Sunday, January 18, 2009

8 weird things that you didnt know about me

I normally hate doing tags but this time I've been double tagged by both Alok and Cuckoo to do the same tag and I can see them giving me the evil eye every time I stalk their blogs, walking right past the tag and ignoring it to the best of my ability. So for once, I'm just going to raise my hands up in the air, surrender and just do the damn tag. So here goes...eight weird things that people don’t know about me.

  • A snake or a rat? Which one would you pick up if you saw it on the ground? Which one would send you out of the room, screaming and shouting for dear life? Which one would give you the creepy crawlies? Which one could you absolutely not stand? This is where things get weird. Because you see, while I have perfectly no problem holding a snake or even two in my hands, I go absolutely nuts when I see or even hear about the faint possibility of a rat being present within a thirty mile radius around me. During my undergrad years, I co-founded a herpetology conservation and education program in my university and snakes do not faze me out one bit. Rats on the other hand are a whole different creature. They creep me out endlessly. I cannot stand the sight of one. Not even in a photo. They give me the heebie-jeebies. It would bring me endless joy if every single last one of them got exterminated and were wiped out from the surface of earth.

  • My taste buds. They're quite possibly the weirdest thing about me. My favorite vegetable of all is karela. I once got one of my American friends to try it by enticing her with "It's delicious". A disgusted face, two glasses of water and three candies later, she still hasn’t forgiven me for it. And the last time I checked, I am still the reigning queen of unusual, disgusting and weird food combos. Ever tried peanut butter-banana-and honey sandwich? Or a bhel puri sandwich? Go on try it, it's delicious. You can thank me later.

  • I absolutely hate makeup. Detest it is more like it. I hardly ever use it, and on the rare instances when I do use it, I walk around all day painfully uncomfortable like my body just got taken over by an alien whom I barely recognize in the mirror. In fact, I did not even know how to use makeup until I was midway through my twenties. I learnt how to apply foundation by video-googling it because I was too embarrassed to tell my friends that I didn’t know anything about it. Girly conversations on makeup still annoy the daylights out of me even today. Deep down inside I attribute it all to having more guy friends than girl friends when I was growing up. Which had an upside and a downside. There, that's a whole lot of weird contained in that paragraph right there.

  • I can be totally OCD about some things. Obsessive-compulsive to the very last bone in my body. Like setting the alarm at night to wake up early in the morning. I just don’t trust myself to wake up without an alarm. So I set it. And then check it before I go to bed. And then settle into bed and check the alarm again to make sure I set it for the right time. And then place it on the side table. And read a book. And turn a page. And check the alarm again to make sure it's on. Put some lotion on my hands. And check the alarm again. And then adjust my pillows. And check it again one last time before I turn off the lights and go to bed. And of course, I recheck it if I get up in the middle of the night to pee.

  • My right leg is jinxed. Over my lifetime, I have twisted my right ankle three times. Fractured my right leg in two places all at once. Bruised the same leg black and blue endless times when I was learning to play hockey in school. And even have a scar to show from the time I fell off my bike and jammed a spoke from the bike into the cut in my ankle. Klutzy things happen when I am around.

  • I once ate mosquito repellant thinking it was toothpaste. I blame it entirely on the packaging of the tubes. Both tubes had the same white background with red writing on it. Except that I didn’t read the writing and proceeded on to eat the repellant. After which it took endless amount of eating actual toothpaste to get rid of the taste of repellant. After which I was disgusted by the taste of both toothpaste and repellant and stopped eating both.

  • I have horrible observational skills. In the words of Joe, I would be the worst person to be present as the only person present at a crime scene when it happened. Because I wouldn’t remember the color of the murderer's hair or eyes or clothes or anything particular about him or her or whether it was even a him or a her. I once told a work colleague how her new hairstyle really made the color of her eyes stand out only to get a dirty look and be told, "I haven’t changed my hairstyle. I switched over from wearing glasses to wearing contact lens" I stunk at my hematology course because I would look at a cell under the microscope, look up and get asked how many nuclei I saw within it, and say "Erm. Hang on, I need to look again."

  • I cannot for the life of me parallel park. I just cant do it. No matter how many times you teach me to do it. Which brings to light the other bit of weirdness I possess. I have the patience of a flea when it comes to learning something I don’t care for. I do not like to learn to crawl and then walk and then run. I just want to get to the running part and get the heck over with learning how to do it. Already. And thus, I cannot parallel park. Because I don’t have the patience to figure out how. How I passed my driving exam to get a license without knowing how to parallel park is a complete mystery to me. On the day of my exam, I was able to miraculously parallel park for the first time in my life and the phenomenon has never repeated itself since.

