20 random facts about me
1. I speak with a lisp
Eh some rude people actually ask me on snapchat damn random stuff like "U sound like you have a short tongue" yes I do 怎样关你屁事?
Most hurtful moment in my life was when I got into a disagreement with my secondary one classmate and he said "Aiya you shut up la you you Daffy Duck pffffttttt!"
Literally made a "pfffft" sound to imitate my lisp and tears were welling up behind my eyes but I kept it cool and I think I didn't cry right there and then.
Strangely enough my family members never noticed my lisp because they grew up hearing me speak like that and I only realised I had a lisp when I went to school and classmates started asking me why I talk funny.
I can't pronounce "s" and "z" and "qi" properly. "Sh" and "zh" are fine.
It's better now but I consciously avoid words with the letter "s". For instance, I try not to say "My name is Yina", and just go for "I'm Yina". I also hardly say "Yes", and I say "Yup" or "Ya" instead 🙊
Apparently I did a 10 things about me when I was Editor's Pick in 2014 already and I just repeated one point 🙄
#10thingsaboutyina
So I'm gonna try to fart out another 20 facts, just for fun? Hahahaa here goes #20factsaboutme!
2. I have two sisters 👭
And we are called Gina, Yina and Lina. So creative, I know. I like to tell new friends that my mom is called Serina (true story) and that my dad is called Banana (false, he's called Richard) just to break the ice 😂 I love my name though. It's super unique. And it's not my Chinese name, contrary to popular belief.
Gina is 2 years older. Lina is 4 years younger. All three of us look quite different.
Gina is in a comms and media related job. Lina is in a analytical/financial position. We are all super different from one another. And they obviously don't care whether I'm popular or famous or not they just like to get freebies off me 😂 Pretty sure @zuanqing hasn't bought makeup in a really long time…
Oh three of us do share some things in common: all three of us like to sing. All three of us love animals (esp our dogs) and all three of us like to read Harry Potter.
3. I'm actually not a very fashionable person
Ironically. For someone who runs an online apparel boutique! After so many years running TVD, I have realised that fit and cut is way more important to me than following the latest trends and styles. So it also applies to the apparel I bring in on TVD! I try to make sure that every piece on TVD is flattering with a good fit. I would rather wear something flattering than super trendy and chic.
Well that's not to say that my apparel aren't chic and stylish ok?!
I just don't go after the latest fashions blindly… I prefer to focus on making sure every piece I wear (or sell) looks amazing on any one 😁
4. YZ is my first boyfriend and now husband
And we have been together for almost 9 years counting! Just another few months to go to our 9th anniversary 😂
Right before I met YZ (in July 2007?), I lost a ton of weight (like 10kg) and I suppose if I still looked like a baby whale when he first met me, he wouldn't have gone after me back then.
I have always had low self-confidence about attracting men when I was quite big-sized and I never thought that any guy would be interested in me.
In fact one funny story is that one of my good guy friends actually asked me out on Valentine's Day when I was 19 or 20: but he only asked me on the actual day itself?!! So I convinced myself that he was just asking me out for a regular friendly dinner…
Until we ended up at a nice restaurant at East Coast Park and then he tried to feed me a spoonful of his pasta ("Mmm, try my pasta, it's pretty good" before I realised that maybe this guy was actually maybe really trying to date me for real.
Awkward..🙄🙄🙄
Yeah, I was so thick in the head that it's not even funny? Hahahaaaa 😂😂
Anyway I then kind of realised jeezus that guy is seriously interested in me! And then stayed away from him because I was so freaked out by the idea of actually opening my heart to someone and getting into a relationship and potentially getting hurt.
Until now, I still secretly find myself very unattractive to the opposite sex. I don't flirt and I totally don't know how to. I'm not the sort that men look and think they want to protect and take care of. I think more men find me intimidating than attractive.
Luckily I'm married already 😂
5. I have sang in a choir since Primary School!
Like I mentioned, both my sisters and I love to sing and we grew up listening to Mumsy belt out A-Mei tunes.
Gina joined the choir in primary school and I followed right after her, joining the choir too once I got to Primary 3!
I carried on in my secondary school choir for another four years, making it a total of 8 years in school choirs.
Then I entered NYP and the voice ensemble AKA choir sucked so I didn't bother. I went on to take artiste development classes outside of school with @elainecxx, my poly classmate.
