Gimme an A! Gimme a U+00D6!

(I'm kinda curious how the title is going to be parsed.)

Someone at work linked this article:

https://jaxenter.com/programming-cheerleaders-hired-in-china-119831.html

Motivation in the workplace takes on many forms, but one Chinese startup has started hiring “Programmer Cheerleaders” to motivate their mostly male developers during office hours. The reason? Apparently they suck at socialising.

Trending in China has reported that Internet companies across China are “embracing programming cheerleaders, pretty, talented girls that help create a fun work environment”. Their tasks range anywhere from buying male developers breakfast to playing ping-pong.

Gender controversy aside, to be honest, I think having someone to boost morale is a great idea. When I first joined my team, I was a mediocre, if not rubbish programmer. A lot of the stuff I learned at uni was either incredibly simplistic (this is an Integer, this is how you write a for loop), not relevant for me at the time (this is how you draw a UML diagram), or just not applicable anymore (you should always comment every part of your code (though to be fair, this was likely just to make the marker's life easier, and not an actual thing they expect you to do*)). It took a lot of learning to get up to speed with the team's processes, and just actual practical programming skills in general.

I rationalised my lack of productivity by the fact that there was something I did contribute to the team: I helped keep the morale up. Had a crappy day? Sure, I'll listen while you rant. It's your birthday? Hey everyone, gather 'round, let's have some cake! Not sure what the process is for something? I'll look it up and get back to you. I wasn't too good at my own job, but I was really great at helping other people do theirs. Over time, as I become more competent, I started to do more programming related things, but I still do the other stuff sometimes, because I feel like I'm really good at it. Sometimes I just come up with these ideas, and I think, "Lionel is really going to love this!" and I just get completely enveloped by the idea (like making that James Bond spoof movie). Plus, I really love surprising people, and I think that the people on my team are great, and deserve to know how valued they are.

I'm not advocating that companies hire super subservient women wearing cheerleading uniforms, but I do think there's some value in raising morale. There's only so long that you can whip people to keep their nose to the grindstone, and after a while, they will seek greener pastures. Not that I'm saying my company does that, as I think we have a decent work-life balance. But from what I've heard from others, it seems to be the norm, especially with the GFC being not so long ago, for the old, "we're not doing that well, so we need everyone to buckle down until things are a bit better." I think the days of company loyalty are gone, and it's asking a lot of someone to stay at one company for 30+ years, so if you want to retain that knowledge, you need to give people an incentive to stay. Low team morale is contagious. Once one team stops caring about the quality of the work they do, they will impede the work of others, causing them to become frustrated, and so on.

It's unlikely that we're going to get "cheerleaders" any time soon, so until then, I will try to keep the team cheerful! =)

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* The argument against copious comments is that comments often become outdated when the code changes, and nobody remembers to update the comments. So you end up with the comments saying one thing, and the code doing something else, and you can't tell which is correct. Also, as darkpast often tells me, your code should be self-documenting. If you can't understand what it does just by looking at it, then it probably needs to be refactored. Badly named variables and methods are things that belong in obfuscated code competitions, not shared code bases. Comments should be reserved for documentation for public use (e.g. javadocs), or for cases where you had to do something that might not make sense, but it's the only way to accomplish what you need, and so you have to explain why you did what you did. Or for warnings not to do something.

Food Mimic - Paella (or Yellow Rice with Stuff In It)

We didn't make it to Spain during our trip, but I did manage to find some paella at the Camden Market in London. I don't know if it matches up to the "real stuff" but it was pretty good. I thought it'd be something simple to make, and something we could take to work.

So here is the one that I tried to replicate:

Neither MrFodder nor I are huge fans of seafood, and I don't like eating mussels, so I opted for a non-seafood version, and chicken and chorizo seemed to be the way to go. However, in the comments of one of the recipes I looked at, someone said that putting chorizo in paella is a disgrace, and that at best, all you could really call it was "yellow rice with stuff in it", so in case he happens to find my blog post, too, I will add that I only managed to make yellow rice with stuff in it. Add to that the fact that I don't have a paella pan, so I'd be pretty hard pressed to call what I made paella.

