• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog
• Share 7 facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird
• Tag seven people at the end of your post
• Let them know they’ve been tagged

Right, here are seven things you probably don’t know about me…

1. I had long hair in high school. Not that long, because my parents were about the most conservative parents of any family I knew, well, besides that Korean family I met once, and maybe some of those Chinese kids in the Youth Orchestra… anyway, my folks were pretty traditional-minded, but I at least had hair down to my shoulders.

   I had to cut it when I graduated so that I could “go and get a job” which, somehow, I never managed to do that first summer out of high school.

   (Because it was a college town and all the jobs were taken by students until September? Well, and because I couldn’t drive and really didn’t want to work at a burger place or a pizza joint, like my sisters later did. But I did hand out dozens of resumes, really, seriously, and got nothing, and all my hair was gone. Ironically, later on, when I was working in a music store, my boss told me I should grow my hair long, but by then I didn’t want to.)

2. I wasn’t particularly interested in SF as a child. I read a total of 3 or 4 SF novels prior to high school, or naybe a little more than that if you count the H.G. Wells novel collection my father gave me (which I still have here with me in Korea), and maybe 3 or 4 in high school. I was more interested in horror, and read Thomas F. Monteleone’s Borderlands anthologies (and a few others) quite happily. When I started writing, I was into H.P. Lovecraft, which led me from horror to SF, and the first SF novel I read as an adult was probably David Brin’s Earth. But until I was 25, I was an aspiring horror writer, much more influenced by The Twilight Zone and Peter Straub’s short stories and Whitley Strieber’s so-called nonfiction about alien abduction (which is more horror than SF, and which scared the crap out of me) than by anything I’m into now.
3. I’m a slow reader. How many pages an hour I can read varies with interest, subject, and distractions, but I am much slower than most people I know. And I can’t/don’t visualize fiction. I just read it, and know what’s going on in the abstract, but I don’t “see” it at all. I don’t know if that’s because of neurology, because I have a lazy eye and it’s impacted my imagination, or what, but there is no movie running in my head when I read a story. (Or write one.) It’s text and information and a story going on behind the screen of my mind.
4. I’m technically a dual-citizen of UK and Canada. When I was born in Malawi, I got British citizenship first, and it was as a British citizen that I emigrated to Canada as a baby. I actually remember the naturalization ceremony, as a little kid, and I still have the New Testament they gave me, along with a certificate, when I became a Canadian citizen. I haven’t gotten my British passport yet — I’ll be doing that this semester, I suppose. I haven’t done it yet because it’s a pain in the ass to give up my passport for a month to get the British one. But that’s what I’m supposed to do, and I figure it would be nice to have it again: open up some doors in the EU for me, and all that.
5. I’ve been wearing glasses since 2005. I realized I needed glasses only after finding out that the movie I’d watched hadn’t seemed out of focus the whole time to everyone else, just to me. (It was small-town Korea, and I’d seen audiences put up with a lot, but even this stretched the limits of believability. Still, it was only the next day I realized it.)
6. I have weird bone spurs on the backs of my heels, right above where the tendon attaches to the heel. On the right leg, at least, and I suspect on the left as well, the bone spur is actually detached from the hell, it’s slightly loose and rubs around when I wear shoes that aren’t soft on the back. That means, yes, dress shoes of any kind invariably have me limping within a half hour or so. It’s horrible.The spurs probably developed as a result of the fact that my dress shoes throughout childhood did not fit me. (Which isn’t so weird, I rarely wore dress shoes and every time it came time to wear them, they were just too small, but it was the day of the event and I had nothing else to wear.) I suspect I know precisely when and how the bone spurs detached — the day I interviewed for my first job out of grad school, I showed up for the interview in dress shoes that were too tight, and I’d walked from the subway station, and I was in immense pain all the way. Got the job (tech writing), but could barely walk back to the subway.I’m thinking of seeing a doctor about having them removed this holiday, if possible. If it’s possible — I don’t know if it is, as I was told by one guy (who’s a little incompetent, I know that for a fact) that it wasn’t — then I suspect it’d be a brief outpatient procedure with a week-long recuperation period where I couldn’t walk around much. (There got my exercise plans for that week, I suppose, but it’d help me in the long run, since tendon aggravation has kept me from exercising many a time.) But for now, I’ve got a full complement of other kinds of shoes that are at least making it tolerable.
7. If I were better at math, my day job probably would have had something to do with computer science. I took that as a tenative major for a semester, did mindblowingly well in the compsci course, but I’d been out of high school so long I couldn’t remember the math I’d learned, and I would have flunked calculus if I’d stuck around long enough. My compsci professor actually harangued me to change my major immediately, and when I told her I couldn’t hack the math, she told me I could get a tutor. When I told her I’d already done so, she said, “Try again!” I guess she figured I’d have been a good computer scientist. But I’m secretly happy not to have gone down that road.

Well, that’s seven things. Whom shall I tag? Uh, I can’t be bothered, especially for a meme like this, which most bloggers have already done one before in their blogging career. Consider yourself tagged if you feel so inclined. So there.

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?

Paying? What, are you in some kind of third world country? I don’t pay bills — it’s all automated. Oh, wait, most semester-breaks I travel, and I have to go to the bank machine to transfer money to pay for my plane tickets. They’re not cheap. I hate that!

2. Where was the last place you had a romantic dinner?

At home. I made it. Slaved. For hours.

3. Do you regret losing your virginity to who you lost it to?

Life is too short to regret such things, but I think I could have made a better decision at the time.
4. If you could go back and change one thing what would it be?

The decisions I made after what’s discussed in #3?

