“Posting 100 Things About Yourself”

“Posting 100 Things About Yourself” memes are fun, because they don’t require you to actually think of things to write about. (Can you tell I’m having writer’s block right now?)

1. Very rarely will I buy cookies or ice cream, because if I see them around the house, I will EAT THE WHOLE PACK IMMEDIATELY.
2. I love tomato juice and tomato sauce. You would have to shoot me before making me eat a tomato raw.
3. I had never learned to cook growing up. Mom would look at me, smile, and say “you get a good wife, she will cook for you!”
4. Mom still calls me every morning at 9:00am and 6:30pm. Every day. EVERY FRICKIN’ DAY. LIKE CLOCKWORK.
5. I was a “last ditch” effort for my parents to have a son.
6. I have one sister, ten years older than me. She acted as a protector/surrogate mother until I was 5 or 6, when she had her mental breakdown.
7. Because of this, I know much more about anti-psychotic medication than an average person deserves to know.
8. At one point in elementary school, I was taking lessons for piano, violin, drums and cello.
9. I took classical piano lessons from the ages of 4 to 15.
10. I rebelled from said piano lessons, only to play jazz piano in high school and to play for my church choir, touring the country every year.
11. The majority of friends from the high school years actually come from the church days. Of those, me and another guy are the only ones that aren’t married.
12. In freshman year of high school, I was in acting classes and the school play.
13. Sophomore year of high school, dad pulled me out of the school play because I was to take computer classes.
14. My dad also pulled me out of the high school improv troupe I was in.
15. I’ve been on a game show. But you knew that.
16. In college, while co-oping for a major engineering firm, there was a macarena contest. I won, but gave my $100 restaruant gift certificate to my boss because I didn’t have anyone to eat with at the time. (Awww…)
17. For a fat kid, I can dance decently.
18. A friend once pulled me aside and said that I have an addictive personality. This is the sole reason why I have not tried hardcore drugs. (And also, because I have a dayjob. Hello, co-workers!)
19. I’m a fiercely defensive driver.
20. I’ve only been in one car-accident when I was 19, rear-ending a woman with no health insurance. I gave her an additional four hundred dollars out of pocket, which was either the most compassionate or idiotic thing I’ve ever done. Probably both.
21. I’ve never had a relationship that has lasted longer than a month.
22. I had a salad-bowl haircut up until four or five years ago.
23. The first time I had ever been intoxicated was the very first day of college.
24. The majority of my friends in college are Filipino. I am Chinese.
25. Because of this, the unofficial nickname in my mostly Chinese co-ed Fraternity was “Sell-out.” (As in, “Awww, man! Ernie sold out!“)
26. Me and another girl were the only two non-Filipinos to attend Fil-Grad, a special graduation ceremony for Filipino-Americans. I got a standing ovation. I don’t know why either.
27. I came out a second time my Senior year in college. The response: “Yeah, we figured.”
28. On the day of the final for my very last class before college graduation, I turned the paper over and wrote the following: “Dear Professor. I need a D in this class to graduate from college. If I get an F, I will have to repeat this class and be here for an extra quarter. I am BEGGING you, give me a D.”
29. I got a D in that class, even though I had the lowest grade in the final.
30. If it’s any consolation, only one technical class I took in college had relevance at my first job, a dot-com.
31. My first computer was an IBM PC-XT when I was seven or eight years old. Dad wouldn’t let me get a gaming system, so I wrote BASIC games and played them myself.
32. As a teenager, I was heavily involved in the BBS community, especially with pirating illegal software. I was in an art group where we would draw advertisements with large blocks of colored text called ANSI. This is how I got my blazingly fast 14.4k modem for free.
33. In hindsight, I have every reason to believe that said 14.4k modem was obtained through illegal methods. Oh well, such is life.
34. I have been told that my maternal grandmother was mentally… well, not all quite there. I have never met her.
35. I have been told that my maternal grandmother didn’t actually raise my mother — my aunt did. My mom’s birthday and birthplace has been fabricated on her birth certificates, because my grandmother doesn’t even know.
36. I met my cousin on my mothers side for the first time the day of my college graduation. When I asked about this grandmother that I have never met, she turned pale and said in Chinese, “She’s gone now. It’s just as well.”
37. My parents didn’t have an arranged marriage, persay, but it was heavily suggested.
38. When I went to China the summer after graduating from college, I was introduced to a nice Chinese nurse named Helen who was VERY interested in coming to America. You see where I’m going with this?
39. I ended up coming out to my father in a crowded department store somewhere in Shanghai. Don’t ask how that went.
40. In the days afterwards, we were on a boat driving down a river overlooking Shanghai. Helen saw me looking forlorn and said in Chinese, I kid you not, “You’re looking very pensive. Do you know who else was very pensive? Chairman Mao.” I swear to god, I was going to throw myself over the boat right then and there.
41. The last day in Shanghai, Helen kissed me and said, in these exact words: Wo hui yongyuen xihuan ni. I will like you forever. Yeah, no pressure there.
42. The sad thing is, if I was straight? I would probably be married to her.
43. I was Amy Grant’s #1 fan in high school. Shut up.
44. I lost 40 pounds for the purpose of not improving my health, but to try to improve my appearances and get a boyfriend. It didn’t work.
45. I will admit that I did some things to lose those 40 pounds that was NOT recommended by the FDA to lose weight. (Don’t ask.)
46. If my father and co-workers did not read this weblog, LYD would be 50 times more obscene. I have nothing to hide, but I DO have a lot to lose by saying it. But that’s fine by me.
47. Unlike some other webloggers, I do not have some hidden weblog or livejournal where I post my forbidden or dirty thoughts…
48. …yet.
49. Honest to god, I don’t remember the first weblogs that got me to start blogging. I remember reading Kevin’s weblog and I remember sending off e-mails to Chris and Jay. There are probably more, but those three were most instramental to having LYD created.
50. It’s hard to write 100 things about yourself over your lunch break. So 50 will have to do. Sorry.

(Alright! That’s enough content for years! Taking a break from webloggin’, kids! See ya in 2010!)