Without further ado, here it is:

Sadly, fresh out of the pot, it looked very goopy, like risotto. However, I didn't eat it right away, as I had just gone to the KFC kitchen tour, and I was too full to eat a proper dinner, so I ate it the next day and it looked a lot more like the one in the photo, in terms of individual grains of rice. Sadly, it didn't taste quite like paella, and I think that's because of the lack of seafood. I guess it adds flavour to the overall dish, and while chorizo does have its own nice smell and flavour, it just wasn't the same. Well, that and the recipe I found substituted turmeric for the saffron, which I thought would help save money, but maybe that was another mistake. Oh, and I forgot to add the lemon at the end. T_T

The recipe itself wasn't difficult though, you can find it here.

It was a bit time consuming cutting up all the ingredients, but that was the toughest part, and after seeing how Gordon Ramsay cuts capsicums (YouTube video), not even that was tough.

Still, it was delicious, would definitely make it again.

Supersize Lunch

I've been noticing a weird trend. It started in April this year. I went to one of my favourite burger places for lunch, and ordered my usual burger with a side of chips. When my order was up, I was handed two bags, and looked confused. The person said, "Your burger and chips." and I thought maybe the burger had leaked through its wrapper or something, so they gave me the chips in a different bag. When I got back to the office, I looked in the bag, and it was full of chips. I'd say it was roughly six or seven times the regular serving of chips. Strange, but the people on my team were happy to help me finish them.

Writing it up to a freak occurrence, I return a few months later, order the same thing, and again, I get the two bags, one filled with chips. Unfortunately, on that day, half of my team was out at a celebratory lunch (I wasn't on that project, so I wasn't invited), so I felt compelled to finish the chips. I haven't been back since, as I'm afraid of getting another giant bag of chips.

Last week, I felt like getting Nandos, so I ordered my usual (1/4 chicken), and I had a voucher for free regular chips, so I used that. Take my food back to the office, open it, and I'm pretty sure I got a 1/2 chicken and large chips.

MrFodder thinks that I probably just happen to go at the right time, and they need to offload food, but I think I've discovered the real secret.

I'm Truman Burbank.

Think about it. If I am given more food, I spend more time on TV eating it, and audience members are more likely to want some.

Now that I know, and by posting this blog, they know that I know, what is going to happen? If the supersized food suddenly stops, then it's a confirmation that I am Truman, and they're trying to hide it. But if the supersized food continues, then that's also confirmation, because they're basically saying, "Screw it, she knows, we might as well make some money off this."

Irrefutable evidence.

Jokes aside, I think a more likely explanation is that I just have one of those average faces, and they must have mistaken me for a regular or something and wanted to be extra nice. Can't complain about that, right?

Food Mimic - Chocolate Molten Cake

This one had a few names, in Geneva, it was called warm Swiss chocolate cake, and in Dubai it was called hot chocolate fondant. I've always known it as chocolate lava cake, or chocolate molten cake.

So here are the ones from Geneva and Dubai, respectively:

What you can't tell from the images alone, is that when you cut open the cake, the centre is all gooey, like chocolate lava. I'm told that one way to consistently get the gooey centre is to freeze some batter and place it in the middle before baking, so that it melts. But I was also told that that method is cheating, and the sign of a good baker is one who can bake it just enough so that the top, bottom and sides are cooked, but the middle remains gooey. So with a challenge like that, of course I had to give it a go. Plus, there was a recipe for it in the Lindt recipe book I picked up. Seemed easy enough, except again, I substituted the butter for the Nuttelex Buttery, and used dairy-free chocolate instead of the mint chocolate suggested in the recipe.

Putting it together seemed to go OK. The chocolate melted fine, no burning. I think the egg mixture become custard-like, and it smelled delicious. I mixed the two. I didn't really have any ramekins that were thin and deep like the ones they probably used to make the ones we tried, so I thought maybe I could use a muffin pan instead.

