is so improbable, that we are unbearably lucky to be alive and to be conscious of that life. I love that the molecules that make me up will one day go on to be something else – a blade of grass, a comet, a breath of air, a star, or even another human being. Our lives are incredibly precious and unlikely. They are, in their own way, miracle enough.

5) I love Chinese food. I love to cook it, I love to eat it, I love to think about it. I love it all. From shiny mahogany-laquered Cantonese roast duck, to plump, bouncy prawn cheung fun dim sum, to numbing, fiery Sichuan fish-fragrant aubergine – oh, it’s all magical to me. My current favourite cookbook is Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery, and even if you never make a single thing from it, it’s still a wonderful, delicious read.

6) About ten years ago, I became seriously clinically depressed. It came on quite suddenly, and so severely that I had to leave high school for a year to get well. I still get ill from time to time, but I’m so incredibly lucky to have the very finest doctors in the world taking care of me, as well as parents who are as loving and supportive as it is possible to be. In the last couple of years I have been re-diagnosed as being bi-polar, although not with the more commonly-known manic depression. I am, somewhat amusingly, a hypomanic depressive, which means that although I get the suicidally bad lows, I only get little baby highs, and not the WHEEEEEEEEEEEE! LET’S HAVE SEX AND SPEND ALL MY MONEY mania that others are plagued with. It’s really, really important for me to be open about this because when I was first diagnosed, I knew of no one who had gone through anything like it, and I was deeply, desperately ashamed of myself for succumbing to it. I am a fierce advocate for talking about my experiences because there is nothing as soul-rackingly lonely as believing that you are alone in your illness.

7) I love tea. I could give up everything for tea.

8 ) My favourite place on earth is my paternal grandparents’ summer cottage on the coast of Maine. Although, technically, it now belongs to my parents, my brother, and I as my grandfather died at the ripe old age of 95 this time last year. The cottage isn’t big or fancy, but it’s wonderful. It’s set right on the water, peeking through pine trees at the sparkling, sail boat-dotted sea, and it is as close to heaven as I’ll ever get:



9) I don’t have my driver’s licence. What? Stop looking at me like that. I know, I know! But I’m a city girl! I grew up in London where driving is a bloody nightmare and public transportation is brilliant, and getting your licence just isn’t a rite of passage for kids here the way it is in North America. But maybe this is the year I’ll do it. Maybe.

10) I’d really like to go to Bhutan. There are yetis there! YETIS!

That was great, Turnip! I too love tea, though I have just started getting into it. I'll finish mine:

7.) I am hopelessly addicted to coffee. I literally can't function at work until I've had a big cup in the morning. I affectionately refer to it as "liquid crack".

8.) I love birds and have wanted a parrot for a long time now, but fear that my neighbors would want to kill me from the noise of a squawky little birdie.

9.) I love Mexican food (and really any spicy food). The hotter the salsa, the better. There is a little Mexican restaurant in the town near mine that I absolutely love.

10.) I'm Catholic, though I don't attend church as regularly as I used to (and as often as my late grandma would like me to.) Like you, Turnip, science has left me with a sense of incredible awe at how complex and beautiful the world is.

Turnip, I have to say how brave I think you are for talking about your struggles with depression. For reasons I'd rather not get into here (mainly because I'd end up writing you all a novel) I really do understand what it's like. I also am a huge advocate of talking about it, because there really is nothing scarier than feeling alone.

YAY! I have loved reading about you guys. I want to give you all big hugs.

Turnip-I have suffered with Massive Depression since I was 11 years old. I also feel that it's very very important to talk about and I have no shame in having it and truthfully it has probably made my life better because I have to stop and really consider the world around me and take personal inventory on sometimes a daily basis. I know that I will never be "normal". but I will always be me and I'm not in the least bit ashamed about that. I will always answer anyone's questions about it and I could not agree more that the worst thing in the world is feeling alone in your disease. So I am very open and don't hide it much. It's not the first thing I announce at at a party but everyone who knows me knows this about me.

I was about 14 maybe and two of my girlfriends and I were hanging out at the 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica which is like a street full of shops and restaurants that's closed off for pedestrians. Well we were going up to strangers and asking random questions. It was one of our favorite games. One of the questions we were asking was "Do you know if Mr. T is in a wheel chair?" So at this point I didn't know who David Duchovney was. I hadn't seen the X- Files yet. But my friend Bonnie was totally totally into him. She had seen him in The Red Shoe Diaries and the X- Files. So they kept chasing him around 3rd St. and finally he ducked into a Banana Republic to get away from us. Now Bonnie wanted his autograph really badly but was too afraid to say anything. So they yank me into the Banana Republic and kind of corner him at a t-shirt rack and are whispering to me "Ask him, ask him." So I said, "Are you-" and he said, "Yeah." And I said, "From the-" and he said, "Yeah." and I said, "Do you know if Mr. T is in a wheelchair?" hahahaha and he gave Bonnie his autograph. Well he was on Letterman that night cause Letterman was doing a week of shows in LA and he asked Duchovny if he ever gets chased by fans. Duchovny told the whole story except he got the random question wrong! He said that we asked him, "Do you know if Mr. T has a German Shepard?"

