A Quizzical Serpent
02/07/2022 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIzzie is as usual the most snailish of serpents.
Several weeks after everyone else, finally posting my answers to some interesting questions from the Cat.
This is one of those nostalgic quizzes all about things that you loved as a kid.
1. What was the first song you can remember hearing?
My mum used to listen to a lot of Elvis Presley, Charlie Pride, Jim Reeves, Glen Campbell and country music in general.
Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” was one of my favourites. There was just something quite spooky about it.
My favourite artist from her playlist was Jean Shepard from Canada who pretty much nobody has ever heard of.
I used to listen to the radio and remember a lot of songs but cannot think of which one came first. Some that stood out are Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe” and “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by The Hollies but sounds much more like Credence Clear Water Revival.
I liked David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, CCR, Fleetwood Mac and Queen amongst others.
I used to think that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was 2 songs because it went on for so long. I preferred the first half. Every time the radio presenter announced the title and album name “A Night at the Opera” I heard it as Tonight at the Opera. Those poor buggers must be so exhausted with all those concerts they are doing.
The one characteristic of most of the songs that I loved were that they were weird or spooky. Spine tingling goose bumps sorts of stuff. Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, some of the Bob Dylan songs etc.
2. What book did you love in childhood?
There were just so many of them. My parents were not into wasting money on books but a neighbour did introduce me to the local library when I was only 5 and I have been a book junkie ever since then.
One of the first books I remember reading was Judith Kerr’s “When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit” which is told from the point of view of a girl who left Germany with her parents to escape the Nazis when she was only 8 years old.
Later I read “Animal Farm” which was brilliant but such a tear jerker. Even to this day.
Much more fun was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which I absolutely adored and must have read at least 10 times. I dreamed of that winning ticket for a long time. I also read the less well known sequel “Charlie and the Glass Elevator”
3. What was the first TV show you remember watching?
Gillligan’s Island and Hogan’s Heroes.
My parents also used to watch Benny Hill and “Are you being served?”. I wondered why they used to laugh so much and often thought that adults will laugh at anything.
I also used to watch “Lost in Space”. It was quite kitschy but I still found it to be very scary. Especially the uber creepy Zachariah Smith.
4. What movie did you see as a kid that made a big impression on you?
The Dunwich Horror - for all the wrong reasons. My brother, sister and myself had a sleep over at a neighbour’s place. I think I was 10 at the time. There was a whole night of horror movies which we would never have been allowed to watch at Number 4 Privet Drive.
The Dunwich Horror was the first cab off the rank. What scared me the most wasn’t any monsters or sudden bumps in the night. It was that I found the whole story completely and totally incomprehensible and confusing. The Crawling Chaos so to say. It was funny that I later became a bit of a H P Lovecraft fan and realised that the Crawling Chaos was quite an accurate description of all his stuff. Maybe I should give it another go and see if it makes sense a century later.
Also “The Night of the Hunter”. The book was one of the scariest things that I had ever read. There were several movie versions but I think the black and white one was by far the most ominous.
Years later BBC did a series of Saturday Night at the Movies. It was a radio adaptation that used to be on at 10pm
This was one of the movies. It was seriously scary. Years later, ABC Radio National broadcast the very same series at 3pm on Sunday afternoons. What a waste of a brilliant show. When it comes to horror, timing is everything.
5. What game did you play most as a kid? Alone, with others, whatever.
Chess and Monopoly. I loved Monopoly because it is one of the very few games that is more interesting when it isn’t your turn to play. I used to know the price of all the properties off by heart as well as the rents for the hotels.
One year I got Scrabble for Christmas but no one wanted to play because they all thought it was too much like work.
6. What was a talent you had as a kid?
Drawing and being really weird.
Being able to stare at leaves or twigs for ages with or without a magnifying glass.
