Piers tried to pay me a compliment the other day.

“Your skin is so smooth,” he said.

I was about to modestly protest when he added, “Like a pumpkin.”

“What?” I said.

“No, wait,” he said thoughtfully, “Pumpkins aren’t very smooth, are they?”

“No, they’re not.”

“Okay,” he tried again, “Your skin is as smooth as a peach.”

Obviously, it wasn’t going very well.

I said, “Huh?”

He said, “Peaches have got these little hairs…”

I made a face. “Are you calling me hairy??”

“No, no, of course not,” he said defensively, “Peaches are not hairy.”

“They’re fuzzy,” I told him.

“That’s kinda smooth isn’t it?”

“How is that smooth? It’s fuzzy!”

He thought about it for a while, then said, “Okay, okay, not peach. What should it be then?”

“Tofu,” I said.

“Eew!”

“What?”

“Tofu is slimy!” he declared.

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is!”

“It’s a common analogy to say a girl’s skin is soft as tofu!” I said.

(Actually, I’m not sure about that at all. It was just the first thing that popped into my mind. Silken tofu is very soft and smooth, isn’t it?)

“That’s disgusting!” he proclaimed again, “Tofu is slimy and wet.”

“It’s not slimy!”

(Which is true. Tofu may be wet but it’s not slimy at all.)

But he had one last argument.

“If tofu weren’t slimy and wet, Takumi wouldn’t have to worry about spilling it.”

I’m sorry if you haven’t watched Initial D (the Japanese anime) and therefore don’t get the Takumi reference, but don’t worry about it because it’s a stupid reference to begin with.

The point is that, after all that, I didn’t feel at all complimented because the conversation ended on “slimy”.

We didn’t go any further than that; I generally try to change the subject when Piers gets too silly.

Luckily for him, he’s useful in many other ways (such as fixing broken things around the house) so we can happily overlook his flaws (such as likening me to a pumpkin).

For his information (since Valentine’s Day is coming soon), I don’t need roses or compliments. I’ll happily settle for an iPad 3 (and not the gimpy 16GB Wifi one)!

:D

You know how, in relationships, you reach a point where you run out of things to talk about?

Piers and I got to that stage a few months back. We gradually replaced our bonding sessions with TV. Lots of TV.

I was starting to get addicted, too, because England has no end of interesting, crazy TV shows.

Not very productive.

Fortunately, things are beginning to change now that I’m back at school. Piers will ask about my day and I will have many stories to tell him. We can last hours this way.

That wasn’t possible just two weeks ago.

Our daily updates went like this:

Piers: How was your day?

Shey: Um, same as yesterday. How was your day?

Piers: Same as yesterday.

Shey: What’s for dinner?

His job is a bit boring. He sits in front of three monitors and stares at pixels all day long. If the pixels are not worth staring at, he stares at his iPad.

For me, two weeks before, I played Facebook and iPad games full-time. Sometimes, I blogged.

But now, we can have more engaging conversations, like this one that just happened:

Piers: How was school today?

Shey: We learnt how to transfer water and beans from container to container.

Piers: Gosh.

Shey: And how to open and close padlocks.

Piers: Wow. Sounds interesting.

Shey: Yes.

Piers: You must be becoming very useful.

Shey: I think so.

Piers: I can get you to do all sorts of stuff around the house now.

Shey: Do you have beans that need transferring? I can do that.

Piers: No, but now I know you can, I might get some.

Shey: I can do mung beans, butter beans, soya beans and aduki beans.

Piers: Amazing. You’re so smart! Proud of you.

Shey: Thanks!

We went on to talk about nuts. I tried to convince him to buy me honey roasted cashew nuts to practise on, but he wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that I haven’t been trained to work with nuts.

I have, though. I’ve been living with one for almost a year now.

Yes, we’ve been dating for nearly a year, so it’s understandable for us to run out of things to talk about.

But not anymore!

I think tomorrow we learn how to use scissors. Yes, Piers and I are going to have another exciting conversation!

I got told off this morning.

All because Edgeworld, a game I’m playing on Facebook, sneakily told all my friends that I’m playing it.

A lot of Facebook games do that, in fact. You can’t even log in to Facebook these days without everyone immediately knowing that you’re at the moment skiving off instead of working/studying/blogging.

So, this was what happened.

I totally didn’t know an update was posted when I logged into the game, and then suddenly I got a notification that someone had commented on my activity.

To further illustrate my point about Facebook games being sneaky tattertales, there was this one morning when I woke up and went about my daily routine, which was:

1. Turn on computer.
2. Turn on MSN and say hi to Piers.
3. Open all my current Facebook games to use up stored energry/collect daily credits etc. Then, if I have time, play for a bit.

