"Guess who I saw at the polling booth today??!" Pixie excitedly asked.

"No? Who?" I was not going to venture to guess. Pixie lives on the edge of the illustrious seat of Wentworth, where the rich and famous frolic.

"Delta Goodrem!"

"Wonder if she voted for K-Rudd."

Election day 2007.

I woke this morning hopefully sensing a change in the air. I considered carefully in the attire that I was to wear on such a momentous day.

Eleven years! I was not yet fifteen when J W Howard took office! Red! It has to be red; the colour of K-Rudd and the working class, the rouge in that strip bar he visited in New York, the shade of Julia Gillard's hair, and the colour of those bar graphs on every channel tonight dissecting the results of the election.

So it came to this long sleeved jumper that I picked up on a recent trip to Shanghai:
It was enough to deflect the Liberal pamphlets as I made my way to my celebrity-less polling booth.

I have been amusingly engrossed in the election this year. Mildly entertained by the pamphlet-overboard incident this past week and the little bit of bitch-slapping that went down this afternoon. Not forgetting the coersion, flirtation and intimidation by the same bitch-slapper that provided the prologue to today's showdown.

Notwithstanding my own amusement and hyper bias for the red team, the politics has divided the Boy and I.

"I can't believe you think they're better economic managers!" We both cried at various times of the last few weeks.

How do you turn someone long decided to be a blue (bleh!) to bat for the red team? After some screaming, some mild coaxing ("If you love me, you'd vote for K-Rudd!"), and threats ("That's it! NO CUPCAKES FOR YOU!"), I have come to reluctant acceptance and will just be smug while the so very obviously better team wins the day.
Two weeks ago, I turned 26. The momentous occasion this year was all the more special when I received a Graf von Faber-Castell mechanical pencil from Le Garçon.Though it is not jewellery or handbag, it is more than enough bling to last me for a very very long time.
* * *
[1989. Shanghai, China.]

I saw my first mechanical pencil at a stationery store on Huaihai Road with my Mama. It was shiny silver with a handsome black grip. I thought it was the classiest thing I had ever seen in my life and bound to make me have the best handwriting in the whole school. Unfortunately, this was back in the old country - fine things were rare and expensive.

"You can have that pencil if you get full marks in your test next week," my Mama bribed. It took a bold statement like that to move me away from the glass cabinet that the mechanical pencil was encased in.

I studied my times table and Chinese poetry like crazy that week. But as fate would have it, I didn't get full marks. I got 89% in Chinese and 97% in Maths. I stared at the numbers in the report card with bitterness as I thought about how the mechanical pencil was going to be encased in that glass cabinet forever. I was seven-years-old and had already started to develop a tendency for the melodramatic.

Slowly, I began to change the numbers on the report card. I was seven-years-old and had not yet learned that there was no possible way of making either "89" or "97" look like "100".

On the way home, the guilt of it all started to weigh down on me. I was also aware that the two 100's did not really look that legitimate. It all got too much that when I handed my passive Papa the report card, I burst out crying and fessed up.

Like how they were for the rest of my childhood, they didn't lose their temper or yell. They simply said they were disappointed and it was enough for the water works to overflow the dam again.

A few days later, while shopping with my Mama, I saw the mechanical pencil again in the same store. I stared at it again and quickly walked away. But this time, Mama pulled me back to the glass cabinet.

"You changed your marks so you could have this, didn't you?" she asked.

I sheepishly agreed.

"I was going to buy it for you anyway. But if I buy it for you today, you will have to never lie again."

I nodded but I felt awful. It was a prize I shouldn't have won. It was also 3RMB and I knew that Mama only took home 20RMB a week. When I finally held the pencil in my hand, I got no satfisfaction in knowing that it was mine. It was tainted goods. I put it in my desk drawer when I got home and never used it.
* * *
"So that's the worst thing you've ever done in your whole life?" Le Garçon asked when we were trading childhood stories about a year ago. "You fibbed your way into getting some pencil and that's the worst you've got?"

"It was a mechanical pencil! And I lied to get it and mum still bought it for me even though it cost 15% of her weekly wage! I was a horrible child!"

"That's still the worst thing you've ever done?" He asked in disbelief.
* * *
On my birthday, I tore through the wrapping and shook the box slightly to hear if it sounded like the pair of earrings I had been hinting for all week. When I finally opened the white oblong box, I was seven-years-old again, staring at the classiest thing ever.

"So you can have one legitimately now," he said.

But what was I supposed to tell my parents? I have not spoken about my downfall of 1989 since the event.

A day later, my passive Papa called.

