KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I gotta keep this short and sweet for two reasons. Diablo III is downloading in the background and as soon as it's installed I will disappear into a gaming vortex and will emerge several weeks later looking like a disheveled vampire (picture yourself after 28 hour flight/travel then times that by four). Also, I have to try and pre-write as many blog posts as I can so Keep It In The Phamly doesn't fall victim to the Hell overlord.

The story of how I got the name jadestopthat is short and sweet. Well, it's not very sweet but it is short.

I went on tour with a band years ago to make a documentary (and website) to ace a university project. One of the guys got very sick of me pointing the camera in his face and he regularly told me so. From hours of footage I cut together a sequence where he says, "Jade, stop that. Jade, stop that. Jade, stop that. Stop it. Stop that. Jade, come on, stop that. Stop that! That's it, Jade, get out." It actually went on for a lot longer than that but I promised this story was short so I've edited it for your reading pleasure.

And that's all I have to say about @jadestopthat.

Once there was a very dark (wardrobe) time in my life when I favoured black clothing, black hair, black underwear, black bras, black nail varnish and black socks. No, I was not emo nor Goth nor punk. I had just moved out of home and didn't know how to get food stains out of my washing, which sucked for two reasons - I love food, what a waste to have it on my clothes instead of in my gut; I love bright colour, what a shame food stained clothes aren't fashionable. So I never wore white and if I wore colours, they were dark and camouflaged specks of spaghetti sauce, curry or lipstick smears.

Life was like that for the first six months of independent life. Then I moved into a warehouse with 9 other boys and soon enough all my black socks migrated into the boys' wardrobes. And I guess this is where my adventures with coloured apparel, laundry techniques and increased food to mouth ratios began.

At first buying bright patterned socks that no one in their right mind would wear (pop colour wasn't fashionable five years ago, you know) was a way to keep my socks separate. Then as time went on and I moved into other sharehouses with a third of that population I kept up the colourful socks. My current set of ankle socks (don't like the shin-high socks, over my phase of knee socks) is the fluoro solid colours and white with fluoro stripes from Big W.

I love it when I make a wish and some one (usually a nerd) grants it. Vodafone's mobile network experience helped me master the art of frowning during its 2010 vodafail year. Resetting a phone every hour to receive texts (usually about calling people back because their call wouldn't connect) helped me to overcome my pro-tightass ways and switch over to Telstra's mobile phone network.

Telstra is a dream. I pay $20-40 more a month for similar caps to Optus, Virgin and Vodafone but I consider it an investment in preventing stress and acne breakouts.  I haven't had any connection issues whatsover in the 13 months I've been with Telstra. The only minor downside is I have to pay for international texts. That is why I love WhatsApp so much.

WhatsApp is an alternative for SMS that uses internet to send messages (text, pics and videos). It costs $0.99 (the cost of two international texts on my phone contract) in Australia and now I get to stay in touch with traveling friends who also have the app on their smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows - this app doesn't discriminate) .

Who wouldn't want to receive a video of my cat while they're overseas? Probably everyone so just humour me and watch Tigger Pham loving life.

I can't tell whether I go cross-eyed when I look at the camera because I'm Asian or because I am actually a little cross-eyed. Non-Asians don't seem to have this trouble - or maybe they do and they simply don't post these photos on the Internet.

I like my eyes despite their design flaw so I highlight them most mornings (dependent on mood, sleepiness or lateness) with my favourite Maybelline gel eyeliner. I've been using it for a good year and my jar is not even half empty. True, I didn't put on eyeliner while I was moving between states and job hunting for about 4-5 months. Still, I used to crunch through about four or five eyeliner pencils a year so one jar that costs almost the same as one pencil but lasts all year is an absolute bargain if you ask me!

The gel stays put all day long too - I don't need to touch up my eyes if I go out after work. It doesn't smudge or scatter the way pencils do. The brush is also very precise and you don't need to sharpen it like pencils. Maybe touching up and wastage accounts for the big gap between how long a jar lasts compared to zee inferior pencil.

My work contract ends next week and I possibly (under Liberal, probably) won't get an extension so I've been doing what I usually do when something bad is happening. I find the silver lining.

I've met some great people - I couldn't have asked for a nicer team to get me back into work-life after last year's unhappy ending. I was also introduced to the double screen workstation, which makes me wonder how I ever did any editing work on a single screen before. It inspired my own desk set-up at home.

I haven't quite found a silver lining for missing out on the team's delicious home-baked goods once I leave... I guess you can't win them all. I did, however, win big at finding cute work shoes on eBay from Australian Designers Direct.
These cute little girly style brogues with kitten heels were so awesome, I got two pairs - one in black/white, the other all-black and I'm seriously considering the khaki/black too. There are limited sizes and colourways left from this seller so get in quick if you want a pair!