((I know it looks like a very sad routine but looks are deceiving so let’s leave the judging for another time because today’s topic is not to discuss my Internet/gaming addiction (although the word I prefer is passion)).

So in the midst of doing my routine this one morning, an MSN message suddenly flashed on my screen:

“You logged in to Edgeworld before saying hi to me!”

Now, before you get the wrong idea about Piers, he was just teasing me and not being stalkerish. It’s impossible to develop an impulse to stalk a girlfriend who wants to stay home all day and play games. I would say I’m quite safe from having a stalkerish boyfriend.

To clarify the situation, I did in fact turn on MSN before I opened my games, but it’s just that Chrome loaded my games a lot faster than MSN signed in, so it would have appeared to stalkers, should I actually have any, that I prioritised games over going on MSN.

This incident brought home the point that Facebook is quite dangerous so we should never add our bosses, teachers, parents, elders and people we don’t like on it.

Who knows what other kinds of things, in the future, Facebook will tell about us without us knowing.

Of course, we can (and should) try to be more careful. And if we strive to be honest and reliable and diplomatic in all things, we don’t have to worry about Facebook telling on us.

Like, if you wanted to turn down a date from someone you don’t really fancy, just say no and don’t come up with stupid excuses like “I broke all my fingers so I can’t come out” and then the next thing is he sees you playing Edgeworld on Facebook.

I’m sure I’m not saying anything new here. Everyone already knows the dangers of Facebook. But then people still keep getting caught in embarrassing situations. We really can’t be too careful.

In the meantime, I’m not too worried. I can live with the odd person telling me I game too much. Not that it’s even news, duh.

And Justyn should be quite happy now so I should be able to log in to Edgeworld without further repercussions.

It is very hard to please everyone but that doesn’t mean we can’t try our best.

So, be happy and make people happy! Just don’t burp or pick your nose when Facebook is watching.

I have a problem: The English can’t pronounce my name.

You see, my official name (Shen Qiaoyun) is written in hanyu pinyin, which is the English phonetic representation of Mandarin.

So the English would read it as Kiao Yoon because Q is supposed to be a hard K sound in English. Some of them even get stressed because Q is not supposed to come without a U.

“What on earth is this word?!” they’d be thinking to themselves. “It breaks all the rules of the English language!”

They’d make an attempt: “Kuh… Keeee… Kao… Keeeeowwww? Kiao Yoooon? The doctor will see you now.”

I don’t want to be called Kiao Yoon forever.

So what am I going to do?

The most logical solution is to legally change my name.

But that is a massive pain in the behind. I have already done that. I changed my name once in November 2005 for feng shui reasons and had to go through the tedious process of updating records everywhere.

In fact, I only updated my driving license recently, which is exactly six years late.

I’ve also had to use a passport bearing my old name for more than five years because ICA refused to give me a new one. They just made an annotation in one of the pages in my passport showing that I have changed my name.

But no immigration officer in the world has ever thought to flip to that page on his/her own accord. I always have to spend a long time at the counter waiting for the officer to check my photo page against my arrival card, then look at me suspiciously, then allow me to turn the pages in my passport to show him the annotation.

Once, a Hong Kong immigration officer even scolded me after I showed him the page. He said I should have written my old name in my arrival card since that was what was showing on the photo page.

So, now that I finally have a new passport with the right name, I never ever want to go through that process again.

In England, Piers usually introduces me as Shey for the sake of convenience because, even if the English hear Qiaoyun being said, they find it hard to say it themselves.

Piers has been practisig the pronunciation for nine months and he still says Chiao Yoon, which is close enough but not quite right.

I’m not sure what to do about it. I don’t regret changing my name because it’s been good for me, overall. It has helped to somewhat change my personality, which has in turn altered the course of my life for the better. But I wish I’d had gotten a name that didn’t start with a stupid Q.

My feng shui master had actually given me a list of names to choose from and Qiaoyun was the nicest sounding one. Many of the ones on the list sounded male or ugly, for example, Yongkang. Wtf, right?

I was talking to Piers about this recently. I told him I didn’t want to be called Kiao Yoon because kiao means dead in Hokkien and he wtflol-ed.

Life is never easy, is it?

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Addendum:

Just remembered a good example I should have given.

When I was in England, I was online shopping a lot. I received packages from postmen and courier service men probably 30 or 40 times in all my time there.

Each time I opened the door, they would read off the package: “Kiao Yoon?”

Because there are many different courier services in England, I was always getting different people, so I didn’t even try to educate them as to the pronunciation of my name.

I suppose I could use the name Sheylara for my online shopping from now on, but there will still be situations where I can’t use it (bank, insurance, clinic, etc) where people will have to try and read my name off a form. These are the ones I want to avoid!

