Anyway, I recently discovered I have a certain preference for what I call the Rehabilitated Genius. For the past couple of years, my favourite TV pairing comes from Bones, namely the characters of Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth. Temperance is a highly intelligent and rational forensic anthropologist, the best in her field. She is, as most geniuses seem to be on TV, awkward with people, mildly autistic. Seeley Booth is the hunky FBI agent who is all about gut feeling and emotions. It took more that 5 TV seasons for Temperance to be slowly rehabilitated into a loving creature capable of falling in love. Seeing them together just makes me feel so happy.

Then recently there’s Sherlock and Irene Adler. Boy. I fell so deep in this. Actually, I can’t decide if I like Sherlock/Adler or Sherlock/John more. Yes, slash is always fun, don’t judge me. In both cases they unsettle Sherlock and joust him from his comfort zone up in his genius tower. Irene, The Woman he can’t read (well, not really but you get what I mean). The Woman who pushes his buttons and makes him feel, for once. John, the ever loyal companion who is Sherlock’s only friend. Things like that. I dig things like that.

And just to mindfuck around – perhaps I like the Rehabilitated Geniuses because they remind me of myself. And by the last sentence I mean I think am the genius. But that also must mean I am looking to be rehabilitated, which is not true. But by dismissing that sort of possibility, any standards I set up must be intentionally high to avoid a situation of rehabilitation. This avoidance must then relate to a certain emotional flaw of some kind and fear of some degree. But emotional flaws are evident is many (TV) geniuses. And thus I am a genius.

:) Do you feel like shooting me yet?

It’s not like I like to be undecided about things. As much as I want to profess and label myself, I always halt in face of expectations. I don’t like to be expected to have expertise. Today I was asked to fill in my hobbies on a form. I paused – what do I write? If I wrote I like music, will people expect me to play an instrument? If I wrote I like to run, will people expect me to do a 7-minute mile?

This is why I hate labels, apart from the usual discrimination categorizing pigeon-holing yadda. I simply hate not having expert knowledge because our society seems to favour that more, rather than the idea of a Renaissance individual with a finger in every pie. Or at least I perceive our society as favouring that more.

There are labels I will put on myself and wholeheartedly endorse. I know I am pro-choice. I know I am a reader (I believe sheer volumes make up for lack of depth). I know I am …

Dang. That’s all I can muster.

Based on my library record, I’ve been a library member since I was 4. I remember as a child, I didn’t own many books. Apart from birthday gifts, and hand-me-downs, my family wasn’t really into buying books for children. That perhaps explains how I never read Enid Blyton, despite it being all the rage and must-read during my time (early 90s). I recall owning one Noddy book, and some Puffin books. From my early library membership I reckon I must have visited the library a fair bit. According to my mother, when I was at the library, I liked to shelf the books. Not really taking books from bins and shelving them, but ensuring each shelf is neat and tidy. I don’t think I knew that much about call numbers and cataloging at that young age. And there was the rolling around in the ball pit in the children’s section at my neighbourhood library, and attending storytelling sessions.

My own earliest memory of reading in the library really started when I was about 10. I still fondly recall the shelves Young Adult fiction tucked away near the thick glass windows. Those were the days I devoured tons of American preteen and teenager books by authors like Paula Danzinger. At about 11, I thought Long Island New York was a wild forest filled with summer cabins and that the island is pretty small. I never really went into a Sweet Valley phase; I read its predecessor from the 80s, the Sweet Dreams series. Back then, each trip to the library was a chance to get out of the house, and go sit in an air-conditioned place and read. Then I could bring home 4 books; it was almost like shopping. Perhaps because I associate books with pleasant experiences, I like reading.

I spent many of my early teenage years reading chick-lit. I was an avid follower of the Shopaholic series (that started in 2000), and I read books by the likes of Marian Keyes and Wendy Holden. Any book with a girly cover, I’d pick it up in the library. Reading during my schoolyears was a treat after completing my homework. Stolen time to immerse myself in a world so far from my existence. After a while I wore off the chicklit phase, and started pursuing various other genres – mystery, horror (I recall buying Stephen King out of my own volition and scaring the shit out of myself), general fiction. Fantasy and science fiction came much later, in my late teens. My first fantasy author was Tom Holt, which I actually read without realizing it’s fantasy. All that alternate reality thing didn’t really register as fantastical. Of course, there were years when I stopped reading voraciously; schoolwork took up too much time.

Someone once asked me why I don’t do Literature since I like fiction so much. I couldn’t really answer it; perhaps it’s my bad experience with Literature as a school subject. I read as a form of escape, and not in appreciate of beauty of the written language. (That makes me a genre fiction reader, some might say.) I derive immense joy from the imaginary flights reading fiction can provide, and to me, that’s enough. Fiction always wins me. This year I have read 84 books (and counting), mostly fiction. I’ve read from various genres, time period, and for me, starting a new book is like starting a new journey. I don’t know where I’ll end up, I don’t know if I will like it, but it’s a safe and cheap thrill. If it sucks, I close it and pick another. Real life doesn’t offer chances like that. That said, I’m an escapist of some form, and every book is an escape to me.