Being invisible (except to the class bullies)
7. What did you think about nature and the Universe?
I loved them. For me they were an escape from the unpredictable grown ups and the horrid kids at school who used to pick on me. I often pottered around on my own in the playground with a magnifying glass looking at leaves, twigs, critters or flowers or burning holes in bits of paper or my shoes.
Also looking up at the pitch black skies at night is a wonderful way of getting perspective on one’s place in the world.
I saw science as a wonderful way of making sense of the world and answering my one big question “How do we know what is real?”
I was so surrounded by people trying to gaslight me that when I first read Animal Farm and 1984 I became obsessed with the nature of truth, lies, power and propaganda.
I also adopted the motto “The Map is not the Territory”
8. What do you remember disliking that adults did?
Watching television shows like Benny Hill or Are You Being Served. I used to think they were boring and that adults will laugh at anything. Now of course that I am a little bit older, I grew to love “Are You Being Served”. They had the art of being rather risqué without ever resorting to all the swearing that is so fashionable these days. I still don’t care too much for Benny Hill except that famous soundtrack. Just a bit too titty for my taste.
9. Which science did you like most?
All of it. Unfortunately, aside from a magnifying glass and a few magnets, I had no sciency stuff. I used to drool over chemistry sets but the Dursleys had no time to waste on such magical nonsense.
So I made do with reading theoretical stuff because all those books full of fascinating experiments were just too depressing because I had no means of acquiring the materials and equipment to do them.
I very rarely got pocket money and pestering my parents for stuff was just not my thing.
But now that I have grown up, I made a habit of going to the Open Days of the various universities and lurking around the science departments. They always have the biggest and best toys out to impress potential new customers.
The usual whizz bang stuff with chemistry and liquid nitrogen, telescopes, giant electron microscopes and medical imaging devices that contain such strong magnets that anyone entering the lab must take off all jewellery and anyone with a hip replacement or pacemaker is simply not even allowed in. But it is possible to peek from behind very thick glass.
The Chem Centre is also fascinating. Especially the fact that it is the main forensic and drug testing lab in the state and there are an assortment of very elaborate protocols concerning evidence that need to be followed so that it meets the standards of a criminal court.
Unfortunately, Covid seems to have put an end to just about all of the old fashioned open days. Now they do things online and get straight to the goal of signing up new suckers. No time for toys in Zoomer land.
10. When did you begin to learn another language (or more?)
In secondary school in Australia, I had a choice between French and Italian. I chose French and didn’t particularly like it. So longwinded and convoluted and of course the rule 999 elles + 1 il = 1,000 ils. (As I discovered later, in comparison to Spanish, French looks like Germaine Greer or Mary Daly on steroids)
When I was growing up, it was very expensive and tedious to learn languages if you were unable to indulge in immersion.
The Readers Digest used to have so many advertisements for Linguaphone which was extremely expensive with long waiting lists at the library and simply not a patch on Duolingo which is free so long as you can tolerate the annoying adverts.
I went on a work exchange program to Germany in early 1989 with no formal instruction in the language at all except for completing a Linguaphone course that I had borrowed from the library. I did enrol in a local course for foreigners but found that I learnt far more at work than in the classroom. After only 5 weeks I had even started to dream in German. It is still the only language other than English that I have ever felt at home with. When you can recognise different accents in a foreign language, that’s when you know that you are making serious progress.
While living in Germany I dabbled in Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. I put rather more effort into Russian which I used to do in adult education classes and even passed an official certificate.
I always wanted to learn the language of the stereotypical Villains of the time. I was a bit early with Arabic and abandoned it after being annoyed by too many real life villains. Usually hordes of creepy Lebanese blokes harassing me at assorted festivals. They are perfectly fine asking questions such as “Are you married?” “Do you have kids” etc. But if their sisters ever dreamed of asking such things of any man, they would be first in the queue to slit her throat.
I figured, I don’t want to talk to these creeps in German or English so why would I waste another minute learning their language? I still think Arabic has one of the most elegant alphabets but it does seem that the prettier the alphabet, the uglier the language sounds.
