2. I haven’t got a middle name. It is Joanna-Mélanie with a hyphen. I’ve been told that this is rather unusual. Nowadays I just go by Jo-Mél, Mél (more commonly) or Méla (what The Boyfriend calls me sometimes to differentiate me from his sister, who is incidentally also Melanie).

3. I weigh far more than you think I do. I am a living example of how the whole concept of an “ideal weight” is rubbish. This is due to the fact that I’ve inherited the heavy bones from the maternal side. All my bony parts e.g. my neck, my wrist, my ankles, my hips, appear thicker than usual but trust me, they are not swollen. It’s all bone mass. And because of my fat ankles, I can’t wear slip on shoes. They look horrid on me.

4. The fact that I weigh far more than I look causes me a lot of distress. While I was in school, we were always made to take our height and weight at the beginning of the school year. I was always given hell by teachers as well as fellow students for how much I weigh. I also live in Singapore, the land of tiny Chinese girls.

5. I have superb blood flow. I don’t hold alcohol very well but I get over it really quickly. I also lose and gain weight really quickly too.

6. I have natural curls. My hair exists as a separate entity from the rest of me. It decides what it wants to do with itself every morning. Therefore, on some days my hair is curlier than on others. So unless the length of my hair has changed drastically, do not come up and ask me if I’ve done anything different to it because chances are I haven’t and it would annoy the hell out of me.

7. I am cross eyed. This is due to long years of reading while lying on my left side. So I’m really bad at ball games and judging distances. However, I played touch rugby competitively through my junior college years with some degree of success, and I can shoot pool competently when I’m semi-drunk.

8. Both my sisters can’t grow plants. I have, fortunately, inherited my father’s green thumb although I rarely grow anything very much, living in a box so high up in the sky. When I was 15, I successfully grew a tomato plant from seed by hydroponics for a Biology project. With some luck, it’d still be somewhere in the school garden.

9. I once had a dish named after me in a restaurant I worked in. It was a bruschetta with an herbed tomato and avocado topping. It was called Melanzane, but we all wrote it as Mel on our order chits. The manager was in love with me.

10. I like sprinkling salt on oranges and sugar on grapefruits. I also like a dash of milk in my mushroom soup, orange juice in my tomato soup, cinnamon and hazelnut in my coffee, and vanilla ice-cream in my earl grey tea.

11. I wanted to be a concert pianist since I was 10. But my parents wouldn’t let me drop out of school and couldn’t afford to send me abroad, and I only managed to get a partial scholarship. So I decided, when I was 16, that since I was stuck in school here, I might as well get a kick ass degree and then later drop out to be a pianist. That was how I ended up in Law School.

12. Unfortunately, I realised that I was far too old and far lacking in natural talent to be a concert pianist. I’ve also, along the way, developed a passion for the practical applications of the Law. So I like to say that the Law found me rather than the other way round.

13. I am a little bit of a psychic. Occasionally, the things that I say / think / dream will come true. After a certain fishmonger incident, I’m now generally quite careful about what I say, especially if it involves death and illness. Hence, I do not curse people often or carelessly.

14. I collect hippo things. I started with only stuffed toys but now have keyrings and figurines, notebooks and other knick knacks. My first hippo is a terry beanie, aquamarine in colour.

15. I've never known any of my grandparents. They had all passed away by the time I was borne.

16. I played classical guitar for a number of years. My favourite solo guitar piece is Cavatina. I can still perfectly tune a guitar by ear.

17. I used to perform songs by the Cranberries with my guitar. I think I’ve lost that singing voice, though. It’s really quite a pity. I’ve always wanted voice lessons but could never afford them.

18. I love stories, no matter how corny or bawdy or mundane. I’ve been told that I’m a good listener and I very much think this is due to my love for stories. In other words, I’m quite the busybody.

19. I can’t drive, despite my love for Formula1 and general car chases….opps…races. I can only cycle and skate/rollerblade in straight lines. But while I’m at it, I like to go really fast and down slopes. I will invariably end up on my ass, but I don’t seem to learn my lessons; I’m just addicted to speed, the whizzing and thinning of the air and the colours flashing by.

20. I like figuring things out. I’m quite the gadget queen and suffer from the delusion that if you leave me to play with something for long enough, I can rewrite the instruction manual for you in plain English. I would also like to think I can fix everything. This is partly due to the fact that my father belonged to that generation of men who can fix everything and I’ve grown up watching him do just that.

21. I was a Jenga champion when I was in junior college. After the promotional exams in my first year, to keep us occupied, the school organised these competitions among the different faculties. I represented the Arts Faculty in Jenga, with two other faculty mates, and beat about twenty other people to become champion. In secondary school, I was a jigsaw puzzle champion, under similar circumstances.

22. I love waiting on tables. I love manning the drinks bar even more. I am very anal about how my drinks leave the bar because I see them as artistic creations. I was also very good to the espresso machines at both the places I worked the bar. Good coffee is an art. Good foam/froth is even more difficult to achieve than good coffee.

23. My indulgences in life are good food, good haircuts and original sheet music. I can go without pretty much everything else.

24. Is my favourite number. I am going to stop here because I can’t think of anything else. It’s taken me roughly three days to put this list together and I did it because I thought it would be fun. I salute other diarists who can reach 100 and more.

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