At 33, you’re still happy being a sexy single woman. At 34, you’ve got a wedding dress in your trunk, just in case.

Hi folks!

I’m writing this pretty late in the evening on my netbook, because my main computer crashed and burned yesterday. So excuse me if there are some typos!

Wow, I have had the most girly day! Carola and I went to see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in the afternoon. I was wearing something I usually don’t wear: a dress! And not just any dress, a little black dress! And baby, you better believe that I rocked it. Actually, the dress I wore is not really a dress, it’s a black sarong out of very thin material that I drape and knot till it looks like a strapless black dress. I discovered I could do this with this sarong last summer, when I had to walk the dog at night and couldn’t bother to get fully dressed (I was already in my PJs when I realised the dog had to be walked). So I grabbed the nearest thing, the sarong, and wrapped it around me. Lo and behold, I looked gorgeous in it! But today was the first day I actually dared to wear that out in public. I also wore a bra underneath and a cute, slightly ruffly at the edges black cardigan to hide the bra straps. And I was all set. I would never have thought that I could look good in anything even remotely strapless and drapey and short(er) but I do. Yay! I have two other black dresses, real ones, but they don’t look even half as good on me as this makeshift LBD. What’s also funny is that while I don’t have any trouble feeling feminine in pants, I feel incredibly feminine when I’m wearing a dress. It’s just a whole other level of sensuality. Maybe I should wear more dresses…

After the film (which wasn’t half as bad as we expected, it’s a perfect girly movie), we spontaneously decided to go for some sushi, something we’ve never done together. It turned out to be a good thing there were two of us, because the sushi platter for two was cheaper than if we’d ordered separate bento boxes. Go figure, but hooray! When we paid, I gave the waitress a 50 CHF note but she gave me change for 100. A fact I only noticed once I’d gotten home. Oopsy. But man, it’s so nice to find 60 CHF in my wallet as opposed to 10 CHF! I know this is really immoral and not nice at all for the waitress, but I’m not going back to rectify the mix-up. She did make me wait for my mango lassi for a quarter of an hour… *clears throat* Ok, so it’s still not nice. Stop looking at me that way! I promise I’ll pay more attention next time and won’t let it happen again, ok? Happy now? Ok.

Anyway, we had a delightful time. We gossiped about a prof at my journalism school who got booted because he was seeing a student (which is not fair at all because that’s precisely how the head of the school met her husband, who still teaches there). And then, somehow, we fantasised about wedding dress for half an hour. Yes ladies and gents, I fantasised about wedding dresses. I’m not as hard or unromantic as I look, believe it or not. My dress is going to be cream coloured with wine red accents. I haven’t figured out the other details yet (after all, there’s no telling during what season my wedding will take place) but I know they involve ballet flats, a simple but elegant veil and some Casablance lillies (my favourite flowers) for the bouquet. Now all that’s left to do is find a partner. Oh yeah, and figure out whether I even want to get married. Do you think I want to? I think that deep down, to my own free-spirited horror, I do if I meet the right person. I’m such a sissy. I’m such a girl. I’m such a *gasp* romantic. Ok, you have permission to shoot me on sight from hereon out.

Anyway, enough with the mushy blabla, I’ve gotta work tomorrow so I’ll hit the sack in a few minutes.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

You really want some space, or are you and I going to get drunk? ‘Cause there’s this bar – you won’t even remember it tomorrow.

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. As you all know I was in the grips of the Martian Death Flu last week and this week (and next, might I add) I am just beyond insanely busy. I hate that, too.

I really don’t have that much new stuff about me going on, so I’m gonna talk about something I started thinking about the other day. I’ve discovered that YouTube has some episodes of The Tyra Show and I watched a few when I was ill. There’s just something about Tyra Banks that I like, even if I don’t think she’s a very gifted interviewer or always agree with her views and methods. Still, watching her show was kinda interesting. There was a segment about teens and the pressures they are subjected to in high school. And that kinda got me thinking about how there’s a whole slew of things that I’ve never done/experienced and most likely never will. A lot of things that people my age are currently experiencing and that I don’t. Here are a few examples.

