I don't want to get married, but...

Today me and my friends were talking about marriage (what age people usually get married in our countries and age gaps and stuff). Honestly I think I am a person that is hard to cope with, my feelings often change fast like switching off a light.. So I have been ensuring myself I will not get married forever. Unless I got reincarnated then.. that's a different Catherine being reborn-ed.

But I was thinking today, If my family will ever force me to get married...? What type of guy do I prefer?
Good looking.. no. I used to really like good looking guys.. But I feel like good looking guys will become ugly when they are mad, sad, or get old. Looks are very temporary. Definitely this person need to have a good inner trait/s.
1. No criminal background. OF COURSE. I don't want to live with a criminal/psych/etc bad stuff.
2. Kind hearted, in terms of movie. I don't need antagonist characters. I always love prince in disney movies.. not the witches.
3. Funny. I really love funny person, I love laughing. But need to be similar joke appetite with me. Because 'trying to be funny' is not funny.
4. Easy going. I don't think I can afford another person with too serious kind of personality. I myself stress myself so much. If this person is adding to it, the next day this guy will find me hanging myself in the laundry room.
5. Relatively smart? NO C student and below. (haha jk). I mean here is like the guy no dumb lah. I'm smart myself (proud, jk again). I feel that brain (not daddy's or mommy's assets) are important.. I have a high dream, I don't want to need to fund this dummy or unemployed *maybe?* person and cannot fulfill my dream or my future.
6. Do not complain about what I like. I always feel tired when people say bad things about stuff that I like. Face it, we all have freedom to like stuff and have dreams. So don't complain, support. Oh! I like kpop, kdrama, disney, fashion, cutie-cutie stuff, creative creative stuff. :D

Those are my list for now. I know I'm no pretty I'm no rich I'm no-thing but I have such long list right? I guess this is the Plan B. Just in case I will need it.

Drama Queen

I think I am sort of a drama queen. When I was in junior high school I think I was the champion in crying quantity... I almost cried everyday. My friend told me I was the sort of queen of cry.
I tend to keep a lot of stuff inside, but unlike some of you my readers.. I am a pretty sensitive person AKA take stuff seriously AKA take stuff personally. Which is bad. Sometimes when I am close with someone I would talk to them about how I feel (Sad) but if I cannot tell then I will just cry at night on my pillow or in front of schindler (now you are gonna look for me every night ? :) hehe.

But the good news is, I have gotten better. Of course with process. I used to cry every day when I was in high school, then my friend trained me to cry lesser and now I don't cry very often, not until a lot of pressure comes to me then I will sort of look for empty space and flood the space. No, no, really I have changed a lot. Just a bit of a drama queen... a microscopic size of cry queen now.

If you see me cry please just ....  close your eyes and go. I should heal in no time. :)

Catherine

Book-Phobia

Many of you might have seen me in the library.. And talking to several people allows me to know that people actually think of me as a person with a lot of passion into.. studying.
No, it is not quite true.

One finding that I found is that I hate books. Each time I enter book store back home or in the US. I always have some sort of stomach ache. When I was in Indonesia, my friends and I always hang out in the mall, and sometimes we go to the book store because my friends want to see if the newest comic books are out yet. Every single time I come with them inside, I always ended up running out and go to the bathroom because I feel stomach ache. If I wait outside, I am just fine. Stomach ache is even worse when I saw the section of the book store where the books are thick. The thicker, the sicker.

I also feel it here. When I go to buy textbook in the bookstore I need bathroom.

Not sure if it is my psych or anything. But no... I don't like book.

Roomies!

Since I lived at my house with my family in Indonesia, perhaps my rommies living started on my Freshman year in college.

My first roomie shared a dorm room with me. So it was the first day I arrived at UNI. I felt really happy slash sad because my family left me alone in the dorm. I saw the dorm door and it said 'Hanan'. I thought hahaha Vietnamese my roommate! :) I picked my bed and stuff cause I know that my roomie has not arrived on campus yet. When she came, my guess was wrong. Now I though Duh, which Vietnamese's name is Hanan. Hanan is from Saudi Arabia! She and I are close friends up until now, which is exciting because at the beginning of the whole year in the dorm I was not really close to her. But as time goes on, we enjoyed going everywhere together, share stories at night when we were going to sleep, and we even made a couple of comic books. We shared some trips together even during my sophomore year and senior year. Went to Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and South Dakota together! In the room we have tons of crap. Especially my area. As you can see in the picture. I do decorate my room with polkadot paper and I put on some of my sketches there. I also always change the mood board every month. Wow, think about it I really did have too much free time back then. Right?

Click on this picture to see the first short story we made:

My next roommate were Natalie and Mayeesha. After my Freshman year, I realized I was wasting money on food. I had 14 meals per week but I only used less than half of the meals. I also do not like American food (I know I am very asian), that's why unlike the traditional Freshman who gained Freshman 15, I actually lost some weight staying in the dorms. That's why me and my friends/ lawther neighbor Natalie as well as Mayeesha moved to an apartment nearby campus. Natalie was my neighbor and friends since I stayed in the dorm, while Mayeesha .. I knew her through summer orientation program. Natalie likes watching korean drama and Mayeesha likes studying? Both likes cooking.... Not me. I think staying in the apartment was nice and I enjoyed it a lot because we had lots of space. I feel bad though because if you know me I have a lot of stuff and in the end most of the stuff in my apartment was mine. :(





We were roommates for about a year and a half until my brother then came.... and I become roommate with my brother. OK I'm not gonna discuss living with my brother. 1, he doesn't like being talked about. 2, you know how much work you need to do when you live with a guy? we need more trash bags here!!!

Catherine

Nicknames

I have a lot of nick names. What I meant by nick names are not like Matthew --> Matt, or Robert --> Bob, or Katherine --> Katie. No, no, my nickname history has been even more adventurous and creative than those names. So here it goes.


