Back from my travels. Bit exhausted. Doing this quiz that was ganked from Jade Park, then grocery shopping, then diving back into the rewrite of the story I’m resubmitting this week:
1. Spell my name as it sounds: Goard Seller.
2. Am I a worrier? Yeah, but I’m trying to cut back on it.
3. What’s my favorite CD? John Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard. But that’s a box set complete, and I’m calling it a CD because it comes in one package and if you don’t like it, well, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
4. Favorite colour(s)? I have none. Hard to imagine, I know. But I have no favorite color. The concept is odd to me, like a favorite cuss. I like the proper cuss in the proper situation, and the proper color for the proper object. That’s all.
5. Does my home have an attic? Actually, yes. Not mine alone, but shared among all the residents in the building. I have about five boxes of junk up there.
6. Have I ever been to Canada? Uh, I grew up there.
7. Have I ever gone fishing? Yes… and would like to again sometime, though only if someone else is coming along in case I catch a fish. I don’t touch fish-skin. It creeps me out. But I like the quiet contemplation of sitting and casting, reeling, casting, reeling. If nothing gets caught, I’m almost happier.
8. Have I ever seen a celebrity? Sure. Yo-Yo Ma was the first, but if we could celebrities in the SF world, I’ve met several and seen plenty more at WorldCon in Yokohama, the only I’ve ever attended.
9. Have I ever been on a motorcycle? No.
10. How much money do I have on me right now? W78,000. Which translates in my head to roughly $80 bucks, though I know it’s not exact and the US dollar’s doing poorly now so it might be more.
11. How many cars have I owned? None. I co-owned one, sort of. But I never drove it, and it wasn’t so much mine that I could prevent the real owner from giving it away.
12. How many jobs have I had? Let’s see: paper route, flyer boy 1, flyer boy 2, giving sax lessons, working at a trailer park for a month, working at an apiary for a summer, working at HMV Music (twice, but same position and I was sort-of transferred, so let’s call it one job), working at Coles Bookstore (once), working as a recital assistant, working as an audio technician for distance education broadcasting, teaching assistant during grad school, freelance technical editor for engineers, editor, tech writer at a pedagogical software company, English instructor at Wonkwang University Language Center, Professor of Liberal Arts at Jeonju University, and Professor of English Language & Culture at my current workplace. Plus we should throw in a more general freelance-editor, for non-technical, non-engineering editing that I started doing after grad school. Oh, and then there was my job as a administrative assistant at the University of Saskatchewan, organizing a record collection for the Department of Music. That’s not including unpaid work, or one-off thngs like teaching saxophone at a workshop, or working for free pizza running a stand for my dad’s shop during a street festival. Just actual jobs. That adds up to eighteen or nineteen jobs, depending on whether we include editing and technical editing as one gig. Good grief!
Oh, and that isn’t counting fiction-writing and magazine-writing, which are paying job but which one never makes a living at. But still, that would be twenty or twenty-one. Wow.
13. How tall am I? Six feet tall.
14. Last person to call me: Lime. She was testing my phone, though. We didn’t talk.
15. Last thing I yelled out loud: “Fucking ridiculous!” (About a computer I was paying to use, in Thailand, with a useless mouse that couldn’t move right.)
16. Last person I was in a car with: Lime. In a taxi about ten minutes ago. There was a cabbie too.
17. Last time I ate at McDonald’s: Um. I think it was a month ago. (Pathetic excuse excised, but I will say that it had been a year or more since the time before.)
18. Last thing I bought: Groceries, about 20 minutes ago.
19. Last person I saw: Lime, five seconds ago. Unknown? A cabbie.
20. Last time I cried: After my father’s funeral, I think.
21. Last time I laughed: Two minutes ago.
22. What is the temperature outside? I think about -8 degrees celcius. Not bad.
23. What time of the day did I get married? I plead the fifth, but doesn’t everyone get married in the afternoon?
24. What did I do two nights ago? I took a bus to the airport, picked up my left luggage and repacked some of it (losing a pair of glasses frames in the process), checked in, went through security, did a little duty-free shopping, had dinner and some internet time in the Star Alliance lounge, went to the plane, got promoted to Business Class, and flew home.
25. Who’s birthday is coming up next? My Mom’s. Followed by mine.
26. What time did I go to bed last night? Midnight. It took some effort on my part as I was very tired by then.
27. What was the first thing I thought this morning? It’s cold!
28. What are my plans for this weekend? Eh? I’m on holiday till March 3rd (mostly). Everyday is a holiday.
29. Lemonade or iced tea? The world is collapsing around us, fascism is on the rise, and you ask me this? But if you’re buying, surprise me: I have little or no general preference. Now, back to global collapse…
30. What do I dislike at this moment? Global collapse. The pain in my side. And the president of the country I’m living in.
31. What did I dream about last night? Dream? I don’t remember dreams. The last dream I had was weird, though, and involved friends who comprised my “family,” inexplicably. And luggage.