I’m back! But I probably have only one reader left because everyone else must have been scared off by the scary anti-virus warnings on my blog.

(Piers is hard to scare.)

The viruses (malicious codes) are gone now. Lionel from Ripplewerkz scared them off for me. Yay.

On the bright side, no readers means I don’t have to watch my words and can be rude if I want to. However, I’m not in the mood to be rude today, so I think I shall do a bit of updating, instead.

Shall be rude another day.

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Studying in UK

I’ve finally completed all the paperwork and legwork. All that’s left now is to wait for my student visa to be approved and then for the school term to start (Jan 9, 2012).

My IELTS results startled me. I had expected to only borderline pass because it was such a tedious and tough exam. But I miraculously got an overall 8.5 (top score is 9).

For school, I have been given a reading list and tasked to read the first book before the course starts.

It’s rather old, the book, first published in 1948, so maybe some things have become either outdated or common knowledge. But I still find in it a wealth of information that’s intriguing and thought-provoking.

Can’t wait for the course to start.

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Facebook

When I quit Restaurant City and Cafe World (about two years ago, if memory serves), I swore I’d never play another Facebook game again because they’re too freaking addictive despite being exceptionally silly.

I was true to my word for two years.

I don’t know what happened, really.

I started spending more time in Facebook recently because I liked the latest layout with all the interesting additions such as scrolling real-time friend updates.

It took just one curious click on a Facebook game advert to suck me in before my brain remembered that I wasn’t supposed to click on ads.

But then I discovered that Facebook games have gone through marked improvements since two years ago; they are marginally less silly now.

I still hate how some games force you to beg your friends for in-game gifts. I had to make Piers play this cutesy game in order to gift me game items since he’s the only person I don’t mind begging from.

But he was understandably horrified about Facebook putting words in his mouth (see above picture) and promptly deleted the app.

I started many new games in the last few weeks and also quit many. Even if fun and cute, I refuse to play games that make you beg for stuff. You could pay for them but they cost too much for the paltry purpose they serve.

My current active Facebook games list:

Family Feud
Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?
Bingo Blitz
CSI: Crime City
1 vs 100
Games (has about 100 games in it)

By the way, feel free to stalk me on Facebook.

Stalking is the new socialising.

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Stalking

People in Facebook would have been able to see me jumping from game to game like a true gaming addict every day in the last few weeks.

I can’t hide. When I load up a game, my 1381 friends know that I’m awake and playing a game instead of doing something more useful with my life.

Piers noticed once that I was playing CSI: Crime City despite having said good night to him an hour earlier. It was a bit hard to explain to him why I felt compelled to solve crimes in the middle of a sleep.

On the flip side, I also know what my friends are up to every minute I’m in Facebook.

Supposedly, that is a scary thing. But it must also be cool. Times have changed, right? Stalking is not the exclusive domain of crazy stalkers anymore.

These days, people are willing to be stalked, which increases the demand for stalkers, a position easily filled because social networking has made it fun and easy.

Don’t try to stalk bulls, though. They don’t like it.

Piers and I encountered this bull in Guernsey (a little island in the English Channel) while driving around. It was standing alone just a few feet from the road, so I stuck my camera in its face and started snapping away.

It stood upright and bellowed at me angrily.

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Gaming

Other than Facebook games, I haven’t been gaming much. My iPad is only used for reading now but I expect to get tired of Facebook games eventually and go back to my iPad.

I recently tried a pretty cool game recommended by Swordplay. It’s a small independent game in alpha stage that’s a bit like Little Big Planet, called Way.

In this two-player game, you travel through a world, trying to get past obstacles with the help of a second player who is very likely a stranger from another part of the world. You’re not allowed to text or talk to each other, but you can communicate by manipulating your avatar’s facial expressions and arms. In this way, you try to work with each other to complete the stages.

It’s really tough and frustrating but also rewarding as you conquer each obstacle. But Piers and I cheated a bit; we were on webcam when we played it together.

We made this picture in the end:

You can “write” to each other in the game after you complete it.

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Jet lag

It is so very hard to adjust my body clock every time I come back to Singapore. For two weeks, I was sleeping at 9 am and waking up at 5 pm.

I tried making myself really exhausted by waking up early even after only sleeping three hours. I’d then go to bed around 2 am, hoping to wake up at 10 am, a goodly hour.

But then, I would wake up after only two or three hours of sleep and not be able to go back to sleep.

I tried doing that for three days, managing only to sleep about three hours a day. I finally collapsed from exhaustion one afternoon and slept all the way through to 9 pm, which completely undid my heroic effort.

Give up.

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And now it’s time to eat.

My appetite has been largely dead due to jet lag. But I only have one month left to enjoy Singaporean cuisine. What am I going to do?