I was taking classes for almost 2 years out of my own pocket (it was a lot of money for a student/fresh graduate!) & stopped taking classes when I met YZ because it was all very melodramatic, I was actually in the running to be groomed as an artiste by my mentor but then I got distracted by love and ran off with YZ 😂
I truly truly love to sing so a few months after I left my classes, I decided to look for another choir to join and thus joined the SYC Ensemble Singers and have been singing with them for almost 8 years now!
That's 16 mind-boggling years singing in a choir, y'all.
Unfortunately though, I still can't read sheet music (well I can sort of read. The middle C and high C at least) and thankfully I have a pretty good ear and can fumble through all the crazy new music my ensemble sings on a regular basis.
I also picked up very basic piano and guitar by making friends teach me note by note or reading sheet music note by note and memorizing the fingering. 😭
Greatest regret in life may just be not learning a musical instrument in my childhood.
6. I can't cook and don't have any interest in it
I'm actually a very lazy person. My motto is "food tastes better when someone else does the cooking" 😂😂😂
So yes. Don't throw me into the kitchen because the only thing I can whip up is a mean Maggi Mee (and although I can't cook, I have to say that I do a VERY GOOD bowl of instant noodles. Though you might mock me because how difficult can it be to boil water and throw in some condiments and noodles inside. It takes a little bit of skill to not get soggy noodles in a tasteless soup, ok?!)
That being said.. I did go through this baking craze once upon a time. I guess baking is easier because you just have to follow a fixed recipe! Not that I made anything particularly worthwhile, the height of my baking finesse was about at the level of white chocolate lava cakes and some really tasty oatmeal cookies 😁
Oh and I was pretty good with tiramisu too!
Apart from that…. Just don't ask me to cook anything, please. My only relationship with food is with eating it.
7. I was a tomboy
Who could have imagined that out of the three of us sisters, I would turn out to be somewhat the most feminine and girly of all three?
Gina is quite girly too but Lina barely wears makeup. I do their makeup for them on special occasions like CNY or when they have weddings to attend.
I'm not very girly on the inside, actually. I behave more like a man, BUT my outer appearance is definitely feminine and girly now.
In my childhood, I spent way more time with my dad, while my sisters went out shopping with mom.
I did all sorts of activities with my dad, like going to the fish farms with him, cleaning up doggie poop when he tried his hand at dog breeding for a couple of years, going jet-skiing with him from Punggol to Pulau Ubin and lots of other fun stuff!!
I never dressed up til I was about 20 because I was fat and dismal. I wore t-shirts and berms all day long and had zero fashion sense.
All that changed once I grew past teenagehood and then lost some weight. Truly a case of 女大十八变 I suppose.
So although I'm so girly on the outside now, I'm quite the opposite on the inside 😂 I used to work in a comic studio and I was completely surrounded by boys who treated me like one of them too.
We'd play DOTA together every friggin evening after work. Fun times.
@cherriwong specially commented to tell me to add in that I'm also very "chor lor" (erm.. Unladylike) so yes I have already said I behave more like a man 😂
I cuss and swear and am very improper too okay? Hahahahahaha
8. I always get mistaken for not being local/Chinese
Which I truly do not understand why.
Back when I was younger, I was very tan from swimming and other outdoor activities (Girl Guides company leader yo) and it's a standing joke between my friends and I that I used to look like "Maria" or "Fatimah" because I was so tan I got mistaken for Malay a few times 😂
Nowadays I'm no longer that tan but taxi drivers love to ask me if I'm local. I mean how do I not look Singaporean Chinese to you?
I certainly don't have @evonnz or @tippytapp's sort of exotic features so I don't get it. And it's ALWAYS the taxi drivers who like to ask me whether I'm local.
One factor could be that I like to speak in a more proper Mandarin than our usual Singaporean mandarin (remember I used to take 艺人训练班) so I guess I might come across as a PRC. 🙄 Also got strange ones ask if I'm Vietnamese or Taiwanese or something like that.
9. I am messy and disorganized and careless
Not surprising for an ESFP and I'd have to say I'm probably very hard to work with because I tend to go with the flow and I don't plan and organise as much as I should. My staff have to be quite on-the-ball to keep up with me 🙊 Because of my erratic nature, lol.
My spaces at home are all very cluttered because I have so much stuff lying around and it is way too much effort to keep everything neat 😂 Maybe things will change when I move into my own home next time.. (Which is not any time soon)
I'm also prone to losing my stuff, but 90% of the time, I find them when I'm not looking for them, which is rather annoying.