If I remember correctly I have always been called Catherine until about the last years of primary school. Although I know that some people called me Cath-Jonk or Au Jong. My last name, I don't like it, but it seems to be very popular. If you google search my name: Catherine Au Jong, you will only see about 10,000,000 posts and images about me. I know I'm famous, note that I created all of the contents.

Starting from Junior high school is when nicknames started to became very creative. I know some people got called different things like daki (body dirt), jiban (type of awkward hero). In my first year of senior high school I got called Babon (Baboon). My friends interpreted baboon as a big monkey and since I was chubby back then, my nickname was like that. Second year of junior high school I
got called.... Dora, actually pathetically. I cut my hair short (shorter than now) and people said I looked like Dora and back then I was actually a Dora fan. In third grade I think people mostly called me Cathjonk again, or AuJong, but we had a group of girl called strawberry family so I think in that group my name was salty strawberry, don't know if it existed. but whatever, you know kids.

After I went to senior high school then my nick name was...Etin. That is because we had orientation for new students and we wear a hat or name tags that have our nickname on. I wrote Etin on my hat. That's why I got called Etin for about forever now. But this name is not actually made up. Let's just say that this nick name is about my age now. My mom actually called me this since I was born. Yes, it is kind of a given name. But I think If I ask my professors here to call me that, I will feel weird. It is not easy to say it :)
Besides Etin, I also had a group called Qt Frutee and here are my members. In the group, I was Pineapple because I have a personality fun and active personality! Like the color of pineapple. Besides pineapple, we have (left to right) orange, kiwi, cherry, honeydew, and blueberry. In senior high school sometimes my friends called me etinatoon just because I created their names. I also made some name called RedPolkadot it was popular for a bit, this is because I like .. minnie mouse.


In college. I got not that many nick names. But Cat, Cathy are often the two nicknames I heard. I actually hate getting called Cathy because... back home we had advertisement for deodorant and the song which infers to armpit was like keti keti (ketiak = armpit). so don't call me that!
Other nicknames I fight over are: Pancake and back to... Dora. I don't know why but my friends told me my face is flat like a pancake...


So yeah. Those are the nickname history!


Which one do you like the most?


Catherine

BiPolar

Sad, Hyped, Talkative, Reserved and Quiet.

You can see me in many or let's say two different moods and personalities. Up til now I am not sure if it is only me, or it is normal?
If you are my facebook friends you probably know my mood swings just like a pendulum (or maybe oranges?). Especially when the light and weather changes. I tend to be so dark and sad and gloomy when it is raining out. While some girls love playing with the rain, I hate rain. I feel sad :( That's why during winter I feel less happy and perhaps nag a lot!

Something that my family knows and only a couple of my friend knows is I can be a different type of person depending on who I talk to. I am naturally very loud and talkative, sometimes I am too explicit too.. to a person that I feel comfortable to talk to, or usually within my age range. I don't know how to describe it, but I guess I live and accustomed to sort of be very or over polite to the older generation or friends or family. I grow up knowing that what parents or grandparents say are ultimate truth although I do not agree I will keep it inside. I am quiet in front of people, have very small voice, and look shy. (My family make fun of this too once they knew it). But with a friends my age, or younger, and usually people that I am comfortable with I can really tease them (wink), be loud, be silly, hyper and all that. I cannot help it too. OK real life example, I am known as being quiet and shy and the office, and my friend Spoo did not know it until one of my friend, Yan mentioned it in the lunch time. I prayed and hoped the day before I started interning so that I can be my real self, but the day of it was difficult for me. I felt obligated to be quiet and just follow what I need to follow. It has gotten slightly better? or maybe worse? Perhaps my family and close friends can tell me. But I feel as of now I'm still stuck with these personalities change.

That is more of a dark (perhaps) side of me. What do you think?

Cooking

If you know me well, I am a dumb in cooking. I can cook water, I can cook instant noodle, but I cannot cook more advanced than rice in a box. I do love baking, though.
Lately I have been so much into cupcakes! Unfortunately I don't do scratch, I use Pillsburry or Betty's boxed cake (again)

I have two stories that I always tell my friends about me cooking:

When I was in primary school we had one day of cooking class. I don't quite remember whether it was assigned or we chose.. to cook sayur asem, Indonesian soup. The soup being very complicated to make, I asked my nanny back home to prepare everything for me so that in the class I only need to boil it. So I carried the stuff I needed (a package) to school. Other students were cooking eggs and fried rice. I was wondering why everyone were using that pack of salt, so I thought maybe it is necessary to put them in our food. So I believe I told my friend to go to our canteen and got a pack of salt. Now If you don't know how big the pack  is, let's say probably 5inchx6inch package (I know it's big). So me not knowing how much stuff to be put, we put either 1/2 or the whole package into the soup... Now it's time for my teacher to taste it. One comment we got: "is this a soup or sea water???!" .. yea yea. I have no instinct in this kind of things..

Next was... my willingness to take cake baking classes when I was in junior high school. I took a class on how to make a birthday cake. So one time (July), it was my brother's birthday. My mom figured it'd be nice If I bake a cake for my brother. So I agreed and she bought me Wysmann butter, and all sort of fancy baking supplies. I already knew I am gonna make a soccer shaped (round) cake! that'd be great! Everything went well and neat.. until I made the icing. If you are from Indonesia you probably know back then we do not have Pillsburry icing or those icing from the stores, we gotta make it from scratch!!! And I recalled the recipe using vinegar to make the icing hard. The birthday came and cake was ready...
Turned out... the cake.. tasted like vinegar. No one dared to touch it even the nannies back home (they usually eat whatever).


So, cooking/baking. Definitely not my talent. Period.