*OO* ALL ABOUT ME IN MANY WORDS

You know, I like reading these parts of other peoples personal sites. We all do...secretly. Because we're all really nosy about what other people - often people we'll never ever ever meet in real life - think of themselves. Come on...you're reading this, aren't you? So...

My name is Cate. That's what it says on my birth certificate - it's not short for anything and I'm not being random with my spelling. Cate Tansy is what it says on my birth certificate. Cate after the very first birth entered into the family bible - that first Cate, by the way, was born in the early 1800's and died at the age of 13 (not an example I particularly wanted to follow) - and Tansy after those flowers, the stinky yellow weedy/herb ones. We have some growing in our garden. Anyway...I'm also in the position of knowing what my parents would have called me, had I turned out to be a boy (which I didn't, thankfully). Feverfew Eutrid. In addition to this, I also know that there was some debate between my parents as to what my surname would have been. Pringle? Johnson? Pringle-Johnson? Johnson-Pringle? All I can say is that, in some alternate universe, there's a guy walking around saddled with the name Feverfew Eutrid Pringle-Johnson.

So, despite the trouble my name causes me, I think I got off lightly. I can make do with people constantly spelling my name wrong - it is only one letter, after all. I can even make do with having to introduce myself as 'Cate-with-a-C' (or 'Cat-with-an-E') when talking to official type people (because, otherwise, they can't find my records/ information/ appointment/ insert huge queue standing behind me impatiently) and - consequently - being thought of as a bit attention seeking. Yes. I can also put up with people randomly assuming that because my name's 'Cate' I must really want to be called Katie. My little sisters called me 'Cake' when they were small.

I have trouble classifying myself like other people tend to. I would say I'm shy but only if I don't know you and you don't know me. Around people I know I'm usually loud and sarcastic. Around people who don't know me I probably come across as a bit cold and arrogant. I would describe myself as being intelligent - knowledge and learning are very important to me - but I would also say I'm incredibly lazy about applying myself. (revising, anyone? how about marathon 13hr FF8 session the day before final exam...? yes? dissertation? what dissertation! I've got the whole series of FMA to watch!) So...they kinda cancel each other out a bit when it comes to things like that. I've done a lot of those personality tests though - in school and in uni and online - and they usually come up with bizarre things like 'dynamic passive introvert' or some other random collection of words and then tell me that I'm the kind of person who'd rather sit at home with a book but would jump off a cliff or play russian roulette if given the right incentive. I recently did a Jung Typology Test online and came out as INFJ which I would actually have to agree describes me pretty accurately in terms of those kinds of things. Although, seriously, knowing I'm the same personality type as 'Nathan, prophet of Israel' isn't, on the whole, going to be much help to me in later life. It's like one of those random things people come out with at parties.

The things I enjoy most - as in, the subjects I would like to dedicate my life to - are astrophysics, history, language and probably music. I've loved astrophysics since I was a child. I mean, I've loved astronomy since I realised the stars were actually suns. (ok, I didn't realise this on my own...I think I read it somewhere or someone told me) Some people have said to me that knowing that and then looking at the night sky makes them feel tiny. It doesn't do that for me - it makes me feel huge. Well, not huge...just, it makes me feel full, because it's so incredible that we're such a small part of everything. That made no sense so I'll leave off that subject now. Although, actually, I probably love history for pretty much the same reason. To think back on all the billions of people who've gone before you and to try and understand the things they did, the way they lived and the way they saw the world. It gives me that same feeling of wonder.

I love astrophysics more though.

Language is also an incredible thing. I would say I speak only one language - English - to any recognisable level of fluency, although I have been 'educated' in French and Russian as well. I studied Russian for seven years at school and have both a GCSE and an A Level in it...you'd probably think that would make me fluentish, at the least. True enough, I can read Russian pretty well. Other than that, all I can do is say 'hello', give you a rundown of all my family members and pets and a detailed description of whereabouts I live, where I'd most like to go on holiday and how bad the weather is. Not what I'd call fluent. My French is even worse although I'm very good at reading it - mostly due to a combination of the fact it's similar to English and that I'm good at guessing. I have a fairly bad track record at teaching myself languages - I tried Esperanto but I kinda gave up at the mi patros estas en la gardeno stage of things. As for Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Welsh, I know a fairly useless selection of words and phrases and that's about it. My Japanese is gleaned from anime, manga and jrock lyrics. My Mandarin and Cantonese comes from watching HK films and listening to Cpop. My Welsh is a result of having lived in Wales for 4 years whilst at Uni - so, I can read a couple of useful (?) words like...hospital, bathroom, kitchen, no smoking, food, drink, fire alarm, search, hello, reception area, student hall, cafeteria, hill, university, school, slow. Yeah. My current love, however, is Korean - it's interesting, logical and I can actually read it, which helps. I have very little understanding of the grammer though - I tend to confuse myself by overthinking what I do know - and my vocabularly comes solely from watching television and listening to music. So...I can confess my undying love, complain about stuff and tell you how useless I am (remember, I listen to Kang Ta alot) but that's about it.