Well, that was a huge mistake.

They looked fine after taking them out, but I realised I couldn't run a knife around the edge to loosen them, because I didn't want to scratch the muffin tin. So I used a silicon spatula to try and get them out, and the result was a disaster. Gooey mixture everywhere. I should have taken a photo, but I was just so sad. In the end, I had to bake it a little longer, just because it was going to be impossible to get out.

Sadly, there is a bit of gooey goodness in the middle, but what I really ended up with was moist, squashed chocolate cake:

I think next time, I will try the BBC recipe, as it seems much more straightforward, and I can probably substitute out the eggs as well. I'll also use dark chocolate, instead of milk chocolate, as I want that lovely dark brown colour (it was pretty sweet, so I think even if I use the 85% cocoa stuff, I'll probably still enjoy it). Lastly, I think I'll wait until I have something that's the right shape to bake it in before trying it again. The muffin tins didn't work out so well (maybe if I had silicon ones that I could turn inside out, it might have helped), and the ramekins I do have are much to big to make single servings with (I use them for mini shepard's pies).

It still tastes good, but didn't quite measure up to what we had overseas.

UNIHACK 2015

I volunteered for UniHack again this year, although not as a volunteer but as a mentor. That meant I was supposed to go around to the teams and chat to them about their ideas, how to make it better, and potentially help troubleshoot some issues (although not actually write any code for them). I was actually pretty hestitant about being a mentor, because I've never actually participated in a hackathon before, and I don't consider myself a strong programmer, so I wasn't sure how much help I'd be - especially when web and mobile applications are pretty popular in hackathons due to how simple it is to whip one up in a short amount of time.

A bit of background. What is a hackathon? It's where a bunch of people are (usually) in a team, and (usually) locked in a venue for a short period of time (24-72 hours), where they need to come up with an idea, implement it, and present it to some judges. Given the short time period for the event, it's not expected that the idea is 100% polished, and part of the judging process is asking what they'd add to their idea if given more time, but I think part of the point, similar to NaNoWriMo, is just to build something. A lot of people sit around and have "great ideas", but then get bogged down with the implementation details, and never actually get around to building anything. It's also a chance to see how viable an idea is. Someone explained to me that there are generally 3 types at a hackathon. The "hacker", which is the person who does the coding and all the technical things. The "designer" who makes it look usable. The "salesperson" who may be the person who came up with the idea, but is also the person who is great at selling the idea to judges. Since hackathons generally have small teams, most of the team members will usually take on more than one role, but it is a good chance for someone who has a great idea, but no technical knowledge, to see the viability of their idea. After all, it's not until you try to build the house of your dreams that you realise how impractical it might be.

UniHack is a 24 hour event, and is held for university students. It started Saturday afternoon, with the actual coding cut off Sunday afternoon, and judging and presentations in the afternoon to evening. I haven't actually attended any other hackathons, but at this one, they also had some talks from their industry sponsors on things like gender diversity in IT, how to get a job, hackathon tips and tricks, user interface design. So I definitely got a lot out of it!

I got to see a lot of the ideas from the participants this year, and some of them were very innovative. I won't write any of them here, because I'm not sure how intellectual property works with hackathons, but some of them seemed impossible to finish in 24 hours, but by the end of the coding part of the event, every team had a workable demo to show. Some of them even looked as polished as existing applications out there, which I think is very impressive.

Admittedly, that's part of what I find so intimidating. I don't think I could write an entire application overnight. But then I have to ask myself, have I ever tried? A lot of the stuff I write at work has to be maintainable. It has to have a lot of testing around it to show that it's bug-free and viable to be deployed onto live systems where it needs to be reliable. I need to write code that other people are going to be able to understand, in case they need to take over some day. With a hackathon, none of those things are requirements. Even in your demo, nobody is going to test that your system can handle weird inputs, or whether it can handle one of your servers suddenly going down. You get to show it off in its best state, and any little bugs will just be explained by the fact that you had so little time to develop it. The idea is to show your idea, and that's all you really need to do (though you do have to submit your code, so it's not like you could just do a Duke Nukem Forever and produce some flashy smoke and mirrors for something that's not actually possible).

