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.

2011 started off well. Set up house with awesome friends and landed a stimulating job at Diamond Dozen.... And then life turned to crap half way through the year. Fortunately for me we were raised by two appreciative optimists who always manage to find the silver lining in any situation.

Mum Pham's health had been fragile yet manageable for years so when she suddenly became very ill, The Phamly had only a few days to accept she was crossing over. The silver lining: Mum Pham didn't suffer for very long. I got a harsh reality check when the funeral drained my life savings. The silver lining: we were lucky I had enough saved to contribute to the funeral costs. (I will post about funeral ins and outs at a later date to hopefully help other Aussies. The information we found online was dense and confusing so I will try and simplify our experience in an Idiot's Guide To blog. I will also try to think of  a less insensitive title for that blog). Mum Pham and Dad Pham's finances and wills had to be reviewed. The silver lining: I learned about mortgages, stamp duty, interest rates and how to read and write a legal will.

I realised living an independent life in Melbourne was selfish and unfulfilling. The silver lining: Mum's passing set my priorities straight. Phamly first. I left my friends behind. The silver lining: I'd be with Phamly and when I visit it will be quality time spent with friends. I left my job behind. The silver lining: I left knowing I'd made a positive impact on the business and met some amazing people doing it. I arrived in Brisbane unemployed and broke. The silver lining: this great country has a welfare system to help those in need and Dad Pham and Little Sissy Pham are also supporting me where they can.

I am starting at zero in 2012. The silver lining: the only way is up.

Happy New Year, dear World! May all your wishes come true in 2012 but if they don't, remember to stay positive and find the silver lining! Also if you fail miserably in the first three weeks, you get a do over for Chinese New Year on January 23rd, 2012.

I have a fashion faux pas to own up to and Tigger Pham is not impressed. I wear jeggings – great jeggings, mind you, but still jeggings. I have not actually worn a pair of jeans since my 2009 trip to Japan where my friend put me onto Uniqlo’s amazing jeggings. They look and fit like real jeans until you do a cartwheel and people see you have an elasticised waistband.

If wearing pants was so great Superman, Batman and all the X-men wouldn’t be wearing tights. Hollywood tried to toughen up these characters by changing their tights to tough rubber and leather suits but everyone knows a real superhero wears spandex. That’s because jeggings hadn’t been invented at the time the superheroes were. Otherwise, I’m sure superheroes would prefer to fly and fight in jeggings. Jeggings look tougher, are more comfortable and breathable too – tri-winning!

So remember, folk, superheroes and pop stars say 'No' to pants and so should you! Anyone traveling to Japan or Europe, feel free to get me a couple more pairs. I’m a size M. Thanks.

I often wander through The Sock Shop, Myer, David Jones and boutique fashion stores to see what colour tights they have on offer but I haven’t bought colourful tights in a retail outlet for a year now. They’re great if you want blacks, navies and natural colours. Last I checked my fave Columbine hot pink and red tights were still stocked in Myer, though the yellows and blues are gone. For these and many more colour options I go to eBay stores like Show Your Legs.

Little Sissy Pham knows me too well. She bought me a wand from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios in Orlando while in the States earlier this year. Then when she presented it to me and I reached into the box she squealed, “It’s a collector’s item! It’s not a toy! You can’t hit people with it!”

How did she know the first thing I would do with my wand is to work my magic, wave it over her head then bop her crown to cast the spell? The back story is I’ve been waiting to get revenge since she hit me on the head with a metal jug in the bathtub when we were three and four. I’ve waited almost 24 years, I can wait a while longer to thwop Little Sissy Pham on the head with an inanimate object. For now I remain the proud and nerdy owner of a wand I can't use.

1. I've always had trouble getting to sleep.

2. I played piano really well once upon a time. It ended when my parents sold our piano to move interstate and I swore never to play again because as a teenage brat I didn’t understand about budgets and expenses. I’ve grown up a bit (just a bit) and plan to get a piano and finish my exams. I hesitate to make the purchase because I’ve had a lot of dumb expensive ideas before.

3. I have a 14-year-old cat named Tigger. I left her in the care of Little Sissy Pham while I was in Melbourne and Little Sissy Pham managed to make her clinically obese. Poor Tigger Pham.

