50 Oddments
For your reading pleasure, below is a list of 50 assorted oddments, which may be expanded at some point when time isn’t as elusive. Ambiguity wikitated where appropriate.
1. I do not use the shift key for capitalisation, I capitalise letters between two taps of the ‘caps lock’ key.
2. I began trading shares in 1999, aged 13. The first investment of my own funds was in AGL (65 shares at $7.75 each on the 13th of March, 2000). I have racked up over $4,000 in brokerage fees since.
3. In 2003, at the end of Year 12, I had a near death experience, almost drowning at Chelsea beach. I credit it with a siesmic shift in the way I percieve things.
4. I am a technophile who began using computers at age 4. I’ve gone through 5 laptops, 7 mobile phones, and currently own no less than 5 Bluetooth enabled devices (laptop, MDA, phone, headphones, earpiece).
5. Being left handed, I cannot write calligraphy because I always smudge the ink. The plan is to either become ambidextrous or learn to write in Arabic.
6. During my high school years at a Catholic institution, I once dared to take the Eucharist, in spite of the fact I am Anglican and dogmatically forbidden to do so.
7. My first CD was ‘Promises and Lies’ by Reggae group UB40. The second was ‘Life’ by Simply Red.
8. My résumé boasts rejections from Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deutsche Bank, Macquarie, ABN Amro, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs JBWere. I am not the kind of person who you can get to know in a 30 minute interview.
9. I believe that 1 Martin Place, Sydney, should be designated a ‘tool shed.’
10. To date, my formal work experience comprises the internship I did with UBS Equities in Sydney over the summer of 2005/2006.
11. Informally, I run a sole-proprietorship, Waterstone Acquisitions (est. 2004), which will be registered with ASIC as a private proprietary limited company when I return to Australia. It operates in investments, merchandise trading, and electronic design.
12. I am one appendix and four wisdom teeth short of being a normal anatomical singularity.
13. I have something of a bizarre fashion sense and a wardrobe with a retail value in excess of my car. It includes 12 pairs of shoes, 5 hats, and a fur-collared, ankle length cashmere overcoat that makes its wearer look like a pimp.
14. I annexure ownership of the ‘Friend Zone.’
15. I have a Diploma in Emotional Baggage Handling.
16. Related to the above, there is speculation (I will neither conform nor deny) that I am stoic and actually a Vulcan. I haven’t experienced anger, stress, anxiety, sadness or depression in at least three years.
17. I was born in Australia, though my Mother and Father hail from Argentina and Mauritius respectively.
18. I bank with six different financial institutions, have kept financial records electronically since age 11 and will change banks for 20 basis points.
19. In primary school, I was a notorious troublemaker and had many a detention for various maverick stunts. A friend and I were also a crack team at embezzling biscuits from the staff room – we never got caught.
20. Also at primary school, I was the highly imaginative co-leader of a group that sought to hunt for and save humanity from evil skeletons. We dreamed up very elaborate plots, even rivalling the X-files.
21. At some point I became a nerd (hard to believe, no?) and was never detained after class once over six years at high school.
22. My most influential teachers at high school were Mr. Verbyla, Ms. Cirillo and Mr. Donoghue. The former imbued a measure of realism and cynicism that was the most useful thing I learned throughout my time there.
23. I don’t mind Brussels sprout, but I do find spinach to be utterly repulsive. I also despise curry with a passion.
24. As far as ancient cultures go, I am a big fan if the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans, and am slowing accumulating a collection of artefacts.
25. On that note, I was a ‘collector’ in my youth, with sizeable collections of minerals, gemstones, seashells, stamps, coins, feathers, Olympic pins and more. My most bizarre collection: phonecards (over 1,000 of them since finding two in a payphone at Huntingdale train station on the 4th of July in 1994).
26. I have a scar through my eyebrow courtesy of being pushed and falling onto a milk crate in play group; aged 2 at the time of the misdemeanour.
27. I engage in argument with women regularly on who pays for coffee/lunch/etc – said ‘gallantry’ is yet to find a worthy adversary.
28. Year 8 marked my first ‘flogging’ of an item on eBay. It was a holographic ‘Charizard’ Pokemon card I bartered an old PlayStation magazine for. I sold it for $52 to a woman in Perth.
29. In my youth, I was a self-styled pyromaniac, having once constructed and detonated an incendiary sparkler bomb constructed of some 200 sparklers.
30. Lending to a genetic quirk for high alcohol tolerance, and of course willpower, I have never been intoxicated.
31. I’ve never been party to physical violence, but once bore witness to a street brawl involving knives, machetes, bottles, trolley poles and some 50 male youths.
32. I have a reserve capacity to verbally reduce a person to a snivelling wreck, though have vowed never to do it unless the person crossed me with iniquity such that they impartially deserve it.
33. Though I have grown up in the environment of a ‘concrete jungle,’ my ideal locale of residence would be a different flavour of jungle – the real thing in South America, or perhaps a villa in country Italy or Spain.
34. I once had ‘Teardrops’ by Womack & Womack stuck in my head, despite playing it no less than 134 times in under a week.
35. The context of a great deal of my interactions is much like a Band-Aid, being taken off when the wound has healed.
36. My first car was a red 1991 TP Mitsubishi Magna, with a number plate extension of ‘666’ when purchased. I now drive a dark teal 2002 TJ Series 2 Limited Edition of the same model.
37. The latter vehicle’s 155Kw is often utilised to shame drivers of rice rockets and ‘fully sick bros’ in Commodores.
38. I have effective online ownership over the phrase “Stupidity is the world’s greatest disease” and am quoted frequently in various forums.
39. I possess heightened radar sensitivity to etiquette, particularly at restaurants.
40. Musically, I scored 97% on a theory test in year 8, the highest mark by a margin of over 40%. In practice however, I am barely competent at playing ‘Three Blind Mice’ on the Recorder.
41. Of the Coca Cola and Pepsi duopoly, my preference is for neither. Dr Pepper, though not a cola, is the definitive caffeinated weapon of choice.
42. Too much of my spare time as a child was spent playing Jazz Jackrabbit and Lemmings on a 486 (around the time when this 66Mhz beast was the crème de la crème of PCs).
43. If I could have any accent, it would be a tough decision between Pierce Brosnan as Bond, Sean Connery and Billy Finn (played by Richard Gere) in Chicago.
44. I point blank refuse to recognise the Imperial system as practical – Fahrenheit, Ounces, Inches and their siblings are counterintuitive, convoluted and dysfunctional.
45. I’m more a tea than a coffee person, though in the domain of hot drinks, my allegiance lies with Yerba Mate – which, in my humble opinion, ‘owns’.
46. As a youngster, I had a mind for eccentric innovations. They include a rubber band-powered bird trap, and a railgun made of office supplies that could fire ballpoint pen cartridges with enough force to embed them an inch into the porous classroom ceiling.
47. In relative terms, I seem to have a bias for wanting to ‘adopt’ most women my age over dating them.
48. My belief system is monotheistic, though I do not believe any religion to be anywhere near the objective truth. I am also an intellectually conflicted existentialist who lives according to a mixture of Christian morals and Karma
49. I am a 35 year old living in a 20 year old’s body.
50. And I am far too nice for my own good.
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