Several weeks after everyone else, finally posting my answers to some interesting questions from the Cat.
This is one of those nostalgic quizzes all about things that you loved as a kid.
1. What was the first song you can remember hearing?
My mum used to listen to a lot of Elvis Presley, Charlie Pride, Jim Reeves, Glen Campbell and country music in general.
Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” was one of my favourites. There was just something quite spooky about it.
My favourite artist from her playlist was Jean Shepard from Canada who pretty much nobody has ever heard of.
I used to listen to the radio and remember a lot of songs but cannot think of which one came first. Some that stood out are Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe” and “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by The Hollies but sounds much more like Credence Clear Water Revival.
I liked David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, CCR, Fleetwood Mac and Queen amongst others.
I used to think that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was 2 songs because it went on for so long. I preferred the first half. Every time the radio presenter announced the title and album name “A Night at the Opera” I heard it as Tonight at the Opera. Those poor buggers must be so exhausted with all those concerts they are doing.
The one characteristic of most of the songs that I loved were that they were weird or spooky. Spine tingling goose bumps sorts of stuff. Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, some of the Bob Dylan songs etc.
2. What book did you love in childhood?
There were just so many of them. My parents were not into wasting money on books but a neighbour did introduce me to the local library when I was only 5 and I have been a book junkie ever since then.
One of the first books I remember reading was Judith Kerr’s “When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit” which is told from the point of view of a girl who left Germany with her parents to escape the Nazis when she was only 8 years old.
Later I read “Animal Farm” which was brilliant but such a tear jerker. Even to this day.
Much more fun was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which I absolutely adored and must have read at least 10 times. I dreamed of that winning ticket for a long time. I also read the less well known sequel “Charlie and the Glass Elevator”
3. What was the first TV show you remember watching?
Gillligan’s Island and Hogan’s Heroes.
My parents also used to watch Benny Hill and “Are you being served?”. I wondered why they used to laugh so much and often thought that adults will laugh at anything.
I also used to watch “Lost in Space”. It was quite kitschy but I still found it to be very scary. Especially the uber creepy Zachariah Smith.
4. What movie did you see as a kid that made a big impression on you?
The Dunwich Horror - for all the wrong reasons. My brother, sister and myself had a sleep over at a neighbour’s place. I think I was 10 at the time. There was a whole night of horror movies which we would never have been allowed to watch at Number 4 Privet Drive.
The Dunwich Horror was the first cab off the rank. What scared me the most wasn’t any monsters or sudden bumps in the night. It was that I found the whole story completely and totally incomprehensible and confusing. The Crawling Chaos so to say. It was funny that I later became a bit of a H P Lovecraft fan and realised that the Crawling Chaos was quite an accurate description of all his stuff. Maybe I should give it another go and see if it makes sense a century later.
Also “The Night of the Hunter”. The book was one of the scariest things that I had ever read. There were several movie versions but I think the black and white one was by far the most ominous.
Years later BBC did a series of Saturday Night at the Movies. It was a radio adaptation that used to be on at 10pm
This was one of the movies. It was seriously scary. Years later, ABC Radio National broadcast the very same series at 3pm on Sunday afternoons. What a waste of a brilliant show. When it comes to horror, timing is everything.
5. What game did you play most as a kid? Alone, with others, whatever.
Chess and Monopoly. I loved Monopoly because it is one of the very few games that is more interesting when it isn’t your turn to play. I used to know the price of all the properties off by heart as well as the rents for the hotels.
One year I got Scrabble for Christmas but no one wanted to play because they all thought it was too much like work.
6. What was a talent you had as a kid?
Drawing and being really weird.
Being able to stare at leaves or twigs for ages with or without a magnifying glass.
Being invisible (except to the class bullies)
7. What did you think about nature and the Universe?
I loved them. For me they were an escape from the unpredictable grown ups and the horrid kids at school who used to pick on me. I often pottered around on my own in the playground with a magnifying glass looking at leaves, twigs, critters or flowers or burning holes in bits of paper or my shoes.