And being a librarian and getting to surround myself with books, to review books, to recommend books (among other duties)? I’ll reiterate what I said previously- it’s nothing short of awesome.

After that I will buy some chicks
that I can rear to be hens and cocks.
They give eggs and meat and
from those I will profit
and then I can buy a lamb at the fair.

This lamb I will patiently herd
in the hills she will feed on lush green grass.
She will grow to be a fine sheep
and I will take her wool
so that I can spin her wool to yarn.

From the yarn I will knit and purl, knit and purl
Till it grows longer and wider
And I will make it into a large sack
One I can fit into, with a drawstring top
So that I can be alone and hide away.

I want to take a walk in the forest so that I can be alone and hide away.

1) Christmas does not hold any fond memories for me.
Growing up my family did not celebrate Christmas. Christmas always had that religious undertone to it, which then didn’t mean a single thing to my largely Atheistic family. Even as a a pagan holiday, it was overtly Western. Generally as a child presents were hard to come by, for me. Apart from birthday presents, I don’t recall being a very demanding child and so there wasn’t that joy in receiving during Christmas. Christmas was just another public holiday to me.

2) Christmas does not bring me joy.
This is invariable linked to the point above. I never understood why we need to be happy during Christmas; I still don’t. Like I said, I don’t associate Christmas as festive nor time for joy. For me, festive time of joy is best exemplified with Chinese New Year. I am big on Chinese New Year. Each year I look forward to that two (or more) days’ break where my entire family congregate to pig out, gamble, pig out some more, give/receive angbao, pig out primarily and be happy. Chinese New Year is always a happy time for me. It’s really also one of the only festival I am willing to partake commercially, which brings me to my next point.

3) Christmas is too commercialized.
The commercialization is not  limited to Christmas alone. Festivals like Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn’s, etc. are commercialized too. I think this whole resistance to commercialized festivals sublimated one year when I was just trying to organize a gathering on the 23rd of December. Not Christmas eve, but many of the restaurants I called said they were only serving from the Christmas (set) menus. At exorbitant prices compared to their usual fare. In my opinion, not giving us a choice is clearly a move to fleece us. It’s this aspect that really gets to me.

These three reasons very well sum up as to why I’m not big on Christmas. I usually don’t start out hating the festival, but it’s when people start making me feel like the Grinch that I truly become one. People often assume I resist for no reason. While I don’t blame them I have to desist that assumption.

Narrowing our discussion to just blogosphere in general – the are the informative blogs and there are the so-called personality blogs. Informative blogs are topical, for example, food blogs are pure food blogs, fashion blogs are pure fashion blogs. These slowly become expertise blogs because somehow we’ve come to equate dedication and obsession with expertise. I don’t know when that took place, but somehow it did. And then there are the personality blogs which really are those filled with controversy, mindlessly attention grabbing headlines and photographs of the blogger. A lot of photographs. Between these two main types of blogs, where do I stand? I am a not a dedicated expertise blog, nor am I a photo-whoring personality blog. On the scale between the two, I’m probably closer to personality, in hope that readers connect with the “who I am” more than the “what I know”.

Alas, it’s hard to market oneself as a serious personality blogger because somehow by definition personality bloggers are bigoted self-indulgent and ranty. I haven’t been ranty for some time. These all brings us back to marketing oneself – personality, on grander scales, is still overrated.

Pray tell, attraction and admiration is first physical. Beauty is foot in the door, you have to agree. No, I’m not a whiney fat girl bemoaning the fact that no one cares about inner beauty (like the fuck it exists), I’m just putting a point that personality is a bonus of some sort in today’s society. An unnecessary, good-to-have bonus. Why? Because personality is not an aspect all can see at once. It’s seemingly improbable to put different personalities on a scale for measurement, unlike what one can do with different types of looks. There is usually some kind of cultural consensus what is beauty and what is not, but is there such understanding for what is desirable and undesirable personality? Honestly, I think judging personality is far more subjective than beauty. Clearly, it stems from a lack of benchmarking, if that is possible in the first place.

Summing up, I’m not claiming that personality is not important, it is. But the fact remains that it is always less important when pitted against other more desirable things. It always is a situation of “it’s nice but”. I’m not driving any particular point home, I’m just trying to get you to think, now that you’ve read till this point.

I know fully well I’m a person born and raised to be envious of others, who really isn’t? Needless to say, Facebook is one of the world’s biggest flaunting ground. I’m also an insatiable ingrate. Being on Facebook and receiving all the feeds from my friends, I only see what I don’t have and who I’m not. I am evidently not the most positive person around.

