Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
**Adrianna tagged me, so what the hey, here we go.**
1. I ride to work daily and rotate between four bicycles, a very fast hybrid, a modified mountain bike and two folding bikes. And their names are Alexia, Tank, Sasha and Natascha. Sasha and Natascha are named after two miniguns used by favourite character in my favourite computer game.
2. When I play computer games, I am not called mrbrown. I am named after a Battlestar Galactica character.
3. One of my email addresses is a very very bad word.
4. I was 91kg at my peak, in 2006. I lost 15kg in 3 months and have maintained it since with a sensible diet and daily riding. I never want to be that tub of lard ever again.
5. My wife and I are teenhood sweethearts. We've been together for almost 20 years.
6. When we named our firstborn Faith, we did not expect her to test ours.
7. Faith is autistic and is currently seven years old. She is the sweetest child in the world. Her first word was "Elmo". We await her other words with great expectations.
8. I wore glasses since I was 5 years old. This was before myopia became the norm in Singapore school kids. Without my glasses or contacts, I am almost blind.
9. I have traveled since I was 5 years old. My first country was Taiwan. We could travel every year only because my dad worked in Singapore Airlines as a ground engineer. He is very famous there, having worked there for more than 40 years. He never took a single day of Sick Leave. Except for the time he had to have a part of his lung removed, in the last year of his employment there. He is now retired. He is one tough guy.
10. All my kids have middle English names, including me. Their middle names are variants of my wife's and my English names.
11. My English first name and English middle name both have the same meaning but one is Greek and the other is Hebrew. I did not know it at the time I chose those names.
12. I served National Service as a mechanic and I was assigned to a Combat Engineer unit, fixing outboard motors (OBMs) for Boat Company. At the peak of my military career, I could rebuild a Suzuki 40HP OBM from just an engine block. The most enjoyable days of my NS were spent at sea, on 5-day round-island exercises as the resident mech. 2009 is my last year of reservist, as I hit 40.
13. I have an NTC-3 certificate from VITB, now called ITE.
14. One of my fingers has a hard fleshy area where I lost a chunk of flesh from a freak outboard motor accident in the army. The flywheel of the engine I was testing shredded the flesh of my finger when I instinctively tried to push down the OBM that threatened to fly out of the testing tank. No bones were broken but the grease-covered shredded skin looked damn cool. Yes, it was extremely painful.
15. I started playing trading card games in my thirties. I was playing against, trading and buying Lord of the Rings cards with Primary Two kids. My merry lot of boardgame and card game geek friends even traveled to Malaysia to play in regional competitions. Twice.
16. I cannot walk into a hardware store and not buy something. My wife has the same problem with stationery shops.
17. I actually hate pork liver. Tur Kwa makes me gag.
18. I am incapable of eating Quaker oats without throwing up. The texture irritates my throat. I am fond of unsweetened cornflakes and granola though.
19. I cannot eat an egg sunny side up, or any egg done with the yolk intact. The texture also makes me hurl. I am fine with an omelette and scrambled eggs though.
20. I used to part-time DJ in a radio station that broadcast from an Indonesian island. I still have some DAT tapes of my two-hour programs from those days.
21. I was an LDDS nerd. in the Literary Debating and Drama Society for six years, from Secondary 1 to Junior College. I did all of it — won poetry prizes, debated on tv, and acted in plays. My last stage performance was in George Bernard Shaw's play, "Arms and the Man" as Bluntschli, the Swiss voluntary soldier. I was 18.
22. I took public transport to school when I was Primary 5, and my brother who is 3 years my junior, did it when he was Primary 2, because my mother felt it was silly to pay so much for a private school bus.
23. I am currently using two phones N95 and N96, an iPod Touch and a Nokia N810 internet tablet on a daily basis. Yes, I am a gadget freak.
24. I collect Star Wars Clone Troopers.
25. I was fan of Chin Han and Lin Hsing-hsia Taiwanese romance movies which I watched at 3pm every day, at my aunt's house, after coming home from primary school.
