KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

1. housemate sex etiquette - surprisingly popular and frequently googled
2. my bum is blue
3. clown wardrobe
4. little old asian lady
5. my pole room
6. "sissy" "salon" "heels" - it was mainly the quotation marks around each individual word that made me giggle
7. fat bald asian women
8. expressions about pocahontas
9. zumba hurts

I learned the full story of my diamond ring yesterday. Mum Pham gave me her favourite ring last year. She'd been trying to get me to take it for over a year but seeing as how the most expensive thing I owned was a $1400 MacBook and I couldn't even take care of that properly, I didn't want to take it. A MacBook is big, white and hardy yet I managed to sit or step on it a number of times and now some parts of the casing are being held together by Miffy sticky tape. No way was I accepting a priceless Phamly heirloom!

I finally accepted the ring over Easter 2011 while I was visiting The Phamly after wearing a cheap mood ring to train myself in the art of wearing and not losing a ring. I did lose it once at the very beginning when I took it off for a cooking session then forgot about it but I didn't make the same mistake again so after 6 months I decided I was ready to graduate from ring training wheels to the real deal.

Mum Pham told me the ring was a gift from Grandpa for doing well at university and it's her most cherished piece of jewellery so she'd like it to be a Phamly heirloom. Dad Pham told me yesterday that  the original ring was left behind in Vietnam when Mum fled the country because the communists would take it if they found it. Years later, Sixth Aunty (the braver, defiant and hot-headed one who talked back at the commies for bullying her sisters - threats of beatings/being disappeared be damned! And yet she has a hysterical fear of chilli) removed the diamonds from its original ring to sneak it out of Vietnam when she migrated to Germany.
This new ring was cast by ze Germans and is one of the most beautiful ring designs I have ever seen. It even has tiny diamonds encrusted in each leaf of the spiral flower. I wear it proudly as a reminder of Mum Pham. Now it also reminds me of the stubborn streak in The Phamly bloodline and that I'm lucky Mum & Dad moved to a country where I can wear a diamond ring with the fear of being mugged by common thieves and not the authorities.

Happy Australia Day, indeed.

Hello 2012! Hope you're having fun. Me? I've been head down, bum up writing job applications every single day excepting weekends when I bulk grocery shop, cook Phamly feasts and power-watch TV shows. I've been through all of Alias (5 seasons), all of Heroes (4 seasons) and after this post I'm finishing the last two episodes of Entourage (8 seasons). I have about 6 years of TV shows to catch up on before employment and being productive rules my life again. Email or tweet me TV show recommendations please! blog@thephamly.com.au or @jadestopthat
Anyhoo, this isn't a post about TV shows. This post is about how I was called on to babysit my nieces for two weekends leading up to Xmas and watched Cars 1 and Cars 2 half a dozen times along with Horton Hears A Who (the bridge scene is one of the funniest animated scenes I have seen in years!) and Monsters Vs. Aliens. As a result I now walk around yelling 'Ka-chow!' every time I do something cool like karate chopping the air. Ka-chow is Lightning McQueen, the race car's catch phrase for those of you age 9 and up.
Dad Pham took some $$ out of his mortgage to buy me a toot-toot, honk-honk (I felt guilty about this until Little Sissy Pham pointed out she got help with two cars and Big Brother Pham has had help with half a dozen). The cutest pastel green second-hand Hyundai Getz you will ever see! And I've decided to make it cuter by decking it out like one of the background extras in Cars.
For readers in Melbourne, you may not know but there's this thing called the sun that beams hot rays of light onto the Earth. I've burned my hands a couple of times on the steering wheel after leaving it parked in sunshiny Brisbane streets so my first accessory is this Disney Pixar Cars window shield purchased on eBay from the Cute Moon Shop. They are closed for Chinese New Years but will be open again on January 28th, 2012. The shade also comes in blue.