I really enjoyed my time as a mentor. Surprisingly, I even managed to help one of the team solve an issue they were having, and at last check, they ended up using my idea in their final product. Not a lot of the teams were after technical help. I spent most of my time trying to help them think through some of the issues their app might have, or to narrow down their target audience. Many teams already had a pretty good idea of what they wanted to achieve, and had already thought through the issues, in which case I was mainly just someone for them to practice their pitch to. Lastly, I like to think that, at 9am, I was that annoying cheerful person trying to perk up their mood after they had gotten little to no sleep because they were trying to debug an issue.

It was an amazing event, they had improved a lot on the issues they had last year. Some of the other industry mentors were really fascinating. I met someone from PWC who said that she goes to a lot of Capture the Flag events, which is similar to a hackathon, but is more security based. So there are a bunch of machines set up, with pre-configured vulnerabilities, and you get points for breaking into them. I think that it's something I'd like to try doing in the future, so I got her contact details, and I'm going to follow her blog, and ask her for advice in getting started. Perhaps that will be my goal for next year. I've also decided that I'm going to try and go through Troy Hunt's Ethical Hacking series on Pluralsight, in the meantime, because I feel like forensics is a bit of a bust right now, and I don't really know where I want to go with that.

Oh, I forgot that I havevn't written about that yet. Julian introduced me to someone who works in computer forensics with the police force. He basically told me that a lot of it involves finding child pornography, and that not everyone is able to handle that. I think that I might be able to, although I've never actually seen any, so I can't be sure. I spoke to MrFodder about it, and he's worried that it might ruin me. I've seen enough episodes of The Wire to see that being in the police force can ruin relationships. And although I wouldn't be a sworn officer, MrFodder said he thinks I'm one of the most empathetic people he has ever met, and that seeing that kind of thing would probably crush me as a person.

It is a little tough, to hear that the thing that you've dream of doing for a while now is not a possibility, and I've really been tossing it over in my mind. I know that there are other avenues where you can do forensic computing, and all the big four consulting firms have a computer forensics arm for auditing purposes, but I've always liked the idea of catching criminals.

Oh, wow, this has really devolved from a discussion on UniHack.

Well, anyway, I really enjoyed my time there. Even though it meant pretty much giving up a weekend, it's something that I think is great for university students, and the IT industry itself. It's a great opportunity for students to get some practical experience, and I think that building something you thought of yourself, in comparison to building something because your lecturer set it as a project is a completely different experience. With university projects, you are coding to a very strict specification. You know what your end goal looks like, you know that you've been given the resources to get there, and if you get stuck along the way, you know that you can always ask your lecturer, tutor or lab demonstrator for help. When you're coding something for yourself, sometimes you don't even know what the problem is, or the shape of the solution changes so much, that the thing you started building no longer resembles the final product at the end (scope creep: you end up thinking, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if....?" and suddenly your program has eight tentacles and can spit acid goo).

The access to industry mentors was also one of the huge benefits of the event (even for me). Some of the mentors who came along were just so passionate about what they do. I won't mention which company, as they're a competing bank (which bank?), but the two mentors that came to the event from that company were just so enthusiastic, it was amazing. I'm actually quite jealous, as it sounds like the culture they have there is amazing, but even at the event, which is outside of work, it was so contagious how happy they were to be at something like this, where they were just discussing technical ideas with other developers and gushing happily about developments in the industry. There were a few recruiters there, and it was nice to listen to the tips they gave to other students about being employable. I wonder if any of them will get job offers at the end of the event.

Overall, if you are reading this, and you are an IT student, I would highly recommend attending an event like this. For me, there's a bit of an, "I'm too old for this" kinda feeling, with the staying up all night thing. I couldn't even do that for The International. But maybe it's something I'll participate in in the future. Or maybe a CTF event. Who knows? I feel so hyped up right now, all the energy in the room is so contagious!

