The Rawpinions Weblog

Ok, here I am drinking a “glass” of red wine from the first bottle I ever bought for myself…LOL.  Red wine and…crackers (I’m hungry, what can I say?).  I’m also listening to Red, Red Wine (1983), UB40’s version…don’t you just lurve that song? It’s just a matter of hours for someone else to start playing that song in this dorm…somehow, there’s always someone copying my music:

2 weeks ago I was taking a shower and thought about high school back home which reminded me of the last day of S2, which reminded me of Lauryn Hill’s version of Killing Me Softly (1996) so when I got out of the bathroom I played “Killing Me Softly”, almost blasting it (it was a weekend).  2 days later, someone passed by my room and I heard “Killing Me Softly” blasting on their phone.  Too much of a coincidence if you ask me!

There was also this one time when I was chilling with Lutricia McNeal’s “Ain’t That Just The Way”, which was on my playlist (i.e. it would keep repeating).  A week later, my next door neighbour kept playing it over and over again.  I mean seriously…I should be a “back-in-the-days” DJ or something.

So anyways, I was just watching Kung Fu Panda.  Not bad at all! It’s got this really Chinese “feel” to it.  I actually think “Tai Lung” is a funny name, it sounds like “tai leng” which means “too cold”.  Most memorable quote in my opinion:

Po to Shifu: “I stayed…I stayed because every time you threw a brick at my head or said I smelled, it hurts but it could never hurt more then it did every day of my life just being me.  I stayed, because I thought if anyone could change me, could make me not me, it was YOU…”

Most funniest scene in my opinion:

Shifu: “You are free to eat…enjoy”
Po: About to stuff a dumpling in his mouth.
Shifu: Snaches dumpling away.
Po: “Hey!”
Shifu: Eats the dumpling.  “I said, you are free to eat.  Have a dumpling.”
Po: Attempts to pick up a dumpling.
Shifu: Skillfully kicks the dumpling in the air, eats it.
Po: Stares at Shifu, pissed off.
Shifu: “You are free to eat!”
Po: Am I?!
Shifu: Are you?!

Arrgghh this freakn headache…

Lemme go pour myself another glass…

Quick Food tip: if you decide to microwave some jiaozi (dumplings), boil them first then microwave them for about 3 minutes and you’ll get this really nice crispy outer layer (ok, I don’t know what they’re called).

Touched About Typing

Last week, I was downstairs at the computer room (first time this year).  This Asian girl sitting at a distance from me was a bit of a bother.  Why? Because she was touch-typing so darn fast! How long does it take for me to be even faster than that? My guess is that her speed’s around 65-75 WPM.  The last time I tested myself (re-typing a passage) I was at 54 WPM.

Hearing that girl type reminded me of what made me start touch-typing in the first place: intimidation.  I was so sick of watching my classmates touch-type that I spent one hour every single day for 2 weeks learning and consolidating.  I have now been touch-typing “fluently” for almost 11 months (give or take a week or two).  I really ought to stop messing around.

I tend to reach out for the backspace key way too often, and I’m still unable to watch TV and re-type something at the same time.  I’m also unable to talk and type at the same time (I might end up typing whatever it is that’s being said).

I’m pretty sure I type a whole lot faster when I’m typing up what I’m thinking, but is that even counted? Typing tests usually involve having to retype something that’s right in front of you.

I’m going to add typing to my schedule again, I want to add an extra 20 WPM to my current 54 WPM crap.  I want to put the 60 WPM secretaries to shame.

According to thefreedictionary.com, opinionated is defined as: “holding stubbornly and often unreasonably to one’s own opinions.”

A few people have this bad habit of thinking that an opinionated person is a person with lots of opinions. Or someone who disagrees with the majority’s opinion on a certain matter is an opinionated person. That is why, I feel a lot of people who call me opinionated is actually a lot more opinionated than I am.

