Five Weird Habits

I like a good meme as much as the next blogger, especially as my brain has begun the Christmas break a tad early. The erudite, learned and charming Pavlov's Cat has tagged me, and since I have lots of amusing little eccentricities, I am happy to play along.

Here's the rules:

The first player of this game starts with the topic five weird habits of yourself, and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says You are tagged (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

1. I have a smallish piece of glass embedded in my forehead, above my left eye. I was in a car crash several years ago in which I foolishly decided to fling myself at the windscreen. As a result of this little escapable a piece of the windscreen ended up embedded in one of the cuts (I had to have 55 stitches in my face and the scars are still quite visible). The weird part is that when I have a few glasses of vino I often invite people to feel the glass in my forehead.

2. I can't stand having bare feet, so I almost always wear shoes or socks. Similarly, seeing other people wandering around with bare feet in places like shopping centres freaks me out.

3. I will not eat green peas. I will pick them out of food such as rice salad and samosas. If I come to your house and you serve me peas, please understand, I just cannot eat them. The texture and flavour are indescribably awful. I shudder at the mere thought of letting a green pea pass my lips.

4. I don't like the texture of white reflex-type paper and I will go out of my way to avoid handling it. I seem to have some strange tactile issues, don't I? I won't mention the dirt thing or the way sometimes my own fair feels wrong.

5. When I develop an interest in a topic or activity, for the first few weeks or months of that interest I obsessively read everything about I can, do it as much as possible, and talk about it non-stop. Then I become exhausted, and I have a short lull of a few weeks to a few months where I stop doing whatever-it-is completely -- as though I was never interested in it at all. Finally, I pick it up again in a much less intense manner and then do it more consistently and with less angst. From running to knitting to dog training to photography to reading certain books to cooking to painting to whatever, the pattern is exactly the same.

So I will now meme-tag: The Forbattle Crew (one or all of you crazy kids), Jennine,  Fyodor the blogless, Ducky upon her return from Woodford, and Cotard, who is currently cursed with dial-up (and who I just realised was a fellow Perthite -- duh). Anyone else who wants to take part can.

Comments

[liam]

Green peas, eh. No pie floater for you!
I've got an uncle with a similar thing to your point one. Except, replace the words 'piece of glass' with 'stainless steel .22 bullet' and 'forehead' with 'behind his temple'.
He's had it for over thirty years.

[Kate]

I have nightmares about pie floaters. And -- ouch.

[Jennine]

I used to feel the same way about peas. I still feel that way about tomatoes. And yet I still attempt to eat bruschetta because it looks so good. Those attempts never end well.

[elsewhere]

I had a v small pebble under skin near elbow after bike accident (skidding on tram track) but eventually and satisfyingly, I managed to squeeze it out (I guess that's a quasi-suggestion).

[Kate]

When I say small I mean about the size of my little fingernail... so squeezing it out would be a leetle bit painful.

Plus it's been there for seven years.

[Robert]

We are as one on the bare feet issue -- I /must/ wear shoes when I'm out, and even thongs or sandals aren't enough. It's at the point where my friends joke about my glow-in-the-dark feet because they're so white.

[Anna Winter]

"Glow-in-the-dark feet"? As opposed to the rest of you?

[Fyodor the Blogless]

How very peculiar of you, Bruce. The peas reference reminds me of that children's book, "War and Peas". Strangely enough, peas are my sister's favourite food in the whole world.

Thanks for the invitation - I'll try to tear myself away from working today to muster something interesting.

Robert, I don't know if your Oirish relatives have ever used this on you, but the Irish themselves have a gradation of palefacedness called "Dazz-White" (after the washing powder). It's the kind of translucently pale blue skin you see on red-haired people after they've been in arctic water for a couple of hours. Or on your typical Irish backpacker just after they arrive in Sydney and BEFORE they turn lobster red.

[Robert]

Fair call, Anna.

Fyodor -- as I'm going to be in the old country for a month after Christmas, I'm sure I'll be Dazz-White when I return.

[Fyodor]

OK, I'm back.

Five Weird Things About Fyodor

1. I have astonishingly good circulation. Couple that to a fairly robust build and I don’t feel the cold at all in Australia. I consequently don’t like wearing lots of clothes and tend by preference and habit to wear shorts, t-shirt and sandals all-year ‘round, much to the horror of my wife. I also swim in the sea through winter, without any of that namby-pamby wet-suit business. I was pleasantly surprised to find in wintry Moscow that I needed to wear a jumper over my t-shirt at -12C.