There are those who flaunt in exchange of affirmation. I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that, but it seems that kind of actions and manners of speech grew in me after Facebook. That I’d pretend to ask for opinions when in fact I am fishing for affirmation and compliments. I hate that I’ve become such a person, and hence, this contributes to why I am unhappy. I think a lot of my unhappiness stems from, clearly, my inability to appreciate and enjoy my current life. I believe there are individuals who love their life and won’t give up anything to choose a different life. I’m not one of those, so I can’t see the beauty in a lot of things.

Then there’s the exact opposite – friends, or really Facebook friends, showing their distress on Facebook by having status and even pictures of their injuries, heartache, failures. To see all that and not help frankly leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Facebook allows us to be together but not really connect. On top of that, I’ve too become a person who moans and groans on Facebook looking for sympathy. That, in retrospect, makes me feel like an asshole.

To be honest, most days I want to cut away all ties and disappear from the face of this world. To still have an active Facebook account makes me responsible for what is up there, and to be responsible for its maintenance. It doesn’t take much effort, but recently I have come to realize we all take such responsibilities for granted and we start chiding people for not knowing certain news about us on the internet (I actually accused someone of not reading my blog and hence not knowing certain things). I think that is wrong. Frankly, I don’t want to be in a situation where I have to know just because I have access to. By cutting off access, I effectively will never be caught in that situation. That to me, is true autonomous living.

So I quit Facebook. To put it simply, I don’t want to know about your fricking life. I have my own to live.

When I was a younger student we were required to write narrative essays for school. The teachers always said the more we read, the better we write. Hence I spent a good portion of my younger days reading fiction. Over the past years, I must have read hundreds of books (assuming I read an average of 52 a year for the past 14 years, that’s easily 728). Surely my writing has improved since my aforementioned cheesy romance days. Yet the more I read, the more inadequate I feel. I’ve always dreamed of writing a very memorable and thought-provoking book that will shake readers at their very core. Nowadays I feel I can’t even wing a holy grail wild-goose chase book if my life depended on it.

Recently I was talking to my friend about my Masters thesis, and how a 30,000 word length will come up to more than 100 pages, longer with diagrams and bibliography. Somehow putting the numbers down in page numbers make it seem a little daunting, but also a little exciting because it will be the longest coherent (I hope) thing I have ever written thus far. It’s not a book, it’s academese, but I still think it’s not too shabby. Perhaps after I’m done with my thesis I will start writing a book. Perhaps. Just perhaps.

I watched half an episode of Desperate Housewives. I heard one song from the Glee soundtrack. I have never given a damn to Smallville, Heroes, Lost, American Idols … (you got to admit they form a grammatical sentence) and the likes. Because they are so popular there are so many intertextual references to them, which makes the guilt worse – the guilt of not knowing. In the world of literature it seems that the inability to catch intertextual references points to someone who is not well-read, and hence quite a shame. Are we becoming the same with popular culture – to not know is a shame?

I’m  not talking about subculture and cult groups who renounce popular culture all together and focus on whatever that they do; vampire novels or creepy expensive dolls. I’m talking about regular middle class people like me and you who have access to these productions, but can’t find the time, impetus or interest to follow them. Why should we be made to feel like we are at a loss for not following these shows and films and consequently not able to participate in socializing acts involving references to them?

That said, I will not watch the World Cup, the Youth Olympics, yet another season of Survivor or America’s Got Talent. And I will stop feeling bad about it, like I’m missing out on things.

Now I wonder — when I have been nothing short of honest and candid with my friends, why do people do such things to me? If something good happens to me, I usually wait not a moment to share it and have my friends feel happy for me. Have I been a sourpuss to them in return when they share good news, such that no one ever wants to tell me any good news? Maybe that’s true, because I’ve been issued “I’m glad you’re happy for me”, as though my genuine delight came as a surprise.

Maybe it’s my fault for not caring about my friends’ lives enough. I don’t actively seek my friends out to be updated on their lives, I don’t stalk their Facebook pictures and subsequently ask awkward questions, I don’t consistently want them to tell me every breath they breathe… so I’m always the last to know by my own choice I suppose. Which annoys me more than I can accept.

I can’t be friends with everyone and know what’s going on in everyone’s lives. I don’t appreciate people hounding and stalking me asking for updates on my life, and I’m sure you don’t too. But those I deem precious to me I will volunteer information in my own ways; those who deem me precious can find out about my life in so many other ways that do not involve asking me personally. If I need to hear belated secondhand news (that is nonetheless important), I’m sorry that just relegates you to rank of “friend of a friend”. Which is really a pity, to me at least.

So, oh well. If I am not privy, I’m not. I can’t force people to want me to know stuff.