I remember during primary school, I once left my entire school bag in school and happily took the school bus home to realize that my school bag wasn't with me 😂 My water bottles and umbrellas always end up getting left behind too 😰
I once left my camera behind in a taxi seven or eight years ago and I was damn upset! Never got it back obviously. I've even left my wallet behind in a food court before but I was super lucky and got back my wallet with all the money intact (it was a lot of money)! So grateful there are still good-hearted people out there.
I misplaced my IC for months since voting day and randomly found it in one of my bags somewhere 😂
I'm more careful with my belongings now but still slip up at times 😅
10. I speak both English and Mandarin
I definitely write more fluently in English but there was a period of time that I kept a Chinese blog as well.
I used to HATE Chinese language and regularly failed my Chinese classes by the way (because I was in Higher Chinese since Primary 5) but my spoken Chinese is quite fluent. My parents are not educated (my dad's highest education level is Sec 1 and my mom's is Pri 5) so mandarin used to be our main language of communication at home,
My sisters and I speak English to one another and we learnt our English from books and reading, mostly.
I've always had a very strong command of English and I consistently scored As for English throughout my school life, thanks to all the books I kept company with!
Right now though, I actually communicate with YZ (as well as his family) mostly in mandarin because his family doesn't speak much English as well. I feel more comfortable speaking in mandarin especially with my close friends 😊
11. I am super easy-going/随和
I am really super duper easy-going and am not very fussy at all which I guess makes me a happier person as well because you know, you don't have to get upset as often? Or maybe you can call it happy-go-lucky!
I tend not to brood over things if I can help it, because I always feel that moving on is the better option. I don't worry about things not within my control, because.. Well, worrying too much doesn't help a single bit lah!
Also means I'm very flexible and open to most ideas: unless it seriously requires WAY too much unnecessary effort from me because I am lazy like that and I only put in effort into doing something when I am really really really interested in it.
Actually, maybe it's the other way round. I'm too lazy to bother about most things so maybe that's why I'm so 随和. 😂😂😂
12. I feared never being good enough for anyone
This is something that took me a long time to get over: the fear of feeling inferior and never good enough for any one.
Maybe it started because my parents never praised me. Nothing I did was ever good enough for my dad. If I got third place in class, he would question why I didn't get first place. If I scored 93 for a test he would ask why didn't I score full marks.
If I ever did anything and got scolded/beaten for it, I wasn't allowed to cry or show any signs of weakness.
I had to swallow my tears and endure whatever punishment that was being meted out without a single cry. Our parents also never showed us physical affection. No hugs, no kisses.. Dad is a very old-fashioned stoic traditional China man and he had the tough job of raising up three daughters.
I guess that subconsciously made me feel like I was never good enough for anyone, and that showing any feelings was a sign of weakness and to be scorned.
Especially before I met YZ: I had so many flaws that I was self-conscious about and that I hated about myself. I was so scared about opening up my most inner self to anyone because they would then be able to hurt me. 😟
YZ is quite the opposite of me in that aspect. He's super expressive and very open, and that assuaged my fears of getting into a relationship because I could see how much this man adored me 😊
He gave me lots of security and assurance that I was good enough for him and that he would love me no matter what.
Obviously, we had some really bad quarrels still and I felt extremely rejected when I walked away in anger (and he never came after me 😡) or when he tried to spite me with hurtful words, but well over the past 9 years, we've gotten better and better with each other and have both matured emotionally.
13. Music can make me cry
Secretly emo nemo like that 😂😂😂 Maybe my emotions are too stifled inside but music can make me cry, for a myriad of reasons!
Sometimes when the music is too beautiful, I'm so touched I feel like crying 😭 Like when I'm singing in the choir and that particular chord or melody is just so beautiful, it literally strikes a chord in my heart and makes me want to cry!
There was once YZ and I sang a really emotional song for our tv competition and I cried on Channel 8 because I got so into the emotions of the song that I was really crying by the end of it 😑 It was quite embarrassing but then again we scored full marks for that performance thanks to the heart-felt singing 😂
Lol I also nearly cried when performing Memory from Cats for my voice exam (good thing it was the last song) and my voice got all wobbly towards the end!
I tried to salvage it by using my emotions to add more "feel" into the singing… You need to balance emotions vs control because with too much emotion you cannot technically control your voice as well.
14. I eat and drink *almost anything… But..
I REALLY REALLY REALLY dislike the taste of fresh milk and I wouldn't go near it with a ten-foot pole 😂 Same goes for cheese, especially the strong blue cheeses and what not, the only cheese I take is mozzarella and then only on a pizza. I would never eat cheese or drink milk on their own, because I detest the taste of it somehow.