The heels give that nice satisfying clomp, clack, clomp sound (the clack is my left pigeon-toed leg) that only solid heels can make when you walk. I also many compliments and even a free lamington from wearing these shoes around the office. I will sure miss getting free food and compliments at work but at least I'll have Tigger Pham to entertain me when I'm home looking for work.

Every family has at least one oddball. In our Phamly, we had four. Big Brother Pham has minimal quirks and eccentricities making him the closest to normal and, therefore, our black sheep. Literally. He works in construction so his skin is a lot darker than his sickly office worker sisters. In fact, one time he came to pick me up from the airport and I walked passed him thinking he was Maori. He let me walk pass because I looked like an English ranga and not his Vietnamese sister at the time.

Big Brother Pham is always pointing out our oddball gene. Like the time Little Sissy Pham and I were singing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs in bed at night. Big Brother Pham came storming in because our squeaky voices were keeping him up, to yell, "Why are you singing Christmas carols? IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS!!!" It didn't shut us up but we sang a little quieter after that because he had a good point.

Big Brother is also the only Pham sibling who can do anything practical. He can fix fences, build computers, install toilets, make babies, replace door hinges, tie ropes, raise babies, move a house. Me: I injured my wrist putting together an IKEA bed and continue to bruise my legs every week by walking into the bedframe. I do slightly better than Little Sissy Pham who was once bedridden with 20+ stitches in her knees because she tripped on her own pants and landed badly on her knee. Then while she stayed home waiting for that knee to heal, she walked into her own IKEA bedframe and smashed her good knee, requiring another dozen stitches.

Things like this just don't happen to Big Brother Pham. He's survived flipped cars, knife attacks and my road map directions - things that would kill any lesser Pham dead.

You could be a hero. Like me. The other day, while waiting in a face painting queue with my niece at the RSPCA Wacol launch, I overheard a worried mum and Aunt who had left their sunscreen in the car and their little girl was looking rather flustered. I pulled out my mini LeTan SPF 30+ sunscreen lotion (in my head, it was accompanied by a triumphant 'ba da!' trumpet sound, but I knew better than to sing it out loud) and offered it to the pink-looking family behind me. I think I saved their lives.

I completely forgot about my act of heroism until I walked by a stack of mini LeTan SPF 30+ tubes in Big W. I bought one for Little Sissy Pham, who was undergoing UV treatment for her psoriasis and extra susceptible to skin cancer at the time, but also because I wanted her to be a life-saving hero too.
I got a coconut scented LeTan for free at the 2010 Vans Bowl-a-rama in Sydney, which suits me fine because I like smelling like food and my nose is always a little clogged from being allergic to life so it doesn't overwhelm me. But there's non-scented versions for people with better senses of smell, like Little Sissy Pham.

Buy yourself a mini sunscreen for a few bucks and you will soon be a hero like us!

It was Mother's Day the day after Dad Pham's 67th birthday. To celebrate, Little Sissy Pham nearly ran over Dad Pham with her car - I assume to honour Mum Pham's memory by taking out her living competition? Sissy Pham reckons she technically only nearly knocked him over with a part of her car (the open door)… yeah, because there's a real difference. Either way, she nearly killed our father the day after his birthday.

I used a less aggressive approach to Mother's Day. I took inspiration from the awesome Book of J.E.M. my friends made me and made a photo memory book to give to my Sister-Not-In-Law, the mother of the two most beautiful nieces an overbearing Aunty could ask for.  I've taken some hilarious, sweet, cute, crazy, embarassing photos of the girls over the past 8-9 years. My goal was to mortify them on their 21st birthdays but the photos came in handy earlier than anticipated.

I viewed and mapped and planned and counted and culled and edited and printed and cut and pasted then decorated 233 photos into a 50-page craft book for the whole day. It took about 10 hours in total and one nearly burst blood vessel when Mini-Me (niece #2) tried to help and messed up my OCD-quality ordered stack of photos (Big Brother Pham had to herd her away before I died from self-restraint) but we got there in the end!
I wish I'd taken a photo of the finished product with all the Pham's handwritten notes inside the cover but by the time I remembered to, Little Sissy Pham had already gift wrapped it. You'll just have to trust me when I say the PhamLe Mother's Day book of 2012 is awesome.

We also did a Buddhist cermonial prayer for Mum Pham, which Dad wants to make our new tradition because it's happier than the annual ceremony we'll do for her day of passing. The ceremony involves incense, sending love to mum and eating food so I'm all for it. Hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day too!