Highschool was mainly unpleasant for me, but not for any of the reasons it seems to be unpleasant for most people. We didn’t have the typical American cliques that everyone sees on TV and in the movies. I have a hard time believing it really is that categorical in the US, but at least according to Tyra’s show, it is. Sure, we had cool people and sporty people and then less cool and less sporty people. But actually cliques, like jocks/cheerleaders, drama club, nerds, etc? Nope. What really cracks me up when I see all that in movies is that all the cool people at my school were cool because they did things that in all those US representations of highschool are portrayed as the stuff the outsiders do. The coolest cats in our school were super smart, hard party-goers (not all, though), into marihuana, playing instruments or in a drama class and, most importantly, did not give a damn about what anyone thought about them. They dressed not according to trends but according to what they loved. Most of them had an interest in philosophy (especially after a spliff or two) and ethical discussions. These were the universally acknowledged cool cats. In my particular class (the French section), you were the King or Queen of Cool if you had straight As, combed your hair right and were liked by the teachers. Yep, that’s what was cool in my highschool. I was never cool because my kind of crazy didn’t mesh with any of the cool types I have just talked about. I was smart but didn’t have straight As (I sucked arse at numbers), I didn’t party hard, marihuana had (and has) no effect on me, I was pretty outspoken about my sexuality (and my various crushes on teachers) and while loved by some teachers, was loathed by others. And I was fat which, no matter where you are, will not do you any favours in this oh so very cruel world of ours. Hah.

I’m still fat but now I’ve moved on to only being surrounded by things I love doing and that I’m good at, which gives my smarts a chance to shine without the constant tarnishing effect of my mathematically challenged brainbox. I sorta try very hard to gloss over the fat with brains and personality. And I think I’ve got most people fooled. No, I’m not saying this is a good thing. No, I’m not saying I want this to be like this. Sure, I’m not really loved by anyone but at least I’m not the weird outsider amongst weirdos.

Another thing I’ve never done is get drunk. I’ve never been drunk in my life and I never will if I can at all help it. I’m not fond of people when they are drunk. I don’t understand, seriously just don’t understand, how anyone can want to give up their consciousness for a few hours. To me, that is a really scary and nonsensical thing. However, if you have an explanation as to why this can be agreeable every now and then, please offer it. I’m curious to know what pushes people to get drunk. Maybe it’s a peer pressure thing in a lot of cases. But that too, is a thing I’ve never succumbed to, so I wouldn’t know.

I don’t have a million friends. I don’t sleep around or go clubbing. I don’t hook up with random people. It’s not like this was ever a conscious decision on my part. I never just thought “Right, I’ve moved out of my parents’ and I’m studying, now is the time to let loose, get drunk every weekend, be wild and screw around”. It seems to me like a lot of my peers have. To me, it’s just that none of these things are even remotely appealing. I see a lot of people who seem to do this because they seem to think it’s what’s expected from them at their age and they have to do it before it’s too late. I have a lot of things I want to do before it’s too late. Projectile vomiting a mix of beer and tequila onto some discogoer who just stuck his tongue down my throat is just not real high on my list.

Seriously, there have got to be more pleasant ways to meet people and forge friendships and relationships.

Anyway, I’m gonna go now. I’m tired and stressed out. J from standingonthebrink – I have been to your blog and was really impressed with it, I just haven’t had the time, brain space and peace to comment. Sorry, I promise I’ll get around to that!

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

Ouch.

Things one should not do and also not have to be doing while ill: cook.

I had to cook myself something today and managed to burn four fingertips and three toes with hot water. I might also have had some bad cream. I can’t tell for sure because having a cold means my tastebuds almost don’t work. I guess I’ll find out if I throw up in a couple of hours. I did try tasting the cream before putting it in the dish and it seemed fine (at least I figured that really bad cream would have tasted bad enough even for me to notice) but one never knows until the meal says hi again in the late afternoon.

These are the times when living in a flat share or with a partner really seems like the only, perfect way to live. I like living by myself but today was just ridiculously hard.

Oh yeah, and I have to turn the volume up really loud when I watch a DVD because my ear got clogged yesterday. I feel like a granny.

Live long and prosper, all ye untainted by the Martian Death Flu, peace,

Anna

One thing I have learned doing this: there’s no drug like adrenaline.

Hey everyone!

Sorry for posting only brief posts at a time this week, but I am so busy, it’s insane. I also got ill two days ago (cough, nose clogged, fever, throatache), which I’m trying hard to combat by taking my Egyptian rat poison medicine that I brought back from Luxor back in 2005. I call it rat poison because it’s hard to tell what’s in it, I just know that it’s lime green tablets which, up to now, have always managed to Chuck Norris roundhouse-kick any virus I’ve had. So I’m taking that and hoping that come next week, this will be over. I have to work with the virus in my system this weekend but next week, which is also going to be crazy, I really need it gone for good. So that’s that.

In other more pleasant news: my newest film column just came out and it’s about J.J. Abrams and his reboot of Star Trek. When I saw the layouted text, my heart started racing. There’s nothing like seeing one’s text made-up to look all pretty, glossy and colourful. It’s really strange but whenever I see my movie column’s final version, I feel like in a way, I have become a little bit a part of the film(s) or people I’ve discussed. Usually my columns sport a movie poster and some stills from the films I mention. Today, seeing my text in conjuction with that cool new Star Trek poster just gave me such a rush of endorphine. I can’t really explain it well, I’m sorry, all I know is it’s a great, very rewarding feeling to have a right to be featured next to film material I really approve of.

