KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I love crafty gifts. Actually, I love gifts of any kind. I even loved receiving a free sample of Kool'n'Soothe migraine relief in the mail even though I don't get migraines and have had maybe four heat-stroke or dehydration headaches in my lifetime. FYI, the sample went to a good friend who's suffered regular migraines since the age of 9 and said they worked a treat!

I got the best crafty gift over Xmas. My girlfriends made a photo album of all our fun times since meeting about 3 years ago. I call it The Book of J.E.M. (Jade, Elaine and Misty). Glad I changed my name from Ngoc to Jade otherwise we would have been The Book of M.E.N. and that could be misinterpreted. Here are a few of my favourite pages from the J.E.M.:

Let's face it. We all stink. Whether it's Mother Nature's natural oils and sweat or man-made chemicals, we all reek something awful. Every time I am on a crowded train I thank the Heavens for my poor sense of smell.

I've only recently paid attention to fragrances. I'm not entirely sure why I never wanted to smell unnatural before but I suspect it had something to do with getting nosebleeds every time I walked through the Myer beauty section during my highly hay feverish childhood. Or it could have been my teenage years getting nosebleeds from the crazy way my classmates abused Impulse and Lynx sprays (a little goes a long way people)! I didn’t get the subtlety of scents until my hay fever cleared up and I worked in a bigger office where people’s smells didn’t offend my central face holes.

I went on a fragrance hunt with my friend whose nose could smell things burning in the kitchen while my hay fever clogged snout left me with nearly no dinner. She also had encyclopedic knowledge of every current, past and upcoming perfume on the market. We went to Paint’n’Powder in Royal Arcade, Melbourne CBD where she and the store clerk pointed out a few warm, vanilla or flowery scents to me because my prerequisite was I wanted to smell like food or flowers.

I fell in love with the prettiest Flower By Kenzo. It would have been $50 cheaper to buy the scent from Strawberry Net but the customer service at Paint’n’Powder was so nice and old school I had to buy it from them for helping me find my new signature scent. Now between my cocoa butter moisturiser and Flower By Kenzo I smell like a chocolate garden!

It's amazing how perceptive kids can sometimes be. Especially when you've seen them in an Easter Egg hunt where they can't even find the bright yellow egg resting on a green lawn out in the open right by their feet. Look down! Look down! Right there! See? It's right in front of you. Look! LOOK THERE! Finally an older kid swoops in, takes the egg from under their nose and the pulsing stress vein in my neck subsides until I try to help find the next egg.

Mini-me (as I like to call my middling niece because she has a big face, is stubborn as a mule and says bizarre things like her Aunty Knock) was scrolling through my iPhone photos at my pyjama birthday party (pyjama themed because I spent my birthday on the couch with a bag of potato chips and my new best friend Ellen Degeneres, then mini-me rocked up in her pyjamas because it was her bedtime as soon as dinner and ice-cream cake was done, the rest of the Phamly wore real clothes because they have real lives) when she came across Mum Pham's plaque and said, 'That's Ba.' (Ba, being short for grandma in Vietnamese).

It was one of those freakish moments where kids know more than they should. We asked her to confirm, 'Where's Ba?' She turned in a confused full circle to look for grandma in the house. And snap - she was back to being the kid who kept missing the Easter egg basket and finding the same egg that she had just dropped over and over until her father finally stepped in to break the vicious cycle.

It's Mum Pham's birthday today. Coincidentally, the lady resting head-to-head with her shares the same birth date too. Happy Birthday, ladies. It was my birthday on Valentine's Day. Happy Birthday, me too. And the other four Pham girls had their birthdays in January. How many Aquarians can you fit into one Phamly? Very many.

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.