Friday Five 26-May-2023

thefridayfive 

1. What is your full name?
Wow, wow, wow. No no no. The most I'm willing to say is my name is Katherina, and my surname initial is a P.

2. If you could, would you change part of your name? To what?
I've written before my full name comprises of *my name* + *mom's surname* + *dad's surname* but that it's common to drop *mom's surname* so that my name is a tad shorter. I wouldn't want to change any part of my name. Initials do seem cool though, and I'm happy enough with that.

3. Favourite girl's name?
Probably Kay? Dunno. Never really thought of it.

4. Favourite boy's name?
Similarly, never thought about that.

5. Would you name your child after a character in a book or movie?
Don't plan to have a child so can't really say.
However, i would say that for my Dachshund mix (she's almost 20!), when I just picked her off the street and went to chip her, her "official" name is Lizzie (short for Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice), but... in actuality she's never been called by that name haha. For some reason we've just always called her "Menina" and dad calls her by "Madchen" (German), and even in Chinese we call her 妹妹 or 阿妹... basically, we've just been calling her "Girlie" all her life.

Might as well pay the dog tax :-) Not her most photogenic photo, but it's the most recent.

http://f.riday5.com/ | Discomfort

1. How ticklish are you?
Probably considered very ticklish. I don't like to go for massages because it's all ticklish for me.

2. When did you most recently experience physical numbness?
Just 10 minutes ago. The people who came to fix the electricty are also fixing a fence thing for our varandah railing thing so the Frenchie is locked in my room with me. It's Saturday, so I'm working on the dog shelter finances. And since I'm locked in the room with the dog, I can only work on my bed, and so I'm sitting cross-legged for an extended period of time. When Mom came in to ask me to hold onto the dog as the guys want to smoothen out the edges of the light switch; I stood up and couldn't move. My left leg had fallen asleep.

3. What’s caused you recently to squirm?
With summer barrelling at us, the rise of the mini cockroaches is happening as well. I used be grossed out by these mini roaches but they're slowly getting on my nerves and I'm starting just see one and whack one.

4. What recently caused you to gag?
hm..... I think I'm pretty good with dealing with dog poop and dog puke. But when it's human puke then it might make me gag.

5. Which item in your wardrobe is most uncomfortable to wear?
oh, I have bra that I don't know if it's a loose stitch or something, but there's something in one part of the stitch or seam on the right side that just scratches and irritates the skin there. It's now in the back of my drawer and I'll probably only wear that in the winter when I have to wear a heat-tech (a special undershirt) beneath it.

So I did a thing.....

I've enrolled in the third "term" of the pottery/ceramics course thingamajig. It's going to start next week. But I figured I should also practice more working on the wheel, as I seem to just not grasp how to "center" the piece of clay.

The master at the workshop had bought some mini wheels from Taobao, so I went on a search for those as well and found them.

Not wanting to work inside the apartment as I was worried the clay-water would splash all over, I set up a temporary station out in the verandah. It was actually nice and therapeutic. Except for when I noticed there was someone on the roof at the opposite building and that gave me a heart attack. They were fixing the terrace.

It was a tad messy in the end though, and cleanup was a pain. I couldn't just flush everything down as the drain isn't working (hadn't been working for the past few years, building management refuse to fix it because it's expensive).

Mom also refuses to talk to the homeowners group because she doesn't want to "raise fights" with them. Well. If that's the case, then I will only passive-aggressively carry the bucket of clay water down, make a big show of carrying it down to the drain in the car park, and when the building guard asked me why I don't just pour the water down the drain, I said "yeah the drain's blocked and the water will just overflow and pour down outside the drain, then everyone down here will complain."

He suggested I pour the water over a drain that's just in front of the building, instead of going down to the car park. I said "Well, I still need a water source to rinse and clean the bucket, so I'll go down to the car park where there's a spray hose. You know, we haven't washed our verandah for a good few years."

It really wasn't the building guard's fault, but if everyone is trying to be polite and avoid confrontation, I can only voice the inconvenience passive aggressively and make a show of how I'm complying to their request of "not washing the verandah" at my inconvenience.

That drainage pipe is actually a "public" drain that all the floors above us will use too, if they wash their verandah. So what happens now is the people up there wash their verandah, the water drains to our verandah, but because the blockage on the public drain has now accumulated to our floor, the water overflows from our level, so the building thinks it's us that's washing our verandah. I want to see when our floor floods then will they concede that it's a public drain or not. Argh but that's boring talk. I was talking about the wheel and practicing one it at home.

Still haven't managed to center the clay properly. But I will continue to practice!