2. I truly adore swimming, and being in water generally. I love the texture of water, the way it flows over your skin, the vortices of aquaturbulence rippling between your fingers. I just don’t “get” people who say swimming laps is boring. There’ve been some days lap-swimming where I’ve lost myself in free association, and simply swum km after km and ended up sunburnt. Swimming in the ocean is pure delight, particularly in winter when the water is that delicious salt-cold and the sky above grey. As I swim past the breakers with the sandy beach beneath me I imagine myself a storm flying over desert dunes like some cavorting djinn.

3. I really [no, like really] like bloody red meat and can eat quite scary amounts of it. I’m generally good on the tooth, actually, and will eat anything that’s edible. I laugh in the face of peas.

4. I’m a linguistic freak. I cannot travel to foreign countries without Zelig-like assimilation of vocab, grammar, intonation and accents. I think this is explained by my studying several languages from a young age, but there could be a genetic factor involved as both my father and grandfather were polylingual. The bad side of this ability is extreme linguistic pedantry and generally irritating smart-arsery. Oh, and I get competitive about it, too. My dad is worse. Before you come away confirmed in your thinking this Fyodor dude is just an OTT arrogant tosser, I would point out that it’s not uncommon for lots of Europeans to speak several languages, and many that I’ve met don’t think I’m peculiar at all (at least, not for this reason). However, Australians are generally so monolingual that it tends to freak them out whenever I say how many languages I speak, and I’ve consequently become rather self-conscious about it.

5. What else? Ah, yes: pop-culture. I consume a ridiculous amount of crap music, TV, celebrity gossip - all sorts of really dumb shit. I usually finish my wife's NW before she does and I am thoroughly addicted to Survivor. Most people find this low-browity irreconcilable with #4 until I reassure them that linguistic ability doesn’t stop me from being just another boring dickhead.

I’m going to cop out on the whole tagging thing, as I got a couple of rejections last time and my fragile ego can’t take another whupping.

Sláinte, Robert!

[Val]

Oh, the bare feet thing, yes I can understand that. I don't even go barefoot in my own house (although not so surprising, given my slapdash approach to housekeeping).
Now off to read Robert's blog - sounds interesting. Reading comments seems to increase blog-reading exponentially.

[Robert]

Slainte yourself, Fyodor, and may you march to victory on a road constructed from the skulls of your enemies.

Comments are where all the best blogging action is, Val!

[cotard]

Thanks for the tag...

It'll help me get back into the whole 'bloggy universe thing', despite my dial-up handicap...

And of course I'm from Perth ya' duffer, although I prefer the phrase 'Perth-vert'.

[Jenna]

well I have very odd habits.

1)I have to thoroughly inspect things nbefore I do them. like if someone hands my a controller for ,idk, a Wii, I have to inspect it, everything on it, what it looks like, if it smells funky, ect.

2) Just the opposite I cant wear socks, I have a panic attack. And freak out. I get made fun of by my friends but i know its weird so i laugh along.

3)Every morning I for breakfast I blend together milk, peanutbutter, and cereal in my blender.

4) When i sit, i shake my leg, and dont even notice im doing it.

5) when i see something I like, I have to draw it somehow. one time i drew on my friends back with a sharpie, and another time i colored on a table with pastels.

people seem to hateee my habits.

[Tiyo]

I was google-ing one day about people strange/weird habits.. and I came across this website. It then inspire me to develop a social application, iHabits (available only on facebook.com for now).

I just want to thank you guys for the inspiration, and if you guys have a free time please take a look at the application

http://apps.facebook.com/ihabits/welcome.php

thanks,

[vegano]

i like get this weird and uncomfortable need to stretch my whole body, sometimes i have the need to punch something, or kick something, im lazy with Homework, it's like i say that i have to do my haomework but i just end up using my laptop doing random stuff, then in the morning when i get to school i try to the the homework, but i get lazy.

i cant sleep in total silence, i have to have a fan on or something, the silence just creeps me out and makes me feel uncomfortable

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On your issue of learning to communicate with a phone, we've been working on that as well. My son won't really talk on the phone, but he is intrigued with how his voice sounds, so he will play on it. The biggest increase I've seen in using a device was when we installed an intercom between the 1st floor and the 3rd. His dinner job is to call his sisters down for dinner. Now he loves using the intercom and even plays some phrase response ritual games with them - the same thing he does face to face.

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[bob]

dear any body if i dont eat some thing with peant butter in it of a morin i will go crazy can u tellme anything if i am crazy thanks

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