That is hilarious! What a cool story.

Thanks! Yeah, I don't remember him telling the story in Letterman cuase this was at least 15 years ago. But my friend Bonnie said that at one point she found the clip online and is going to try to look it up again.

I don't have time to post all mine now, but I am so impressed by all of your random facts! For now I'll just say you are not alone on the depression front - maybe that's why we were all drawn to the guys. I promise I'll post a list later.

I had it all done, went to preview it, and I had been on so long, I had to sign back on, and lost it all!!!
I'll try again tomorrow...

ARGH!

Indy, I want to know what types of meat you have tried

Emafer, I think donkey is the most unusual I've tried at the moment, but I do eat parts of pigs and cows that a lot of people don't eat or don't think to eat very much anymore. Neck, tongue, tail, feet -- the kind of stuff you have to ask the butcher for, instead of finding it packaged and ready for you. And I do love haggis! I'm not a picky eater and will generally try anything once or twice. I just wish I had more opportunities to try more unusual stuff! Outside of meat, I've heard so much about the durian fruit that I'm very tempted to try it, despite the smell. I've seen it at the Saturday market at the same stand that sells my beloved okra. I may give in and buy one the next time I go and they have it. I figure it's a bit like stinky cheese. The smell and the taste are two totally different things.

While I haven't suffered from depression as so many of you have, I do live with someone who has dealt with it and I hope the stigma of it disappears more and more as people do talk about it. It's an illness like any other illness and shouldn't be treated any differently. You don't expect someone with cancer to just "get over it" after all!

As for how I ended up here in the Netherlands ... My boyfriend has his own business importing an American brand of drums to Europe. It made more sense for him to be in Europe, instead of the US, so he can visit clients and potential clients much more easily. He's from Italy, and I speak a bit of the language myself, but neither of us is happy with the political climate in Italy these days and it's not the best place for small businesses, so that kind of knocked it out of the running. He'd been to the Netherlands on business quite a few times and really like it and the people, and the country also has certain benefits for doing business here. We briefly considered Cologne, Germany, because of some opportunities, but that fell through and so here we are. It's turned out extremely well for us, so I don't think we could have chosen better. Oh, and we ended up in Utrecht, because we wanted to be in the center of one of the bigger cities, but Amsterdam was too expensive.

Turnip, driving is overrated! I got rid of my car when I lived in NYC and didn't miss it. I love public transportation! I don't mind highway driving, but I hate city driving. Fortunately, I don't have to drive at all now, either. I can't actually, because the car we have is a manual, and I've yet to learn to drive a manual. I do want to learn, just so that I could drive in an emergency, but I'm perfectly happy to not have to drive everywhere again.


That's one of the reasons why I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not having a belief in a higher power. Personally, I find it much more amazing and awesome (in the true sense of the word) that so much can come together on its own to form the worlds/universes/galaxies as we know them. Evolution fascinates me! I generally don't like deus ex machina endings to books, so why should I like it when it comes to the whole of life. I think, for me, the idea of creation via a god is just too easy.

Sadly, despite my mother's insistence that tea cures all, I'm not a fan of tea. I try, but no. I do like coffee, but it's not a must-have.

Val's talk of Mexican food is making me crave some. We have quite a few Mexican restaurants in town, actually, but I suspect their version of Mexican is not the same as mine. Maybe I'll get the Mexican pancake tonight when we finally go to the pancake place for dinner tonight.

Oh my GOSH! That is wild. See I didn't really grow up eating meat so for me it's one of those things that I'm very wary and specific about. Oh what occasion did you have donkey and what does it taste like? I have tried alligator sausage and its was ok, a bit tough for my liking. And I've tried frog legs which again were ok, but not something that I think I'll need to eat again.


That's one of the reasons why I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not having a belief in a higher power. Personally, I find it much more amazing and awesome (in the true sense of the word) that so much can come together on its own to form the worlds/universes/galaxies as we know them. Evolution fascinates me! I generally don't like deus ex machina endings to books, so why should I like it when it comes to the whole of life. I think, for me, the idea of creation via a god is just too easy.

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I have such respect for these views even though they aren't my own. I feel that love of the world around you is a form of spirituality in it's own and it's magnificent.