KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

If caffeine turns you into an uptight, highly strung, angry person like it does me, then you may want to try caffeine-free dandelion tea!

I first learned about Symington's dandelion tea through Mum Pham. It was recommended for her liver so I never drank it because my liver behaves itself. But one day, I got hooked to coffee supporting Tiny, a new café run by a non-related Pham next door to my old work and Juddy Roller café, my friend's joint. When I started to become hulkish without a coffee in the morning, I quit by replacing my flat whites with dandelion tea. Dandelion tea tastes richer than normal black tea and the colour (if you mix enough) looks like coffee so you can trick yourself a little.
Symington's dandelion tea is naturally sweet so you don’t need to add honey or sugar, but I recommend drinking it with milk or soy. I took photos of both their new and old labels because I still see both stocked in supermarkets - either with other teas or in the health food sections. I'm not sure why they changed their cute retro label to an uglier, literal one but I try not to be angry at them because that's not what coffee-free me is about.

It's Dad Pham's 67th birthday today. To celebrate, he's going to dinner at his little brother's house and NO KIDS ALLOWED. The only time I'm ever a young 'un is in context with Dad Pham.

While the only time Dad Pham is treated like a kid is by his older sister, who babies him to this day. It's funny to watch because he's my dad and also because it's how I treat Big Brother Pham. Our Aunty sometimes comes over with pre-cooked meals for Dad to heat up when he's good and ready to eat. Then when we visit, she makes Little Sissy Pham, me and Dad sit in a row at her kitchen bench so she can fill her nieces and little brother with ice cream, before sending Dad Pham home with more food.

Age really is relative. Dad Pham was telling me this morning that some people call him 'bac' (respectful term for older man in Vietnamese) even though he's younger than them because he gives sage advice...and maybe because of his big, bald Buddhist head. Yet some people call him 'anh' as in big brother when he's 40 years their senior because he still likes to joke around - and he's not into 'dad jokes' either, he's got the sense of humour of a cocky youth.

Mum Pham once asked me in an incredulous and serious voice, with hands on hip and puzzled head tilted to one side, 'Why are you so funny?' I said at the time that I was obviously adopted or an alien from outer space, but now I see I get my cheeky, irreverent streak from Dad.

Well, Dad Pham, I hope you're having a fun 67th birthday with your siblings and I expect you home before midnight or I'm grounding you for a week.

I went to a hairdresser for the first time in 2.5 years last week. And got into so much trouble with my new guy. He had to cut away all the damage I did so now I'm going to live with a tiny ponytail on top of my fat head while I wait for my hair to grow out.

Why so long between snips? Well, my hair broke off about 2.5 years ago (not the hairdresser's fault, I went a bit nuts dying my own hair different colours every two months). Unfortunately, I waited one year too long because by the time I found a Brisbane hairdresser to try, I'd already hacked into my own locks a few times to trim, thin and tame it.

Boy, was Tony at Hair Corner (Shop 18, Elizabeth Arcade, 99 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane CBD - (07) 3211 1030) so very unimpressed with my work. I've never seen some one sigh, shake their head and purse their lips so much while cutting hair. I'm not so sure about this work-in-progress haircut but he assures me chopping it off was the best way to grow it out.
I am under strict orders to grow it without DIY hacking for 3-6 months. Then I have to come back so Tony can fix the layers and styling. Part of me wants thin out my fringe a little more but another part of me was impressed by how unimpressed he was with me and thinks I should probably listen to his instructions. I mean, he repeated them five times during the hour-long session so maybe he wants me to listen. He also could tell which hand and what type of scissors I had used to cut my own hair. The man knows his craft - who am I to defy him?

It's always a bit nerve-wracking to try a new hairdresser. Especially since I have to go to Asian hairdressers because they understand Asian hair but not always English. I've learned to bring pictures along to new hairdressers just in case. I had such a good, creative hair relationship with my retired Melbourne hairdresser, Kathy. Now I don't trust anyone else to experiment with my head. I guess it's a good thing I need to grow out my hair; it will give me time to get to know Hair Corner before I decide whether or not I trust them to shave a part of my head when my hair is long again (assuming future workplace/s don't have anti-head tattoo policies).

