the way i am

just had dinner with tireless terence and kooky kai and had an amazing and amusing self-revelation, one of those things that don't happen very often till someone points it out to you.... it's like suddenly discovering you have BO.. (oh no, i'm doing it again! :O .. ) ok, well, the self-revelation was:

I can't speak beyond two to three sentences in a lively conversation without using any one of the following:

- analogies/epitomes: .. i mean, i can't think of a better way to describe someone who's flexible than by using the analogy of a grass that bends in a strong wind vs a tree that gets blown down because it is stiff and refuses to yield..

- metaphors: my brain has "hung" (one of my favourites - when my brain suddenly stops working, inexplicably and embarrassingly, and there's nothing i can do about it except "reboot" - i'm sure you know that feeling...)

- ironies: this is always by accident, almost never planned... life itself is an irony... Life Is a Fatal Disease

- similes: wah... the laksa is as spicy as.. err.... a plate of thai chilli padi mixed with japanese wasabi??

- tautology: unnecessary repetitions.... repeat again... widow woman.. either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow

- cliches: (as the saying goes) time and tide waits for no man..

- oxymorons: blue movie in full colour (??)

- alliterations: christopher columbus caught captain cook cooking curry chicken containing cancer-causing carcinogens.. err... geddit??

- sibilants: (the) short slippery snake slithered slowly south

only someone as pedantic as terence could have spotted it.. i tried to explain something after that without using any one of the above... err.. figures of speech (??) and found myself totally paralysed! i couldn't continue speaking and explaining what i was saying cos that appeared to be the way i was used to talking, and hence conversing... funny no one ever pointed it out to me... short of old pals like Lynn who slams me on and off for using "platitudes" in my speech :p

hey, i just can't help it! <--- (think Dove shampoo ad as you read this)