I also have some weird, random, new nick/petname news. This really seems to be the Give Anna A Pet Name Week. As I mentioned in my last post, I was called “Princess” by someone. Then yesterday another someone called me “Sunshine” (which, to me, will always be Justin’s nickname, you know, from Queer as Folk) which I found so sweet and funny since I wasn’t being a sunshine at all, I was quite beat and unhappy about me being sick. I think he called me that to make me feel better. It worked a little! And today, someone else called me “Honeybee”. Now that is creative. I love it! I’ve never been called any of these things (though upon reflection, I, like, totally deserve it) and it’s fun to me. It’s a nice feeling to know that some people think I’m worth giving a cute pet name to.

Gotta go back to work now (*cough* *sneeze*), live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

Aw, that’s not a very good nickname. What if you do get defeated? Staal the Not-Quite-So-Undefeated-Anymore-But-Never-Mind?

Old nicknames for new people, there’s something I never saw coming… Somebody has made an appearance in my life again and it’s kinda been nice to catch up with him. He called me “Princess” today and before I knew it, I jokingly called him ” My Lord”. That took the wind out of me for a second.

One of the nicknames I had for Steve was “My Lord” (because of Lord Leto from the Dune books, it’s a long geeky story, so don’t ask). When he broke up with me he gave me a whole stack of papers, which turned out to be all the letters, notes and other that I wrote him during our relationship. I recently stumbled upon them and read through a few. All of them contained some Dune vernacular and me calling him “Leto”, “Lord Leto”, “My Lord”, you get the general direction. As I read them, I remembered how I thought what a shame it was that I would never again be able to call someone like that. What a bloody shame it was that I could never give the true love of my life a Dune related nickname. You see, I don’t give anyone Dune names. Only people I really, truly love.

The guy I called “My Lord” today knows nothing of all this and unless I tell him (which I probably won’t) he never will. But to me, it seems like this was another step in the right direction, away from the now painful memory of times with Steve.

Old nicknames for new people… it’s good how things can change and heal.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

You know that I ain’t braggin’, she’s a real pussy wagon!

Zipping in and out because time is a rare commodity this week!

First: my mum commented on my blog! Whoa, I just about fell off my chair when I saw that (my mum doesn’t really read my blog). I’m also a little puzzled as to why she commented the Mother’s Day post on the Contact Me page but I guess she just really wanted to… make sure she’d be contacting me?   My mum constantly surprises me. Know what I said about her being way ahead of me? Well, I didn’t think she even knew how to comment on a blog but here she just went and did it. This is a bit like the time I found out she knows how to MMS from her cell phone, a feat I have yet to accomplish. At least I was the one who introduced her to the Tube. Now she can spend 20 minutes on the phone with me telling me what cute animal videos I have to watch next.

Speaking of which, this is the cutest and most hilarious thing I have EVER seen in my life. If you’re feeling a bit down today, don’t despair, I have an instant remedy:

Next in line, my staff meeting on Monday: I rolled over, played nice, got out of it unharmed. I think P. still bears a slight grudge against me – as I knew he would, he had a spat with a friend of mine about one and a half years ago and he still doesn’t speak of her nicely, even though he claims it’s all ok between them – but the important thing is: me and Carola are okay. We were going to the tram and passed the Starbucks and she said, sniffing at the air “Mmm, can you smell that delicious smell? Do you maybe wanna get a coffee before we go home…?” and all was well again with the world. We got some Starbucks, talked about men and went home unburdened. I hope this is for real but it looks promising.

Third on the list: I’m about drowning in work this week. I have to research stuff in libraries for a new ghostwriting assignment but I’ve never been to a public library in Zurich and the database from which I’m supposed to conduct my original search is not yielding results that I understand. Anyone familiar with Ebsco? My deadline is Sunday, ack!

Anyway, gotta go. Super sparkly bonus platin star points if you can guess why I chose this title for this post. Heh.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna

ps: incidentally, the new Star Trek would make for a great drinking game. Everybody do shots everytime somebody does the Vulcan greeting! Woot!

pps: yes, I know my ps is totally random. So sue me.

Mom, it’s just a pretend wedding. J.Lo has them all the time.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been seeing a lot of Mother’s Day paraphernalia being sold. I never know when holidays and vacation times are, so I was pretty clueless as to when that Mother’s Day was. And I was also not particularly interested. My mum and I never celebrated Mother’s Day. I think the only time I may have done something for Mother’s Day was in kindergarten and primary school, when they made us glue some pieces of coloured craft paper together to make a flower and a card. And I clearly remember that my mum never once cared about those things when I brought them home. It wasn’t long before that stopped and ever since then, we’ve not celebrated.