Believe it or not, I have no shame in apologizing when I’m wrong. I have no shame in telling someone that their strong argument has convinced me that they are right. In any argument, I try my best to calm down and focus on rationality.

We all have opinions. Just because I have the guts to state my opinion (whether it’s supported by others or not) doesn’t mean I’m not willing to hear others out. It just so happens, that people either:

1 - don’t care to challenge my opinions
2 - throw insults when they disagree, rather than take the high road and simply tell me they disagree

Remember this: if you disagree with my opinions, it’s only because you have an opinion on the matter too. What makes my opinion wrong, and yours right? How is it that my opinions automatically make me an opinionated person, and your opinions don’t automatically make you an opinionated person?

I love hearing what others have to say about everyday stuff. I feel their opinions help me grow; their opinions help me form better opinions.

There are two ways to react to someone’s opinions: the rational and the irrational way. When I state my opinion and someone disagrees with me, I reply by trying to further explain why I think the way I do. They’re very welcome to convince me otherwise. That’s the rational way of dealing with opinions I believe.

There are more than a handful of people who decide to take the irrational route to dealing with opinions. Just recently, someone decided to call me a racist b*tch rather than saying something like “no way, I totally disagree with you”. One other time, this African guy disagreed with something I said so he not only told me to drop dead (or whatever it was he said), but he also decided to wish harm on my mother (the argument had nothing to do with mothers, he just wanted to get personal)…all that because he couldn’t get me to agree with him on something. *Rolls eyes*

When I was a kid, I’d be so frustrated when people just didn’t agree with me (highly opinionated?). When I eventually did some independent thinking, I decided to respect what others thought and believed, hoping to get the same amount of respect in return (not so opinionated, huh?). But after a while, you realize that everyone’s kind of the same: we all think we’re right. So believe it or not, if you feel I’m opinionated then you are just as opinionated as I am.

I have the news on in the background, I can barely hear myself think…so if you didn’t understand anything I said, tough.

I just found yet another one of my pet-peeves: someone calling me “sis” or “sister”. After this post, I’m going to try to Google-search people who might be feeling the same way, if any…because it is a weird pet peeve.

It bothers me when either my male or female friends call me that. My own biological sisters don’t even call me that, so why should other people?

The reason one of my close female friends call me “sis” is because, according to her I’m the sister she never had. So instead of calling me ‘buddy’, ‘pal’ or anything that sounds like she’s talking to her dog, she calls me “sis”. I totally understand her reasons, but somehow it still bothers me big time. I can’t really tell her not to call me that, because she’s going to sulk and get all sensitive about it.

Even more horrible is when guys call me that. It’s just a word that has never been in my non-existent culture. So the word only has one meaning to me and that’s “female sibling”, of which I have two.

The ultimate worst however, is when a guy - a steaming hot guy, calls me “sister”. It’s as immoral as incest-ism.

Some of you might realize that my blog’s gone a bit odd. I updated to Wordpress 2.5.1 yesterday and had to spend all morning repairing my database - manually! I honestly can’t believe they’ve released this version. There are bugs on the admin panel and worst: the update went all wrong! Now all the Chinese characters I had have turned into symbols and/or question marks. The updating has also messed up my categories and have added odd symbols to the earlier posts (what’s up with character compatibility?). Wordpress, you guys are experts - don’t you know when to label something as a beta???

When I was scheming through the database, I found a whole lot of blog links that I had never seen before. Now I’m going to have to do some asking around to find out if I’m actually giving any of these Wordpress developers backlinks.

After this post I’m going to try to reload my backup, and reinstall 2.5.0 and update the posts only. I’m finally learning a bit about SQL databases…and it’s not even funny.

Update: I’ve been able to fix the categories.

Current Mood: Mischievous

As much as it bothers many foreigners when we all have to pick off the same plate while eating Chinese food, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me much anymore - especially if there was plenty for everyone, and as long as the people I’m sharing the food with don’t spit on their chopsticks. This Chinese food sharing thing is an exception.