Also looking up at the pitch black skies at night is a wonderful way of getting perspective on one’s place in the world.
I saw science as a wonderful way of making sense of the world and answering my one big question “How do we know what is real?”
I was so surrounded by people trying to gaslight me that when I first read Animal Farm and 1984 I became obsessed with the nature of truth, lies, power and propaganda.
I also adopted the motto “The Map is not the Territory”
8. What do you remember disliking that adults did?
Watching television shows like Benny Hill or Are You Being Served. I used to think they were boring and that adults will laugh at anything. Now of course that I am a little bit older, I grew to love “Are You Being Served”. They had the art of being rather risqué without ever resorting to all the swearing that is so fashionable these days. I still don’t care too much for Benny Hill except that famous soundtrack. Just a bit too titty for my taste.
9. Which science did you like most?
All of it. Unfortunately, aside from a magnifying glass and a few magnets, I had no sciency stuff. I used to drool over chemistry sets but the Dursleys had no time to waste on such magical nonsense.
So I made do with reading theoretical stuff because all those books full of fascinating experiments were just too depressing because I had no means of acquiring the materials and equipment to do them.
I very rarely got pocket money and pestering my parents for stuff was just not my thing.
But now that I have grown up, I made a habit of going to the Open Days of the various universities and lurking around the science departments. They always have the biggest and best toys out to impress potential new customers.
The usual whizz bang stuff with chemistry and liquid nitrogen, telescopes, giant electron microscopes and medical imaging devices that contain such strong magnets that anyone entering the lab must take off all jewellery and anyone with a hip replacement or pacemaker is simply not even allowed in. But it is possible to peek from behind very thick glass.
The Chem Centre is also fascinating. Especially the fact that it is the main forensic and drug testing lab in the state and there are an assortment of very elaborate protocols concerning evidence that need to be followed so that it meets the standards of a criminal court.
Unfortunately, Covid seems to have put an end to just about all of the old fashioned open days. Now they do things online and get straight to the goal of signing up new suckers. No time for toys in Zoomer land.
10. When did you begin to learn another language (or more?)
In secondary school in Australia, I had a choice between French and Italian. I chose French and didn’t particularly like it. So longwinded and convoluted and of course the rule 999 elles + 1 il = 1,000 ils. (As I discovered later, in comparison to Spanish, French looks like Germaine Greer or Mary Daly on steroids)
When I was growing up, it was very expensive and tedious to learn languages if you were unable to indulge in immersion.
The Readers Digest used to have so many advertisements for Linguaphone which was extremely expensive with long waiting lists at the library and simply not a patch on Duolingo which is free so long as you can tolerate the annoying adverts.
I went on a work exchange program to Germany in early 1989 with no formal instruction in the language at all except for completing a Linguaphone course that I had borrowed from the library. I did enrol in a local course for foreigners but found that I learnt far more at work than in the classroom. After only 5 weeks I had even started to dream in German. It is still the only language other than English that I have ever felt at home with. When you can recognise different accents in a foreign language, that’s when you know that you are making serious progress.
While living in Germany I dabbled in Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. I put rather more effort into Russian which I used to do in adult education classes and even passed an official certificate.
I always wanted to learn the language of the stereotypical Villains of the time. I was a bit early with Arabic and abandoned it after being annoyed by too many real life villains. Usually hordes of creepy Lebanese blokes harassing me at assorted festivals. They are perfectly fine asking questions such as “Are you married?” “Do you have kids” etc. But if their sisters ever dreamed of asking such things of any man, they would be first in the queue to slit her throat.
I figured, I don’t want to talk to these creeps in German or English so why would I waste another minute learning their language? I still think Arabic has one of the most elegant alphabets but it does seem that the prettier the alphabet, the uglier the language sounds.
