Fat Redistribution

I've lost weight since I started working. At first I was all like, fricking ecstatic and stuff (because my stomach was flatter and my hips were slightly smaller and so I was feeling more physically attractive)... but then today I noticed something that shook my world. In a big bad earthquake-y way.



My bra was not being filled properly. I looked down today while I was getting dressed and I noticed that on the fabric of the bra cup, there was slight... RUCHING. there was tiny little air pocket where there should've been breast. OMFG.


Like, talk about life being a bitch!

Seriously.

Seriously.

Seriously!

They should invent some fat-gene genetic control pill thing that lets you choose where to lose fat or where fat should go if you gain some. Like I would do it so when I lose weight, it goes from my bottom half FIRST, not LAST, and when I put on weight, the fresh fat would go to my BOOBS first, my bottom half and face LAST. As things stand, with Mother Gene in charge, it's the total opposite of the ideal situation.

When I put on weight (which happens if I so much as smell frying bacon, goddammit), my thighs, hips and butt (and FACE) pad out. When--presumably--all those bloomin' fat cells are so full up that there's nowhere left for the new fat to go, THEN my boobs grow a little. But it's SOOO not worth it, because I need to look disgusting EVERYWHERE ELSE on my body in order to gain half a cup size.

When I LOSE weight, the fat goes from my face, abs and boobs FIRST. The first two places? Good: One can always appreciate a more defined face and flatter belly. But to take away from what is already a very AVERAGE pair of boobs? That's just cruel. And when my poor little babies have been depleted, THEN only will my hip, thighs and bum deign to bless me with say, a piddling one-inch loss in circumference.

I haven't done my research yet, but maybe plastic surgeons can suck the fat from my heavy half and instead of throwing it all away, maybe they can syphon some of it into my boobs. That'd be convenient.

Things of beauty

Check out this black heel:

Very cute, yes? The sheer material, the artful gathering along the sides, the graceful scoop, the peep-toe. Ahhh. I can picture myself wearing them now. They would vamp up almost any outfit. I could wear it at work, out for lunch/dinner with the girls, out on a date. Versatile beauty.

Oh but wait. Let us now witness new heights of shoe-beauty.


Look at these babies by Rock & Republic:
Oooooh. So hot. I want want WANT them. So what if they don't match everything? They're SALIVA-INDUCING.

Imagine wearing these shoes with a pair of long-line, low-waist, slim-cut jeans and a white singlet (scoop-necked or with a square neckline), or with a strappy, knee-length, breezy-yet-fitted cream/white day dress. Mmm.




Can't talk, gotta go fantasize.

Bad Grammar as Key to Social Acceptance

Was just killing time on the ever-entertaining Facebook when I found this link on one of the groups I am a member of ("I judge you when you use poor grammar"):

Your Modifier Is Dangling by Bob Morris, The New York Times, October 21 2007.

Not long ago, an elderly friend and grammar stickler stopped me midsentence. I
had just said, “They gave it to him and I,” when it should have been “him and
me.”“You have to keep in mind the object of the preposition,” she gently told
me. I felt ashamed, but also grateful to be corrected.“And now you won’t
embarrass yourself in front of someone else,” she said.

She isn’t the only one wagging a finger or a pencil these days. Bring up the topic of grammar at any party and you’re likely to be hit with a tirade.But then, this is a time when e-mail messages, hip-hop slang, and a “decider” president who said that
“childrens do learn” are chipping away at good grammar. Poor usage, of course,
goes back at least to Shakespeare, who invented plenty of his own rules.

In “Pygmalion,” George Bernard Shaw wrote that the English have no respect for their language, and spell it abominably. And Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s character Mrs. Malaprop, with her silly misuses, could hold her own on today’s White House cabinet, or anyplace where being folksy sells better than being impeccable.

“Unfortunately, using poor grammar comes off as less pretentious,” said Sharon Nichols, a 22-year-old law student. “Everything is just so calculated in politics.”Ms.
Nichols is one of many young people throwing off her generation’s reputation for
slovenly language, and taking up the gauntlet for good grammar. Last year, after
seeing a sign on a restaurant window that said “Applications Excepted,” she
started a grammar vigilante group on Facebook, the social networking site, and called it “I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar.” Its 200,000 members have gleefully and righteously sent in 5,000 photographs documenting grammatical errors. Facebook offers several grammar-crusading groups in high finger-wagging mode, including Citizens Against Poor Grammar and Grammar Freaks United.

Meanwhile, Martha Brockenbrough, a Seattle writer, has started the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, for waging her own battles. She wrote a scolding letter to a shampoo company that used the word “structurizes.” She has also written to President Bush. “But I haven’t heard back from him,” she said.

Engaged as she is in flagging misuses, however, she doesn’t correct people face to face. Lynne Agress, founder of Business Writing at Its Best, a 25-year-old Maryland-based company, is another stickler who won’t correct people in social situations.

“You never want to make anyone uncomfortable,” she said.Of course not. And you probably don’t want to correct your boss, either. On the other hand, what kind of world would we have if everyone let grammar continue its drunken, downhill slide? Communication would become even more difficult than it already is. Civilization might even be hastened to its ultimate collapse.So, when is it O.K. to correct grammar? When you’re a teacher, of course, or when you’re coaching a nonnative speaker who has asked for help.

But if you can’t control the impulse to help a friend by correcting a mistake, what’s the best way to do so? It seems there are two options.You can ask, “Oh, is that the way you pronounce that word?” Then go on to say that you always pronounced it differently, and demonstrate how you do so.

A more subtle approach: Don’t point out the mistake. Instead, repeat what was
just said, but with correct usage this time, and in your own sentence. Then keep
talking.Ms. Agress, the business-writing expert, uses this technique.“So if
someone tells me that everyone has their issues,” she said, “I reply, ‘Yes,
everyone has his issues, but that doesn’t mean we have to worry about them.’”And
unless we really care, we don’t have to correct them, either.