I don’t like sharing anything else, especially stuff that’s mine. If I were to order my own meal at a restaurant and my friends orders their own, it would bother me if they were to pick of my plate. I mean, if you like what’s on my plate, why didn’t you just order the same thing?

I do believe many people can still be generous even if they don’t like sharing their stuff. If I had 2 bars of chocolate, I’d be very willing to give someone one whole bar even if I didn’t know them well. If they refused and only asked for a small piece of mine (thinking they’re being less demanding), it would bother me. Likewise, if someone had 2 bars of chocolate and only gave me a piece of one bar I’d consider them greedy.

The ultimate worst thing someone could possibly do is ask me for a sip of (my) water from an already-opened bottle…and then handing it back to me after the sip. That is just g-r-o-s-s.

When it comes to booze, I’m slightly more tolerant. Especially when my friends and I order different types of cocktails and someone will tend to want to ‘taste’ what I got.

So I guess there’s such a thing as being generous and greedy at the same time.

The other day, I was trying to explain to Alma that during the extremely humid Shanghai summer (our current season) my hair starts to go wild.  Not quite like Marge Simpson’s hairdo, but a little bit as funny as Monica’s, in ‘FRIENDS’ during the Barbados trip episode (if I were to exaggerate a bit).

She then asked me for the curler I used, so that she can do her hair like mine.  Funny, I guess she didn’t really understand what I said, when I was explaining about the behaviour of my hair.  Like I said before, my hair is neither curly nor straight, it is wavy for crying out loud! AND I don’t use a freakn curler!

Random Quote: “”Barcelona… a club with a stadium that seats 120,000 people. And they’re all here in Newcastle tonight!”"

My first year in Shanghai (my Chinese language year) I was a very happy person.  I finally left Seychelles, and all the troubles I had behind.  At that time, anyone who’d talk to me could notice how happy I was.

Why has that changed so much in the past year?

Nobody will ever know, or truly understand the extreme depression I was in back home.  I wasn’t happy in all aspects of my life: problems with my private life, family issues, financial…

Here in Shanghai, I started out with no problems: getting the scholarship allowance (more than enough here), excellent grades, lots of friends and I was actually a popular person in class.  That’s the problem when you’re so well off in more ways than one, people stop liking you.  They don’t realize that it’s not that they don’t like me, it’s that they were growing jealous.  So after a while I wanted to blend with the background and lay low for a while.  I moved to another room (a single room), I didn’t invite anyone to hang out, and I stopped hanging out with everyone except Alma (my Filipina friend).  Why Alma? Because it’s better to hang out with someone who’s not a nerd, and someone who’s got more than homework, schoolwork and competition in her mind.  Still the same thing now, the more I think of school, the more i think of everyone I dislike, those people who like to mind my business, the people who have nothing better to do; the people who are jealous.

Well I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve: I’m in the background in fact, I’m not even there.  I’m not popular anymore (some of my teachers don’t even know I’m supposed to be in their class).  My grades aren’t excellent anymore.  So now I’m not as perfect as I used to be.  Nobody likes a perfect person anyway so I hope you guys are all happy now.

I blog because I have time to.� I make time to.� I blog, because I’ve always been a diarist.� We always want someone to read what we’ve been through & what we’re going through - but not necessarily someone we know.� It just feels good to know we’re heard by someone who might understand what we’re going though.� Or it’s just pretty cool to believe that somewhere out there, there really is someone who’s just like us.

But the difference between a diary and a blog is that a diary is a secret book.� A well-kept diary will be read by someone after the diarist dies (as always).� A blog however, is read almost immediately after the blogger posts the entry.

So that’s why I hate blogging - lots of things I really want to publish on the internet, but I can only say 30% of what I want to say, and mention only a few names, for the sake of other people’s privacy…darn it.� Why am I so righteous?