4. When I was born I yawned. Then I proceeded to drink twice as much formula as any other baby. Some things never change.

5. I was the fattest, ugliest and smartest girl in my year at high school – perfect bully material except I was so strange they didn’t know where to begin so they never did.

6. My sister is my best friend and my favourite person in the whole entire universe.

7. I wear contact lenses.

8. I have three tattoos that represent who I am/who I will be, what I aim to achievein everything I do, and what I believe in.

9. I baked a cake for the first time ever last week.

10. I have a phobia of people dressed up in giant animal suits with their faces covered because part of me fears that it could really be a giant demon-animal and not a person in a suit. I don’t stand too close to the stage at a FlamingLips concert.

11. No matter how important a conversation or how hard I try to concentrate my mind always dips away for about 3-4 seconds every few minutes or so to swim in thoughts and ideas before it comes back to reality. I'm intuitive enough to guess what I've missed hearing though so no one's ever seemed to notice.

12. My Mongolian Blue Spot never faded - it's about the size of a 20c piece and looks like a triangular bruise near my tailbone.

Acne medication isn’t the funnest experience I’ve had in life. Especially since my acne returned a few months after the six months of torture I went through to try and clear up my skin. I normally enjoy being in the minority like being in the top 3% of IQ brain-dorks and in the 2.9% of INTJ personality types but being in the 15% of people whose skin can’t be fixed by hardcore medications is what some would call a ‘major bummer’. Majority pun intended.

One of the god-awful side effects of acne meds is the dryness. The idea is to shrivel your pores up so they don’t get clogged and pimply. This means your skin feels severely tight and dry (think Montgomery Burns) and your lips threaten to crack if not lathered in lip balm every 15-30 minutes. I’ve heard of far worse symptoms like depression and hair falling out so I tell myself I was lucky.

The meds worked permanently for about a dozen of my friends who I questioned months before I went to a dermatologist so I’d still recommend heavy acne sufferers try the meds but be aware that you may emerge from the end of it without clear skin but a new found knowledge of the best lip balms available in Australia.
Lucas Papaw Ointment
Before I went on the meds I was a papaw ointment fanatic. Once my lips dried up on the meds I quickly realised papaw is only good for keeping moisture already in my lips, not adding it.
Blistex
I tried five different Blistex products - Complete Moisture, Ultra Protection, Lip Ointment, Lip Infusion and Strawberry Lip Balm. While they all relieved my lips somewhat on application they felt dry again soon after making me touch up every 15mins or so. Excessive? Wait til you’re on these meds then you’ll understand.
Nivea Lip Care
My friend got me a tube of Nivea because she saw how much pain I was in after I forgot my Blistex tube for a half hour grocery run. Nivea had the longest staying power (didn’t rub off or blow off in the wind on the walk to work) and I only needed to touch up every 30-45mins. I drink a lot of water and tea during the day so if you’re not constantly drinking you’d probably only need to touch up every hour or possibly more.

Vaseline
I will never fully understand Tyra Banks’ reaction to Vaseline in this YouTube clip but I am a little less inclined to think the woman’s completely mad. Vaseline was the sweetest relief to my dry lips. The only problem is it rubs off too quickly so towards the end of my med course I’d apply Vaseline every morning after waking up with crusty lips then once they were soft again I’d load up the staying power of Nivea for the commute to work then keep doing a combo of both Vaseline for softness and Nivea for keeping in the moisture throughout the day.
Since going off the meds I’ve tried the new Maybelline Baby Lips and it seems to both soften and keep moisture in – if only they’d released this baby while I was on my meds! I’d probably still use Vaseline in the mornings but Baby Lips feels like it could take care of the rest during the day.

I’ve given away all the knives I had in Melbourne to my more kitchenable friends. Mum Pham would kill me if I gave her good knives to inept cooks but she can rest in peace knowing that my dear friends are all living in danger of accidentally hacking their fingers off with her blades.

Only half joking. Unless they're half a buffoon, they're much more likely to hurt themselves with a blunt blade than with a good blade that cuts true. I often crap on about it to no one who will listen that a blunt knife is not worth cooking with just as a kitchen with less than three peelers is not worth cooking in (the peelers is a blog post for another day).