In the ongoing war on challenges (which has hopefully come to a ceasefire), I've been nominated again, this time to expose myself. 
Well, I'll try and expose myself a bit more, but you have to bear in mind half my family is on Steemit these days.
1. I'm an Unhealthy Mess
As young as people insist I look, and as little as I actually fall 'ill' or need to set foot (more on that in a minute) in a hospital or dentist my entire life, there's so many little things wrong with my body it's unreal.
I have Tachycardia, a benign condition where my heart beats faster than normal, or a resting heart rate of about 100bpm. Right now it feels more or less 100 still so yeah. Though it's asymptomatic in my case, I hear that most animals have a finite number of beats, about a billion, in a lifetime so maybe mine will just run out by the time I hit 50. I think I also have arrythmia.
I have potentially cancerous polyps in my... liver? Kidney? I forgot. Most of the time again, they are benign, and in my case they're too small to become cancerous for whatever reason, but the results said to 'keep an eye on it over the years'... so I will.
I had severe acne my whole youth that crippled my confidence, and still lingers around today, though to a much lighter degree. It seems most adults in Asaia now appear to have acne so I'm actually doing better than average, but the effects of painful, torso-wide acne still molded my personality to what it is today.
I've had an ingrown toenail-on-steroids for a little over 5 years. You'd think I'd have gotten something done permanently by now but hey. At first it was on my left foot and I got surgery in Korea where they removed a whole side. Within a week, still in pain, I was off to the Himalayas for a month of hiking up rugged mountains which was pretty painful to say the least, but I got it done - I wasn't about to give up on the greatest time of my life for a puny toe. The guide would sometimes get me hot, salty water and massage my foot at night! I didn't even have to ask.
It grew back and has been normal ever since, but incrementally, my right big toe decided to have a go. By the time it got real bad, I was in China, and have had two surgeries on it during my time here. But China is incompetent and the doctor probably assumed my QI was off-balance and so removed the toenail entirely - an outdated and discouraged practice - which just made it grow back far, far worse. I don't want to go into too much detail here because I think the journey will warrant a great post one day, and I'm pretty sure some of what I've gone through is new to science, but basically I still have a very gross-looking toe (ask
- I have particularly bad hayfever. This has been crippling several times in life. I remember once in Vietnam I was in the shower and in those few minutes, sneezed 50 times. People said they would love that, sneezing feels great. But they don't understand. When you sneeze every 5 seconds for days, your throat rips apart and becomes sore, and every upcoming sneeze is anticipation from hell, knowing it'll be that much more painful than the last one. Eyes and nose become painful and red and swollen - and this becomes my way of life for long periods.
Every time it went away for more than a few days, I never took it for granted. It took me my whole life to find a solution, and literally just a month ago I found it. non-allergic rhinitis is a thing, and nose steroids are, so far, the solution. I've not had much more than a bit of itchiness since I found the right medicine, though I'll likely be stuck using it until the day I die.
The list goes on, trust me, but this is just the FIRST point... damn... Moving on.
2. I was a terrible student
Pretty much me during exam time
In high school I spent most my time sleeping with my hood up over my head, long hair covering my face, and willing to do as little work as possible. I scraped by with C's, exactly how I designed it. I had no plan to fail, but had no desire to excel. It was just. too. BORING. Towards the higher levels of school I would just skip classes entirely for extended periods until I failed miserably (something like F, F, X) and found my calling with further education. It seems as soon as education became optional, life sprung into my soul and I just went into a kind of learning overdrive.
I'd be in the library with their classical CD collections while working on my laptop in the corner of the 7th floor (the emptiest floor of the library). I'd pull multiple all-nighters over the years, engrossed in bettering myself. I'd book as much time as possibly permitted to speak with my favourite professors about my work and how I can do more than the minimum requirements. Even for fun, wikipedia became my best friend as I started catching up with the world that was lost on my in school, My YouTube feed became saturated with education channels (still to this day), I'd take part in various extra-curricular things like pantomimes and charity events. My whole 18+ life has basically been a catch-up event, though now I realise I probably didn't need to work so hard...
3. I don't like music
I've often thought about this, being a musician by trade and all. When I think of Anime, Japanese cartoons, I realise that, although I hold several of them in very high regard, some of which I consider some of the greatest and most well-developed stories out there, 99.8% of anime is actual garbage. The same applies to music. I'm very passionate about creating music and listening to a fair-sized variety of all genres, but the vast majority of music across all eras is just... not worth the paper it's written on.
I'm not terribly impressed with the classical era - sure it was amazing for its time and laid the groundwork for modern music, but we've evolved so far beyond it I don't see why we're still hung up on it. And modern pop? I don't even need to lay out an argument against. So yeah, in the grand scheme, I really don't like music - with some exceptions.
4. It seems impossible to find a home
This would be be if laziness wasn't a thing
I've been a little lost my adult life. England feels so strange to me, going back permanently seems almost impossible. Whenever I go back, I feel like the country is stagnated, like everybody is just getting older and nobody is actually progressing, stuck in their little villages that look like they haven't moved on since the 80's. This is of course different in London, but I never really go there. So am I a city person?
No. Ok so I typically seem to live in centre of the biggest mega cities in the world, but only because it's easy to find work and opportunity. I constantly yearn for the countrysides and the green villages that I was just insulting in the previous paragraph. I hate the noise, the people, the grime, pollution, expenses and so on. The most 'at home' I feel are during romanticized periods - like the trip to Nepal, or other short stays in wonderful places. but if I spend too much time in any given place, I yearn for the other. I guess I'm a little lost in that regard.
Consequently I constantly feel like I won't stay here more than a year or so, don't get comfortable. Even though I've been in Shanghai now for over 4 years. Stupid brain.
5. I'm a murderer
Kinda ran out of ideas, but I killed animals before and they haunt me all the time. I killed two bats with a tennis racquet. Accidentally. I used to play tennis 3 times a week in Vietnam, around 8-10pm. Vietnam's sunset is consistently around 6pm year-round so by the time I go to tennis, the bats are out feeding on the bugs above us.
I was known for my arrow-like, powerful serves which I liked to work on getting faster and faster, but one night I tossed the ball up and swung to hit it and if we slow down 200x, a bat swung down thinking the ball was a food source and latched on to it. Meanwhile my arm was still in full swing, aiming right for it. My eyes and my body acknowledged what was happening, but my muscles hadn't the time to react, so my legs kinda fell limp in some kind of hope that gravity would work fast enough for me to drop out of reach, but I barely moved an inch by the time that bat was splat.
It slammed into the racquet and helplessly flailed to the floor like some stray leaf caught in the wind. It was still alive, however, and instantly thought I could rescue it, and was hopeful when the Vietnamese caretaker picked it up and took it off the court to take a look. Turns out he was just clearing the area, and swiftly stomped on its head before casually moving on to something else.
Damn I was distraught. So imagine how it felt when it happened to me AGAIN a couple of months later. Needless to say, I stopped doing big serves after that.
I've also killed spiders and ants and stuff nobody else would typically care about, but I do, and I still think back to them like they were some family member killed in the call of duty. Maybe that's why I write about nature so much on here, who knows!
