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Ai Li, you cannot keep your table neat, huh? I also cannot. As if you don't know. I think there must be a course somewhere in TRAISI on this.

And so here are random facts about me and (can I cheat? of course I can) people around me.

1. I keep on forgetting if Ai Li's name is spelled Aili or Ai Li. There are some things which my brain is simply not wired for and spelling is one of them. I can't spell occasion/ocassion and I can't figure out if it's spelled or spelt. Sometimes, things like that bother me enough to get out of the bed at night and check the dictionary.

2. That brings me to #2. I am becoming quite an insomniac this year. My brain will be whirring with activity even when the rest of my body is screaming for sleep. I think it's because the first two years of motherhood is physically challenging but not so taxing mentally so my brain (should it be brain or brains cos we do have a set of two brains, right?) is severely underused and it returns the favour at about 1 am in the morning.

3. I can tolerate messiness but dirt is not a friend. If a place is very dirty and I'm stuck there for a while, I'll get depressed. Seriously depressed. But it has to be terribly dirty to make me depressed. A bit of dust here and there in someone else's house does not bother me. In fact, I feel relieved that other people have problems with dust too. Sometimes, I find myself trying to surreptitiously wipe the dust off other people's TV cabinets. NO, you may not invite me to your house when you are doing spring cleaning. My siblings used to think that I have OCD. Because I'll be mopping the floor of my room at 11.30pm at night. I used to be unable to sleep in an unmade bed. Hmm. I think I did have OCD. I also married the right person because my husband cannot tolerate messiness. So, between us, our place looks pretty okay. We just have no eye for design.

4. And that gives me an idea for #4! Our house is very, very plain. It's very functional but no spot in the house will make it into the pages of home decoration magazines. I am aesthetically handicapped. And The Husband is only interested in having things at right angles and correct symmetry. (He's another OCD case, I'm sure.)  How handicapped am I? In primary school, whenever drawing was involved, I'd cry non-stop and my mother would end up drawing for me. My mother was not so free to draw for me all the time so there was once in Primary 3 when I had to draw a picture of a goat. Of course, I cried and cried the whole night but nobody wanted to help me. In the end, my 5-year-old brother drew the goat for me. That is still a story exchanged at family gatherings. In secondary 1 & 2, my mother and sister did some of my art work for me. In Sec 2, one of my art work was put up in class. But it wasn't mine. It was conceptualised by me, drawn by my mother and painted by my sister.

WAH!! From not quite knowing what to write at first, I've written 4 rather lengthy paragraphs about my deepest, darkest secrets! Now, for 4 more.

5. There are times when I just have a strong and urgent need to break into Singlish. These moments usually surface in the middle of an English Language class or when I'm in a meeting with complete strangers. I can't! I can't!! I'm a fraud! I don't speak English! Singlish is my first language!

6. If I need to poo, I almost always rush back home for it. I can't poo satisfactorily in public toilets. Because I hover. This, I'm quite sure, is related to my OCD.

7. A few days ago, my mother was rearranging a part of the house and she moved the entire box of albums from one area to another. I took a look at the albums and it is for the sake of world peace, international harmony and well, generally being concerned about everyone's welfare, photos of myself from the time I started wearing Coke-bottle glasses (Primary 4) to the time I discovered contact lenses (NUS, Year 1) will be banned from the public space. The photos are frightening. If you are pregnant, you should not look at them. Those photos are the type that can make even the most good-natured child bawl and not sleep the entire night. SCARY. If you happen to go to my mother's house for whatever reason, do not go near the shelf where she puts the photo albums. Please treat this as a warning and I shall not be liable for any permanent damage you may face as a result of viewing such photos.

8. Thank you for  reading up to this point. I think if you have successfully read up to this point, I should reward you with something short and sweet to end all revelations about myself. So, I shall end this with a piece of secret which is really embarrassing. I'm scared to death of irregular shaped sponge. (There's yet another long story to go with that but I think you should be very breathless and tired by now so I'll spare you.)

Hmm. That wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Reading would be a pain, though.