"What did the Boy get you for your birthday?" he asked.

"He got me a mechanical pencil."

"A what?"

"Remember that time in second grade when I changed my mark so I could get a mechanical pencil?" It was inevitable to relive the shame all over again.

"No? When did that happen?" Passive Papa was clueless.

"In second grade! Mum said I could only have it if I aced my tests that term." I was starting to get exasperated that he couldn't remember the worst thing I have ever done in my life.

"So you changed marks?" Passive Papa started to laugh.

"Yes. I felt awful."

"Why your mother not buy it for you? It couldn't be that much!" He said sympathetically.

"But she did! And it was 3RMB when you guys only made 20RMB a week!"

"How you still remember that?" he asked.

"How do you not remember that??" I asked, "You mean I've been carrying the guilt of this horrible thing I did for almost twenty years and you guys don't even remember?"

"No. Can't remember."

Whenever I am home, my mama likes to show me the various things she has bought in the time I have been away. Her ever-changing taste never ceases to amaze me.

"I got new jeans," she said, proudly showing off a pair of pale blue jeans.

They looked innocent enough. Until I noticed the zippers that ran along each side from the waist down to the bottom of the legs.

Essentially, my mama bought stripper jeans.

"Look at the zippers!" She said excitedly when she noticed me staring at them in shock, "they are the best part!"
I am spending this weekend with my parents in Sydney. I've not seen them since Easter and that equals almost four months without their eccentricities and salivating home cooking.

As soon as we got home from the airport last night, my mother put the kettle on. As I stood there waiting for the water to boil, she informed me that the water in the kettle was off limits but there was enough hot water in the thermos for me to make tea.

"What are you doing?" I asked, as she started to concoct a strange mix of green herbs with Indian henna dye.

"I take sick days for the next three days you here," she said while beating an egg into the mixture. "I need to dye my ankle to look like a bruise. Tomorrow I go doctors, look real and I get medical certificate."

"Why can't you pretend to have a cold? Or a migraine?"

"Not severe enough," she said with an air of experience. "Here, help me bind my ankle. Make the strapping tight."
When my parents got their passports renewed recently, I was their "in case of emergency". Such a role came with heavy responsibility, which to be frank, I overlooked initially until one chilly morning I received a phone call as I was on my way into work.

Serious person on phone: "I understand from Father of Swell Mademoiselle's passport application that you are his in case of emergency contact."

Oh no, I thought. What kind of hot water has my passive papa got himself into? A phone call like that about my mama is not unexpected, but the solid paternal figure of my life never gets into any trouble.

Serious person on phone: "We have just received his passport application and there appears to be a bit of problem."

Me: "Okay."

Serious person on phone: "He's smiling."

Me: "And that's a problem?"

Serious person on phone: "Yes, he can't smile on passport photos. It's a problem for the facial recognition program used for machine readable passports. He should have a neutral expression showing no teeth or gum."

Me [finding this all too funny]: "Right. I guess none of those terrorists ever smile eh? Not a hint of gum there."

Serious person on phone: "This is a serious matter, can you please just pass on the message to your father please.

Me: "Sure, no problem."
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After several months of persuading by those incessant emails screaming "I've added you as a friend on facebook", I have finally relented. And it is an amazing world of facebook I have discovered. 19 friends and counting.

During the course of the day at work, Pants Wearing PA and I hop on at our respective desks and moan to each about how bored we are:
Swell Mademoiselle [current status] is wishing she had called in sick today.
Pants Wearing PA [status] is also wishing she had chucked a sickie.

At times the connection at Rather Large Bank fails us. Then a spate of
"I can't LOG ON!"
"Phew! Thought it was just me!"
"Crap! We have to resort to Lotus Notes!"
bounce back and forth.

During my lunch break at the pilates studio the other day (a recently ventured activity in an attempt to make a stunning entrance as a bridesmaid next year), my face was booked by the receptionist. He is one of those spunky new age types that smelled of ylang ylang. A mass of politically correct organically knitted green sweater that took down my details as I got sucked in for a ten session pass.

"Can I get your email? You know, just in case we have to change class schedules."

"Yep. It's ___@gmail.com."

"Gmail? That's the way to go. Isn't it the best?" Green ylang ylang man approved in his Brunswick Street cool manner. "Wait. Have you got facebook as well?!"

I rushed back to the office, logged onto facebook for the umpteenth time that day and changed the security settings on my account.
I have never been good at getting haircuts. One of my famous outbursts from childhood was at the hairdressers. I was probably five at the time and my mother always let me grow my hair long. But after way too much Tang one morning, I begged her to take me to the hairdressers to cut my hair short for the first time ever. As my locks were snipped off - and as the buzz from Tang wore off - I realised I looked like a boy. I jumped off the seat, grabbed the long locks of hair that were once on my head and mourned their loss in howls and sobs.