We didn’t today either. I had my mum on the phone but it was for about two seconds and then she handed me to my dad because she was cooking dinner.

However, when I opened my computer today, logged on the internet and went to read the pages I read daily, I saw that today was Mother’s Day and pretty much everybody was talking about it or even doing something about it. On Pioneer Woman’s page, she asked her readers to share about the women in their lives and the mums especially. That got me thinking.

My mum and I share a lot common traits and yet we are nothing alike. I sometimes have the feeling that we started off with a similar set of skills but that we use them very differently. Case in point: writing. My mum has always written, she is an academic and she started writing history novels some years ago. She is now a published writer and she always seems to be working on new stuff. I have always written but my writing has to do with actuality and real, modern life (mainly). I also can’t help but think that in a way, I’m a true amalgam of both my parents. I have combined writing (my mum) with cinema (my dad). And I hope that one day, it’ll pay bigger bucks than it currently does.

I’m not as intelligent as my mother is, she is actually gifted, but I like to think of myself as not being a complete moron. (Except when I make my voice overly sexy to tell people that I’m not trying at all to be sexy!) What I did get from my mother is a perpetually intellectually curious mind. My father is really intelligent and knowledgeable as well, but differently. My mum is the one who has a thousand interests and is good at all that she endeavours. I hope to be that way some day.

My mum is like a shark. She never stops swimming and she always makes the kill. I cannot remember a single instance in which I have found my mum idle. She juggles her career, her marriage, raising her kids, writing books, singing in a professional choir, cooking and a million other things. While my interests and my life differ from hers greatly, I hope to be as shark-like as she is one day. I’m certain that most people who know me would disagree and say that I do, in fact, do a million things and that I’m good at most of them. But the simple truth is: I know my mum and I’m nowhere near her level of sharkness.

One thing I am grateful for is the relationship I have with my mum. We’ve had some tough times and we’ve even had times when I felt our relationship was loveless. I’m quite sure such times could come again. But the bottom line here is: my relationship with my mother is utterly different from her relationship with her mother. And that, my friends, is evolution in the right direction. That, folks, is an achievement that only my mother and maybe me can fathom the value of. My mother, whether for good or bad, was always around. She may have had weird or troubled ways of showing she cared but I understand now that she cared. And still cares. And that’s really all that matters.

Last year, my mum and I went to visit my terminally ill grandmother in France. I had this kitschy, Isabel Allende-style fantasy of three generations of women getting together in that big house and just loving each other. Knowing that there was love there and that it had been worthwhile, for all of us, to keep going. Suffice it to say that fantasy was bitterly crushed. It was also ripped to shreds, trampled on and spat on. But I think I was simply expecting, naively, something that could never be. I was hurt, at the time, but now I realise this is unimportant. What is important is that my mum, by being who she is, has paved the way for her, myself and my future daughter to one day be able to sit in a room together and love each other truly. Because out of the seeds my mother has sown in me, I know that nothing but love will be able to grow. That love may not be easy or always pretty but it will be.

My mum may not give a rat’s arse about today being Mother’s Day. But I do hope she had a good day.

Live long and prosper, peace,

A Daughter

I thought you were dead. Yeah, I get that a lot.

Do you guys have things that people compliment you on, on a regular basis, but you yourself are still not really sure what they’re on about? But deep down, you really savour that compliment and it makes you feel all giggly and cool? Well, I do.

I regularly get told that I have a beautiful, sexy, sultry voice. Yes, those are the actual terms people use. But just like I’m never too sure what people mean when they say “Oh French, that’s such a beautiful sounding language”, because I speak it and so lack the proper distance to the subject, I can’t really pass judgement on the sound of my own voice. Ok, so I know I’m not squeaky and high-pitched (except when Simon Pegg comes on in a film, then fuhgetaboutit, I squeak) but I have no way of really knowing what my voice sounds like to others. I sometimes hear my own voice when I play back recordings of interviews I’ve done. But just like any person, it makes me squirm. It sounds like it’s not my own. Usually when I hear it, I think: “People find that particularly sexy? Ok…”

Nevertheless, I like getting that compliment because it’s an unusual one and it means the person is receptive to things that others might not be. Yesterday, I was given that compliment again and I went totally dumb. I actually made my voice sexier and said: “Really? And I’m not even trying to make it sound sexy!” After that, I went and slapped myself. I don’t think the poor recipient of that idiotic line noticed anything because he merely went “Oooh, there it is again” and I actually heard the shiver running down his spine while he said that. But I still feel mighty stupid. I’ll try and refrain from such idiocy the next time someone tells me they like my voice.

But you know what? It feels damn good to have the power to make somebody’s spine shiver through the phone. Ha.

Live long and prosper, peace,

Anna