Okay. So there's one non-puzzle game (i.e. Tetris, Scrabble, sudoku) in the entire existence of nerdery that I play and that is Diablo - the series. Diablo I, Diablo II and next month the long awaited Diablo III. It's been promised for a long time but always the release date was extended so I never got my hopes up until it was officially official and for real with a release date and everything this year!

To prepare I made Big Brother Pham give me one of his two spare computer screens (underneath his builder's body is an IT brain that makes his own light-up, fancy, hyper-powered desktop PCs) and bought a mini-DVI to DVI adaptor to connect to my MacBook so I'd have this kick-ass screen. I already had the Apple magic mouse, keyboard with numeric pad and Griffin elevator desk stand for laptops from my indie fashion PR days.

I think my sudden need for a massive screen came from inheriting a double-screen at work (thanks for having a baby and going maternity leave, random lady I never met) to do editing work. Coming home to my 13" Macbook wasn't quite the same after I got the space station of a work desk.
I want Diablo III to be in my face and scare me so much I pee myself a little every gaming session. To add to the scare appeal, I also got a nice gold-tipped audio chord to run from my laptop to my radical new Sharp mini-hifi stereo system. Bring on the adult diapers!!! (P.S. My desktop images at work and home are from Seth Casteel's 'Underwater Dog' photography series.)

Sadly, I discovered upon closer inspection of the system requirements that my old faithful MacBook that's survived being trampled several times does not have enough video card power to run Diablo III. While Little Sissy Pham's MacBook could manage it, I don't think she'd appreciate me borrowing her laptop for 2 x 16 hour sessions on the weekends and 5 x 3 hour sessions weeknights (who am I kidding, those weeknight sessions will be 6 hours and I will go to work looking and feeling like a demon-slaying zombie).

I am now going to wait for the next gen of MacBook Pros. Rumour has it a slimmer more powerful range will be out early in the third quarter of this year, which means I'll miss the Diablo III May 15 launch date but I waited this long, I wait a little while longer.

I did consider buying a PC just for the game for all of five minutes because desktops are way better equipped for a game as intense as Diablo but... that is a bit extreme, even for me. A new MacBook Pro would let me game AND manage my photo work better, Little Sissy Pham won't have to kiss her MacBook goodbye for several months and my niece Little LL will inherit my trusty Miffy-taped MacBook. As she said upon hearing this, "Everybody wins!" except my bank account but Diablo III is worth it!

I got these Native shoes back in Melbourne thanks to the amazing grace of Diamond Dozen PR and Lucky Cat. They are soooo unbelievably comfortable and easy to wear. I pretty much live in these now and have developed a superiority complex towards Crocs wearers because peeps like Tommy Hilfiger, Diplo and (the actor who played) Steve Urkel wear Native.

I like to think I'm doing my part to add to Native's cool factor by wearing them to the beach, on my daily walks with Dad Pham, to the supermarket, movies, house parties and even accidentally to a couple of Brisbane clubs when I forgot to change into dress shoes. I still got into the clubs even though some poor suckers got turned away for wearing shorts instead of pants. That is the power of Native.
They come in a range of styles - they're available online from Style Tread and Surf Stitch. I got the Jefferson style in white, which pays homage to the classic Converse shoe. Though, I've already got my eye on some pink Jerichos after I wear these babies out. I don't know when that will be though. I usually stomp the heel off any sneaker or shoe I own within 3 months but Native shows no sign of caving into my heavy-footed pigeon-toe walk. I also want a pair of their Red Dot award-winning Fitzsimmons boots in yellow (The iPad and Dyson bladeless fan have won Red Dot awards - are you impressed by Native yet? I am!) and their Paddington gumboots in red.

...sometimes I wish I had more feet.