Twenty years on, nothing much has changed. Although I do exercise a fraction more decorum now.

Recently, le
Garçon and I got our hair cut together. He was scooted off to a woman named Stella who had very bad teeth, in addition to some flirtatious apprentices who cooed over him. Meanwhile, I was sent to a skeletal Asian man with blonde spiky hair (aside: I do not trust Asians with peroxide hair).

"Aiya,your head...your head smell bad," he said as he combed my just-washed hair to figure out a suitable style.

"Oh." Really how does one respond to the claim that one's head smells bad? "It's just been washed by that girl over there," I nodded to the direction of the apprentice who was running her fingers through le
Garçon's hair. "And I washed it earlier in the day too."

"No. Hair no smell. Head smell. Scalp smell." He was adamant.

He walked briskly away and came back with a tub of something. "Use this. You need this."

I balked at the 25-dollar price tag. And also smelled something rotten. On him.

"Oh, I have this at home." I lied.

"Then you use it. You should buy, you need a lot."

"I think I will just finish the one I have at home first," I said. Pfft, I ain't giving him an extra 25 bucks that day. I was adamant too.

"Whatever."

As he snipped away locks of my hair, he started sighing again.

"Wavy. Hair too wavy. Natural wave no good. You should get it properly permed. More structure." He started up again.

"I read in Vogue the other day that naturally wavy hair is all the rage at the moment. Straight hair, last season. Permed hair, five years ago." I argued.

"Your hair is a mess. No structure. You perm, still look natural."

"I just wanted it cut today. NO PERM."

He quietens down for a while, though still sighing as he snips.

"Wavy hair. Hard to cut. Next time don't come to me to cut."

"Bitch," I muttered under my breath. He still had the scissors to make a mess of my head.

I thought the blow drying part would be better with the noise to drown out his sighing. It was good for a while, until -

"PPEW! YOUR SCALP SMELL BAD! ALL THE BAD SMELL FLOW UP FROM THE BLOW DRY. PPEEW!" He screamed.

I stared back at him in horror. I have great hair. I am known for great wavy hair that does not smell.
I wanted to grab that pair of scissors and snip him into shreds. Alas, I have more decorum now, I'm not five and I don't cry over spilt hair anymore. I walked away from that chair without another word with my fabulous good-smelling head held high.

"What happened? You looked like you were about to cry on that seat," le
Garçon asked as we were walking out.

"He hurt my hair's feelings."

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I think I may have written something to this effect back in late 2004, amidst exams and thesis:
"Grr...have to stop wasting time mucking about on computer writing stupid stuff. Have a thesis to write. Have another 100 pages of thesis to write. Have to present thesis in TWO DAYS!"
So here I am again. The CFA exam is in 75 days, there are probably 75,000 pages yet to be read and I am happily typing away.

I suppose an absence of over a year warrants an update on all the old favourite characters, and possibly introduction to some new ones.

My hot momma took a long time to adjust to her little duckling moving out of home. While visiting me in Melbourne at Easter last year, she gave me another ten months of freedom before moving back home. That did not eventuate. I stood my ground and am still happily enjoying freedom with intermittent trips home every few months. I think she is back to her former happy self now with some new friends - new wild friends with tattoos, I might add.

My lovely poppa is like the constant in a regression equation (apologies, I just read up on regression analysis yesterday). He has not changed. I enjoy the conversations we have, especially while he fixes the heels of my shoes whenever I am up in Sydney (and saving myself $8 per shoe in the process).

Every night, at just after eight without fail, they call me on my mobile because that's when Optus free time kicks in.

"Have you had dinner?" mum usually begins.

"Yep, just had dinner," I answer, sometimes begrudgingly because it seems there is never a new topic of conversation.

"What you have?"

"A potato and spinach salad," I said today.

"What??! Just salad for dinner? Any bread?" she said with alarm.

"I didn't want bread," I explained, not really wanting to go into my aversion to carbohydrates late at night.

"What about rice? What about soup?"

"No rice! NO SOUP!"

"Aiya. If you were at home, you could have had soup." She always made four dishes and a soup every night.

Some nights, I make up dishes and soups to tell her, things that would not be possible for me to make in the little time I have after coming home from work. Grilled salmon, mama! With some chicken broth to start! And quiche too!

Bah! The books are staring me down! Looks like I will have to introduce the new characters next time. Stay tuned.

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