Khanh the Killjoy

10. I'm obsessed with working out. I work out for 2 hours every day, on the cross trainer and the stairmaster at high intensity. I sweat a lot. It's rough, but it's a good stress reliever. I go crazy if I don't get my daily workout. I don't know why I push myself so hard sometimes.

9. I follow roughly a Paleo diet, preceded by 10 years of vegetarianism. I eat no processed foods most of the time, except for when I'm PMSing and I really need to eat everything in sight. Which happens occasionally >_> I don't really gain weight all that much, and I've been the same height and weight since I reached my maturity, which is to say I've been +/- 100 pounds at 5'4 my entire life.

8. I grew up in Vietnam, where there was no refrigeration, and American food was a scarcity, so I absolutely hate American food. I'm talking about pizza, hamburgers, pastas etc.

I can't stand the taste of soda. I have an aversion to hamburgers, milk, and Ensure, specifically, because my parents force fed me all that stuff when I was a child after arriving in the US because I was so small and thin for my age. I can't touch any of that shit without a shudder today. The thought of strawberry-flavored anything makes me gag. Strawberry Ensure tastes like vomit and sadness.

7. I started reading at age 4. My parents are firm believers in education, and by age 5, I was reading newspapers.

6. I read really, really fast. I can demolish a 2-300 page book in around 2 hours.

5. I take extensive notes when I read if I'm going to write a review for that book. I keep a pen and a pad of paper nearby and I jot down memorable quotes, I outline what I'm going to cover in my review if certain things stand out.

4. I played computer games and tabletop games extensively in high school and college. Starcraft, Diablo & Diablo II, World of Warcraft, etc. I would go to clas, then go home and play games for 5-6 hours straight. I don't know how I got rhgouth college as I did.

3. I came to the US when I was 9 years old. I had to learn English, and I did it through reading. I went through every single Sweet Valley Twin, Baby Sitter's Club, all the miggle grade serials that I can remember. It helped me learn English. I never learned basic grammatical structure, and I couldn't tell you what a preposition is off the top of my head if it bit me in the ass, but I pick up patterns in languages very quickly, so my grammar is pretty damn near perfect.

My pattern recognition also comes in handy when I learn other languages. I pick up new languages quite fast. I took French, Chinese, Japanese. I love languages.

2. I love Asian bands. I started off with Japanese idols, like KinKi Kids, NewS, KAT-TUN, then moved onto Japanese Rock.  Currently I'm obsessed with Korean idol groups. They are young, they are pretty, and I shouldn't be interested in them, but I give no fucks.

I listen to anything and everything, German industrial, British pop. Doesn't matter. If it catches my ears, I listen to it.

1. I was raised in rural Vietnam, on a rice farm. A marshy, wet area with a lot of mosquitoes. I had recurrent dengue fever from age 4 onward, and I was sick to the point of death. My childhood in Vietnam was composed of hospital visits, folk doctors (where they literally bled me with razor cuts in my back), huge reusable syringes from questionable folk doctors, hospitals without electricity or sanitation, and bitter Chinese medicine.

Good news: I survived!