I got my first pay from my new job about a month ago and to celebrate I treated the Phamly to gifts for taking care of me while I was unemployed. Dad Pham is going to get some cashola for a trip to Melbourne in September for Mum Pham's one year passing Buddhist ceremony (he doesn't know this yet and doesn't read the internet so don't tell him - it's a surprise!), Big Brother Pham and Sister-Not-In-Law Pham got the kitchen shelf they wanted for their new house and Little Sissy Pham got a(n expensive) blood test and Disney car eyes for Oscar (her car) to match Luigi (my car). Then I bought myself a kick-ass new stereo for my bedroom because I'd left my Melbourne stereo to a friend.
It's a Sharp CDSW440NH and even though it comes with a CD player, radio, auxiliary inputs, tape deck (what the?) and has the cleanest, crispest, boomiest sound I've ever heard from a mini hifi system, all you need to know is that the speakers light up blue when the bass goes boom ba doom boom! I LOVE it SO much. The only trouble was when I first brought it home and plugged it in,  it kept flashing the blue light in off/stand-by mode. I was afraid it would become the flashing lights of doom and bringing back my insomnia.

Or I just sit in my room typing out blog posts and listening to sweet, sweet music on my new mini-hifi system. (If you look closely at the pic below, you can see Little Sissy Pham and I being blasted in our happy faces by The Black Keys on the radio.)

• it's okay to blog as a hobby (phew, because if I try to turn this into a career I'd be back on the dole in two seconds)
• the best blogs aren't about quantity (number of posts or readers),  they're about the quality (having a unique voice and point of view)
• you do it for the love of it.

I particularly like her last point. I love having a creative writing outlet. I think I'm super-lucky to be working with words in my current day job but it's nice to have a little space to call my own where I can make the rules, set the style and write whatever I want to write (as long as I don't hurt anybody, that's the first rule of Pham Club).

Mum Pham had a particular thing about my lips. Little Sissy Pham, being born with Dad Pham's colouring has a naturally dark pink tint to her lips. I, having Mum's pale complexion, have a naturally blue/green tint to my lips.

In my current incarnation as a suburban Brisbanian, lipstick is too much for the office (I'm not in fashion land anymore, Toto) but plain lip balms leave me looking like the living dead. The solution came from Nivea's lip care range - the new tinted 'Fruity Shine' in pink guava is the perfect shade of pink for my complexion. I've had red tinted lip balms before - possibly Bonne Belle? Can't quite recall which brand because it was years ago and the bright red tint looks clownish on me while great on most of my caucasian friends.
If you've read my guide to lip balms you'd know Maybelline Baby Lips is my all time fave lip balm. While they do have a tinted Baby Lips range, it's sadly not available in Australia that I can find. The only reason I know they exist is because they popped up in this make up video Aussie model Bridget Malcolm posted on Facebook. Thanks social media for letting me know about yet another thing I can't get, use, eat, drink, wear or sit on in Australia.

For those of you who won't care, I finally found a favicon to match my blog.  Favicons is short for favourites icon in the way blog is short for weblog but only a dork would know that so, quickly, erase this sentence from memory after reading. Erased? What? Nothing.

A favicon is the little website icon you see in browser's address bar or before the page title in the tab or, like duh, in the favourites menu or bar. I used to have a scrabble letter P for Phamly because, in case I hadn't told you twice already, which I did - Little Sissy Pham and I are obsessed with Zynga word games.

Anyhoo, the scrabble P never did sit right with my blog because scrabble implies intelligence, being well-read, having a great vocab and impeccable spelling. None of which is relevant to this blog whatsoever! So last Sunday, while I was waiting for my 'retro-future' silver nails to dry (quoting editor colleagues who are intelligent, well-read, have great vocabs and impeccable spelling here), I trawled the internet for a favicon that suits my blog.
I, of course, found it in the nerd department. The favicon I've picked is 'logic not' - you know, from when your math/science teacher explained/bored you with the AND, OR, NOR, snore partially overlapped circles? These circles are venn diagrams - you may want to erase this dork fact sentence from your memory too.

This favicon makes perfect sense for my blog because my blog makes no sense at all. I write about whatever I feel like. I make big bold statements that are completely untrue or partially made up on the spot, but because I use my grown up voice people 'respact mah authoritay' when really I have just made them that little bit dumber for having believed me. Even the 'dynamic' navigation I've picked for this blog is illogical and pretty much designed to discourage people from actually reading any of my posts. Logic not favicon = perfect!