Day Thirtynine

New crush. Amanda Seyfried. Starrs in Mamma Mia! and Mean Girls. Also appeared in one episode of House as the sick boy's girlfriend.

Favourite quote: "So if you're from Africa ... why are you white?"

Kinokuniya has a 3-day book sale. 20% off all books. 10% off all stationery but who cares because the stationery grossly overpriced anyway. I've just finished the last book from my previous literature shopping spree so after walking Jez to work I browse around for new reads. I end up holding Atonement, Grotesque, Change of Heart and Peach Blossom Pavilion. I don't want to buy all four so I stand around debating quietly to myself.

I've heard great things about Atonement from movie critics and awful things from real people. I put it back on the shelf. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino is about two Japanese prostitutes with huge potential as young girls. Prestigious upbringing gone wrong. Change of Heart is another presumably heartbreaking typical Picoult, which sadly is my kind of book. I hold on to it. Peach Blossom Pavilion tells the story of a Chinese girl who is sold to a whore-house and becomes an influencial olden-day high-class prostitute. I decided to pick between Peach Blossom Pavilion and Grotesque. Chinese prostitutes or Japanese prostitutes? I'm Chinese, so I go with the former.

After reading such books, prostitution is looking dangerously glamorous.

I make it to the library two hours before my tute. I sit at the computers with Ray and share two packets of Fran over shamelessly photo-surfing Facebook. Then I make some progress on my forensics report which is immediately lost when I click "save", close the document, and realise that I've saved it in the temporary internet files folder which judging by the analness of uni computers destroy its contents every ten seconds. I'm angrily reading wwtdd.com when Sid appears on my other side and audibly drops his jaw at a photo of a near-naked Marissa Miller.

Sid takes out a plastic bag containing a little container of Dettol anti-bacterial gel and Bepanthen cream. He sticks his hand inside his jumper and rubs a liberal amount of each onto his chest. I look at him inquisitively and he shows me a rather large tattoo of his first name in Chinese. I also notice that the epically long nipple hairs are gone.

We open up a gallery of tattoos on Facebook and browse through them. We stumble across a wrist displaying a large ";".

"What's that?" I frown at it.

"A semicolon."

"Why would anyone get a tattoo of a semicolon?"

"Maybe he had colon cancer."

We decide, in the end, that tattoos and I are incompatible. I know it for a fact but I can't quite say why. Jenny says I'm too "cute". Derek says I'm too "white". Mylinh says I'm too "Barbie". Jez says I'm too "pretty". My guess is that a prerequisite of tattoos is possessing some level of outer maturity. I fail because whatever I do I look like a little girl. It's frightening. I'm going to be 50 one day looking like a school-girl with skin several decades too old. I just shivered.