32. What’s the last TV show I watched? It was some horrible, probably direct-to-video werewolf movie on Star Movies, while I was packing stuff in my guesthouse room in Ao Nang.
33. What is my favorite piece of jewelry? I don’t wear much, so I guess it’s my earring. Or Lime’s engagement ring.
34. Am I a dancer? Not. At. All.
35. Have I ever cut my own hair? I do it all the time, if you could using clippers on one’s own head. Not quite the same challenge, though.
36. What is my favorite treat? Good, well-prepared non-Korean (and these days non-Japanese) food that isn’t deep-fried crap, because it’s so rare here. It may well be Lamb (or Chicken) Dopiaza at Namaste in Dongmyo (in Seoul). Or a nice wheat beer.
37. How many piercings/tattoos do I have? One piercing in my left ear, which has led many Koreans to ask whether it means I’m gay. (Wrong ear, plus that’s so 1980s urban legend, and no, I’m not.) That’s it.
38. Where’s my favorite place to be? Um… an English-language bookstore? Or a well-stocked English-language library.
39. Is there someone I haven’t seen in a while and miss? Well, I’m an expat, and I moved around a lot before even going abroad. If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be human. Need I list them all? I should note that my communication with most of them is spotty. I’m just bad at keeping in touch, but miss lots of people just the same.
40. Who was the last text I sent to? Lime.
41. Do I care what strangers think about me? Sometimes, but not much, especially since I live in such a conformist and socially conservative society. It’s true everywhere, but especially here, that if you worry what other people think of you, you’ll never be happy.
42. Last person I talked to on Instant Messenger: Uh… no idea. Probably Tinatsu or Ben, if Gmail messenger counts.
43. Last person to make me cry: It was an event, not a person. See #20.
44. Who can I tell anything to? If I told you, I’d have to kill you.
Har har. Actually, a number of people, I suppose, depending on one’s definition of “anything” but Lime is the one who usually hears whatever random stuff is floating around my head.
45. What am I doing tomorrow? Making paella, having it with a nice Chilean wine. Watching some of Season 1 of House. (Which I picked up because Season 3 of Lost was not available at Emart today.)
46. Do I have alcohol in my home? Sure. I buy something whenever I fly. Barely drink it, though. This post discusses it in further detail, though I should add there’s more now: a good, big bottle of sake from Japan, a nice bottle of Grey Goose vodka from my last trip, and a few small bottles of various Korean liquors I never got a chance to try. And I try to keep a store of Oettinger Wheat Beer in the house at all times, as it’s a nice occasional snack and much better for one than a bag of chips.
47. Do I like ketchup? Almost never. Occasionally on fries or a burger, but the flavour of the stuff is just nasty otherwise. I can’t understand why I liked it so much as a kid. Though speaking of bags of chips (see # 46), I do like ketchup-flavored potato chips. OR did, when I last had them, ages ago.
48. Do I think I will be on a vacation this summer? Yeah, Lime and I wil be going somewhere together. Maybe Mongolia/Tibet, that’s her idea. Me, I don’t know what I’ll be suggesting.
49. What colour is my master bathroom? Eh? Master bathroom? This is not a question for me, but I think the tiling is kinda off-white, and the floor tiling is grey. By the way, see #29.
50. Do I wear a bikini at the beach? Ha. You should be glad I do not… though I had to wear speedos when learning to swim in Korea. Everyone has to dress like a pro swimmer for some silly reason.
51. Have I ever been to the Grand Canyon? Not yet, but that’s hardly surprising since I’m not American. However, I’ve also never seen Niagra Falls. And I am Canadian. However, I have seen the giant golden Buddha statue in Bamgkok, went to the Great Wall of China (yeah, at Badaling, however that’s actually spelled), and visited the troll under the bridge in Seattle. So I don’t feel too badly.
52. What is my favorite fruit? Fruits are something I like, but not so much that I have a favorite. I am missing the little, tart limes that were available everywhere in Laos and Thailand when I recently visited, though. Man, those were refreshing.
53. What did I really want to do today? Sleep, and not eat much.
54. Am I always cold? Not usually, but these days, I’m feeling the cold more. When I lost a lot of weight in one year, back in 2003, I really noticed how much more I could feel temperature changes in the great outdoors. I’m embarking on another plan of exercise — this time with Lime as a co-exerciser, and she’s got Jedi Guilt-powers that put any Catholic clergyman to shame, when she gets her mind set on something important that I’m neglecting, like health — so maybe I shall be feeling cold all the time next winter. Here’s hoping!
55. Does it annoy me when someone says they’ll call or text, but don’t? It depends. If it’s not a big issue and they didn’t get around to it, no problem. If it’s something of great importance and they don’t call or message (or, preferably, email) then I do get annoyed after a day or so.
Anyone else who sees this, consider yourself tagged.