It is true that many, MANY people perceive perfect (or good) grammar to be a sign of snobbery. But I don't think that is the case at ALL. I just don't get why you'd want to encourage--nay, CONSCIOUSLY BRING ABOUT--the degeneration of any language system (syntactic, phonemic, whatever). It hurts! It's the slow, deliberate death of an INSTITUTION, a beautiful SYSTEM.

In the case of English, I fight hard not to correct people I talk to (or overhear) because it's not very nice. And in case you're wondering, I have these impulses not because I'm pretentious, or because I'm a teacher--I've been like this as long as I could remember. Bad grammar (and spelling and punctuation and pronunciation) grates on my nerves, drives me completely nuts. Especially when they come from supposedly native speakers. People who by dint of their nationality and mother tongue are blessed with unconditional passports to unquestioning respect and financial ease, people who wield an invisible power, a perceived superiority over their non-native English-speaking counterparts.

When I do correct someone, I'm pleasantly surprised that I use the exact two techniques discussed in the article above. So it's nice to know that I'm strong enough to curb impulses that may otherwise brand me a social pariah (for example, I don't screech at people "It's YOU'RE taller THAN me, not YOUR taller THEN me! GAHHH!" or "It's MY FEET HURT not MY FEET HURTS, GOD don't you KNOW feet is PLURAL?!"). It's hard, but I try. ;)

Crisis Mode. Must...vent...

Oh. My. GOD. It's starting up again.



When was the last time I moaned about wanting shoes here? I can't remember. It's just been a constant pain in my soul since my dad banned me from buying another pair of shoes (this was way back in January). I thought I'd banished my shoe-lust into its little banished corner--well, after the first few months of anguish anyway. You know. Cold turkey = CRAZED wanting-ness until the initial blaze of withdrawal subsides, and you become human again. Almost. What it is is that you THINK you have gotten over the worst part. But all you've done is you have managed to fool yourself into thinking you may not need/want those babies (whatever they may be--different stroked for different folks!) anymore. You are living in a realm of suspended reality, my friend. The world moves along without your full participation. You think you're all better but you still crave what you used to have access to. You merely got USED to living--EXISTING--in misery. You are not FREED. Eg, recovering alcoholics still feel THIRSTY even though they've been sober for years.

And me. Ah me. A fresh tidal wave of unrelenting, obssessive yearning has crashed upon me. I existed months without another pair of shoes--heels, to be precise--and now I have arrived at yet another tsunami of mad-eyed, shaky-handed need, of panicked, willing-to-kill desperation.

I no longer have even a vague idea of what shoes I want. I have disallowed myself from fantasising about them for so long that now, all I want is SHOES. period. ANY AND ALL SHOES. Something to adorn my feet, elongate my legs, match individual outfits, give me a strut, make me go "Ooooh."

GAHHHH!

I must hold on. I must not give in.

At least not until I get my first bloody paycheck.

...And if The Father tries to intervene, so help me god, there shall be bloodshed.

Memo to Future Cynical Self

I write this to immortalise my current thoughts and feelings in black-and-white. I write this in the hopes that one day, when I feel all bitter and cynical and angry and unfulfilled with my chosen path in teaching ESL, I will chance upon this post again. I never want to forget the things I feel and believe in right now, when I have newly been launched into the practical world of teaching. I hope I never forget the main reason I decided to do what I do: to help others do things they always dreamed of, to touch their lives somehow.

I am two weeks into teaching my first ever class. My very own class. 21 of them, all mine. (Wow.) I've got 3 women--1 Japanese, 1 Arab, 1 Vietnamese. The rest are young men--2 Koreans, 1 Chinese, 14 Arabs.

My students are generally lovely. This class is anyway. (Most of the boys are just... so irrepressible. Deliciously cheeky. The quieter ones are equally charming because they find their ways to interact with me. And the girls! Gosh they do try so hard, and I feel their effort, and it is gratifying. They enjoy their boisterous classmates as much as I do.) I KNOW I'll get dickheads in the future, but this batch I've got are so... *sigh*. They are basically the reason why I love what I am doing. They LOOK UP to me. God.

They respect me. They believe that I am their (linguistic) superior and they accept what I say without snarkiness, without question. They come to me the moment they aren't 100% sure about something. They freaking THANK me for teaching them. I have a guy who changed classes to go to a more advanced stream because he was too good for the level I'm teaching, and today he stopped me in the corridor to ask me for help in an assignment. And in class today, two of my students told me to my face that they "only like my class" because they "always understand everything I teach".

I mean I know that people should always be all "independent-minded" and question everything, not just make like a sponge, as I've discovered in uni, but I think in 2nd language learning it might not work exactly that way, at least not in the beginning when they don't know enough to question you.

And I know it sounds like I'm just on some power trip or something, but well... you know what I mean right? I feel so APPRECIATED. Kind of how I look up to ...hell, all my bloody lecturers from uni. In my eyes they can do no wrong, they are Gods from the land of Knowledge, and if they do make mistakes it's "always for a good reason". As far as I'm concerned, they are on an indestructible pedestal. (Yes, I'm from that very ancient school of thought.)

And now, it overwhelms me that there are people out there who feel (at least a bit) that way about me. I feel totally undeserving. So humbled. And so freaking honoured. Does that make me a silly person? Does that scream "greenhorn" and "idealist"?

I am not sure I actually care. Sure, some might smirk and wait for the day I become completely disillusioned so they can laugh and feel superior to me. I hope that never happens, but cynicism is hard to keep away as the years of life pile on. Self: Don't ever stop trying and giving your best in every class you teach.