5. Name of your first grade teacher?

Uh…

6. What do you really want to be doing right now?

Eating something. I’m hungry and it’s very late at night, so I won’t eat, but I’d like to be.

7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Um, an artist, then a writer, then a musician. I came back the writer, finally, and I’m working on it now.

8. How many universities/colleges did you attend?

Two so far: University of Saskatchewan, and Concordia University, Montreal.

9. Why did you choose the shirt that you have on right now?

It’s new and there was a party in the building tonight that I attended.

10. Gas/petrol prices?

Most of the world has realistic ones, and America should try to normalize to that so that consumption goes down. I mean, it’s a no-brainer.

11. If you could move anywhere and take someone with you, where would it be?

Besides space? I gotta agree with Marvin, Paris sounds good to me.

12. First thought when the alarm went this morning?

“Why did she set her alarm and then leave it in the other room?” Followed by, “Oh God, it’s 11:00 am!”

13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?

“This novel is so weird.”

14. Favorite style of underwear.

Boxers in my size. Which have, oddly enough, gotten harder to find in Korea in the last few years. Not just because I’ve grown a little in the gut, either.

15. What errand/chore do you despise?

Washing the dishes. Or maybe mopping the floor.

16. If you didn’t have to work, would you volunteer?

Um, I write science fiction. I already do volunteer. On top of my day job. Though it occasionally pays.

17. Get up early or sleep in?

The latter, except on the days when I have a morning class!

18. What is your favorite cartoon character(s)?

Eh? Adults have such things? I do enjoy Asterix, though. But he’s more of a comic book guy. Actually, maybe Obelix.

19. Favorite thing to do at night with a girl or guy?

Duh.

20. Have you found real love yet?

Sure.

21. When did you first start feeling old?

When I realized some of my students can’t remember a time before the Internet. I’ll feel really old when it gets to the point where college kids can’t remember broadband and grew up plagiarizing Wikipedia.

22. Favorite 80’s movie?

Not sure I have such a thing. At the time, it was, variously, Ghostbusters (until I saw it), The Goonies, and The Last Starfighter. (Yes, really. For like a week.)

23. Your favorite lunch meat?

Heh, I know what you mean by that — sandwich meat, right? — but that sort of thing is much less available in Korea. So I shall answer contextually — a nice fried fish all to myself? I like “godeungeo,” but I can’t remember if that’s mackerel or something else.

24. What do you get every time you go into Sam’s Club?

Huh?

25. Beach or lake?

Um… neither is half so exciting for me as an English-language bookstore. To tell the truth. But beaches are usually more fun.

26. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?

Probably. Like most rituals humans practice. (But I’m engaged, hypocrite me.)

27. Favorite guilty pleasure?

Writing my thoughts here.

28. Favorite movie you wouldn’t want anyone to find out about?

You think you’re so tricky. If I post about it everyone who reads this will find out.

Oh yeah, that means nobody would. So I’ll say at the moment, it’s 다세포 소녀 (Dasepo Girls), a freakish Korean musical set in a high school, which is also a bizarre sex-comedy.

29. What’s your drink?

Water? Seriously. Or, now that I’ve gotten the hang of grinding the beans fine, my homemade espresso? Love it. But this means alcohol, so I’ll say that Bushmills Irish whiskey is still my favorite, though nice, decent cold sake is a close second. While I was in Japan, I sure liked that stuff.

30. Cowboys or Indians?

Gangsters.

31. Cops or Robbers?

Space pirates.

32. Who from high school would you like to run into?

There are many I would like not to run into. I am curious, though, what happened to that short girl who had a crush on me in 11th grade. The one who asked my friend Mike about me. I can’t remember her name, though. Or Tonya Gresty. She was kind of famous in my grade. Curious how life turned out for her, and she ain’t on Facebook…

33. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?

What car?

34. Worst relationship mistake that you wish you could take back?

Everything that followed #3.

35. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?

Um, I don’t sit at work. The people directly in front of me are my students, and I like them okay.

36. What famous person would you like to have dinner with?

They’re mostly dead. But it’s be fun to have steaks with Hitchens, Dawkins, the Dalai Lama, and Ratzinger. I’d goad the former to until they whupped the latter two’s butts. For fairly good reasons, but also for the sheer exuberant joy of it!

37. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?

Only if the intended purpose was to hold doors open while moving into an apartment.

38. Last book you read?

At the time I filled this out (a few days ago) it was I Have the Right To Destroy Myself by Young-Ha Kim. It’s a very weird novel. (Novella, really.) Not sure I liked it. Or got it. It’s almost like a very short Korean-ish Chuck Palahniuk, but with overtones of Japanese literary sex-death obsessiveness and French cinematic tragedy. Or something.

Currently, the last thing I read was The Arrival. And it’s reviewed in a recent post, just as is the Kim book. Go find the reviews yourself, lazybones.

39. Do you have a teddy bear?

Hell no. Had one, made in my image, even, but I gave it to my nephew.

40. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?

Um… a fungus infested rock band practice room? Not so strange.

41. Somewhere in California you’ve never been and would like to go?

Anyplace could be an answer, as I’ve been only inside the San Francisco airport, but I guess LA? San Francisco? Um… I dunno?

42. Do you go to church?

Not except for when I am obliged to. Like, by work, or a friend’s wedding, or whatever.

43. At this point in your life would you rather start a new career or a new relationship?

I’d go with career, which is handy, because I kind of am working on one now, in writing.

44. Just how OLD are you?

Heh. I was born the same year India first detonated a nuclear bomb, and Nixon’s impeachment hearings began.