I didn't like yogurt too but have grown to love it now 😬 But uh-uh to fresh milk unless it's flavored!
I have an aversion to avocado too. Even though it's supposed to be "healthy"… It's just too rich and creamy and mushy for me 🤐
I eat almost everything else except stuff like pork liver (gross!) and also I don't like sea cucumber (slimy, ew).
15. I'm not a thrill-seeker
When I was 9 years old or so, my school brought me on an excursion to Escape Theme Park (anyone remembers this place?), which was exciting at first, until I went up on the Viking ship and sat really far out on the second last row… And then threw up over the side of the Viking ship 😰
From then on, I had a phobia of Viking ships haha and even if I take one now I try to stay near the middle so you know the inertia isn't as great.
I do take roller coasters and all that hehe but if I see very scary rides like those 200m drop rides and crazy reverse bungee rides I'm not too inclined to take them.
In the same vein, I'm not an adventure-seeker or party-goer! Though I look like I club and go crazy, the truth is I'd much rather be curled up in bed with a good read. I've only stepped into clubs a few times, lesser times than I can count on my fingers, and most of the time there was a special occasion for it. 我是乖kia的!
16. I get stage fright
It totally sucks but I have terrible stage fright and although it doesn't come across mentally, it's even worse than that because I get physically nervous and my adrenaline pumps up and my mouth turns dry and my heart is thumping at an accelerated rate and then I basically sound terrible when I sing.
😭😭😭
A very apt random fact to list down because I just tried out for an audition for this singing competition and yeah the above just happened to me.
The stupidest part is once I'm done with the singing, everything goes back to normal and straight away I feel like I can sing properly (but obviously the opportunity to show off is already over).
I super hate this part of me that I can't control!
It always surprises people to hear I suffer from stage anxiety because I always come across as a vey confident and fearless person. 😕
17. The strangest email I ever received was…
A boyfriend who was planning to propose to his girlfriend, and basically wanted me to be there at the proposal and somehow be involved in it… 😰
According to the guy, his gf likes me a lot and talks about me all the time. And he thought that she would be overjoyed if I were part of the surprise proposal. It was very sweet and all but I just could not see myself appearing out of nowhere to present the bouquet and ring to the boyfriend and give his girlfriend a surprise 😶
I mean it's like how I really look up to say Velda a lot.
I would actually feel very awkward and embarrassed if my boyfriend somehow arranged for Velda to be present during his proposal to me!
Anyway… I couldn't think of any good way to reply this email.. So I didn't reply it. Hopefully this guy succeeded in his proposal 😅
18. I'm too self-conscious to dance
I'm not totally 同手同脚 but I'm quite self-conscious about how I look and thus I dont dare to dance haha! I don't know how to let loose and go crazy except maybe after some alcohol 😂
I don't like to drink too. And I don't get drunk, but only end up at the puking stage while feeling totally sober.
I super respect those gfs of mine who can dance like the whole world is watching or rather dance like no one is watching cos I can't do that 😟
19. My pet peeve is when people cut my queue
Or if someone snatches my taxi a few metres in front of me, that sort of thing.
I have actually barged up to people a couple of times and said "Excuse me, but I was here first. Do you mind?" with a stare that could kill 😂
Just cannot stand it when people are so inconsiderate la! Same for public transport. Like when there's so much space within the bus or cabin but everyone refuses to budge and move in. In which I will just raise my voice right out and shout "Hi can you all move in please?!"
20. OMG LAST FACT DONT KNOW WHAT TO PUT
OK It shall be that Mathematics is my worst subject ever. I hate anything that requires boring constant repetition and I detest memorizing equations and working out calculations. By some lucky twist of fate, I scored an A1 for E Math for O's.
Maybe in general I just really don't like to mug and study and do homework. Which is why I chose Polytechnic over JC because I couldn't take the idea of having to sit through another two years of school and A's.
My "best" record was flunking four out of eight subjects in school and getting last in class HAHA BEAT THAT!!!
I love humanities though. Not much studying required just a love for reading about interesting stuff (history, literature, all okay) and a knack for bullshitting and writing crap for literature.
YESSSS IMMA DONE!!!
Now it's your turn guys!!
Either comment with an interesting fact about yourself or you can ask me any thing else if you're curious? ☺️☺️☺️
Else do your own #20factsaboutme and hashtag it!
Slightly dejected because I was waiting for a phone call that never came. But well, better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all!