Erm. Is anyone still reading this crap? I think I may have put a little too much weirdness out there and lost my audience. See, now this is exactly why I don’t do tags. But if I'm going down, I'm taking all of you down with me. So to spread around the embarrassment of being a weirdo, I tag 'A', Trisha, Bindu, Lakshmi, and Dust and Vamsee. Muhahahaha!

~vagabond~ © 2009

17 comments:

Just call me 'A' said...

yes yes, i read it till the end. You like snakes....scaryyyyyyyyyyy man. I share your weirdness for OCD but I think that would not fall under my eight. I can't parallel park too....but I know lots of people who can't...just pratice is often I guess and you'll get it.

will do the tag sometimeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee soon. You get the picture right. But will definately do it. promise

Inner Vision said...

You call it crap...but I enjoyed reading it and looking forward to reading some more in future. Nice read...

Vamsee Modugula said...

That was hilarious. The OCD thing reminded me of Saru who is exactly that way. He usually sets 3 alarms (cell phones +clock) and it is annoying as hell.
That story about the mosquito repellent is too funny!!

bindu said...

It's interesting that when you wanted to get rid of the taste of mosquito repellent, you reached for toothpaste! Why do you eat toothpaste anyway? That needs to get its own mention, I think. ;) Glad to see you want to take us down with you.

~vagabond~ said...

@A: ...no really, snakes really arent so bad...lol...glad to know there are other weirdos out there like me who cant parallel park. :)

@Inner Vision: Glad you enjoyed reading it nonetheless. :)

~vagabond~ said...

@Vam: Oh, I knew I was forgetting one more person to tag. You're it. Haha!
And Saru is just sensible like me. I too set the cell phone alarm along with the regular alarm just in case you know one of them dies mysteriously in the middle of the night.

~vagabond~ said...

@Vam: Oh, I knew I was forgetting one more person to tag. You're it. Haha!
And Saru is just sensible like me. I too set the cell phone alarm along with the regular alarm just in case you know one of them dies mysteriously in the middle of the night.

~vagabond~ said...

@Bindu:

I dont eat toothpaste anymore. I used to eat it because I liked how it tasted. Ahem. Not any more. Now I use it like normal people just to brush my teeth. It is not a snack.

GMG said...

Amazing!! Poor ankle!!
Blogtrotter

kunal said...

that was a boring post
ya your life story stirs some painful-hilarious moments but still u could have come up with better explainations.
There are times when u tried ur best to bring out insanity into completely sane looking situations( which may not amuse all).

R u still reading my crap comment.
hahahaha.

For the first time i was able to read anybodies tagged post.

Wonderfully, patiently u have been mindful about the readers too.

Anonymous said...

They say better late than never and it suits me sooo well. :-)

Well, 1st one I knew already.
2nd & 3rd are exactly me. Karela & Methi.. oh I so much love them.

Alarms.. I do check them but only 5-6 times.
I am also a grown up now. No toothpaste for me. :-)

Rest all, you'll slowly come to know. :P

~vagabond~ said...

@Kunal:

Yes, I agree...it was a rather boring post. Hopefully the next one will be better than this. I hope. :)

~vagabond~ said...

@Cuckoo: Yup...better late than never...always glad to see you here. :)

Oooh! I love methi too! And why does it not surprise me that you share a lot of these traits with me? LOL.

alok said...

Oh! the first one looks more like a skill-set :P

"In the words of Joe, I would be the worst person to be present as the only person present at a crime scene when it happened". really? Have you ever tried with your photo memory?

And the mosquito story is funny

Thanks for sharing with us :)

Anonymous said...

i sure can give u a competition in horrible observational skills. Until I forcefully see something and remind myself to be reminded again about the thing, i won't remember a bit of it. last day i was watching 'reservation road' and remarked that I can seldom recall if i be asked about the colour and make of a speeding car. also i fail to recognise babies as taking the features of their mother or father, which other people can do so easily. So at least for me u r not weird in this trait.

~vagabond~ said...

@Alok:
Yeah. I should probably mention the first one on my resume. LOL. You have no idea how horrible my observation skills are.

@Rahi:
Ooh! Ooh! Me too! I never get it when people say "aww..the baby looks just like the mother"...I just dont see it. I never see it.

Vamsee Modugula said...

I didn't realize I was tagged here. Let me think about it and see if I can come up with 8.