The Cool Girl, Part 2

Today I was invited to a board games night with some friends of a co-worker. I conveniently wore my Princess Leia hoodie, and we were playing X-Wing 1 ship vs 1 ship matches. It was a pretty fun game, although I don't think the game is quite balanced for 1v1 ships. Also, my opponent didn't seem all that keen in playing. I meet one couple there, the husband was a gamer, and the wife (my opponent) a non-gamer.

To be honest, I feel like that dynamic makes me feel incredibly oversensitive, but I can't help but worry. I know that there's a lot more to their relationship that I don't know about, but in those situations, I feel like the "Cool Girl". Obviously, it's not true, but all they see of me at that point is someone who enjoys games, and when I am, and their partner isn't, I sometimes sense some resentment.

So I ejected out of my TIE Bomber as soon as the game was done, and fled.

 Dante was the first one to call me a "unicorn": the mythical girl that games. I took it as a compliment, like, "Hey, I actually do have a great quality!" I may have gone somewhat overboard in making it my "thing", even to the point of dismissing some of my fellow female gamers. A fact that makes me cringe now, but I do recognise that it did form a large part of my personality. And to be honest, it somewhat worked. Not in the romantic department, it was completely rubbish for that, but in that I got to make a ton of friends who were interested in the same thing that I was interested in. Every now and again, I'd hear the comment, "Why can't my girlfriend play games like you?"

Admittedly, and again, I say this in shame, I took it as a compliment. "Hey, look at me, I'm so awesome, all the guys must want me." But it was a short-lived one, as my seemingly never-ending single status would remind me. However, I tried to be helpful. "Why don't you get her to roll a character and we'll power level her up to 60?" or "Here are some more casual games that she can start with, that I really enjoy." It didn't seem to work, and once, I thought to myself, "If you hate being with her so much, why don't you dump her and date someone who does game?" That one time, I checked his Facebook page, saw a photo of his incredibly hot girlfriend, and decided to hold my tongue. Cynical of me, I know.

Now I'm starting to wonder if it even is that big a deal. MrFodder is really into fighting games, and thought I've played a bit of Smash Bros, and played Skull Girls until I got stuck on one of the tutorial levels and started getting blisters on my thumbs, I'm rubbish at it, and don't put all that much time into it. On the other hand, MrFodder has delved into Dota 2 a bit, and does feel the compulsion to play every now and again, but also doesn't play nearly as often as I do. And even though we've only been married for a few months, for the entire time we've been together, I think it has worked for us. We both have enough friends who are willing to play the games we want, and when we do want to play a game together, we usually end up playing MMOs. So I should really stop wondering if other people are resentful of the fact that their partner doesn't play games, and I do, because there are tons of other factors in play.

On the train ride home, I realised I was being an idiot, and so I messaged me co-worker asking if it was OK if I went to another games night event in the future. Hopefully he says yes.

Food Mimic - English Breakfast

Since it is way to expensive for us to be travelling overseas all the time, I've decided to try and replicate some of our favourite dishes from our trip. We've done a lot of Italian cooking since we got back, using the stuff we learned on our courses, so I thought I'd start with the other end of our trip - London. So first up is the English breakfast.

Here's the one we had in London:

It was toast, baked beans, bacon, sausage, egg, tomato and a hash brown. Not too hard, right?

Here is the one that I made:

A few fundamental differences. I went for poached eggs, rather than fried, because I thought it was a bit healthier, and I've never made poached eggs before. I also wanted to try making hash browns myself... and it was a disaster. The rest went OK, I think - I mean, if you own a working toaster, how can you screw up toast?! Baked beans came out of a can.

OK, so lessons learned from making hash browns. I read a lot about how watery potatoes are, so you need to dry them out beforehand. But all the recipes I found had grated potatoes, and I'm the crazy person who prefers steak cut chips over fries, so the more fluffy potato bits I have, the happier I am. So I went the total opposite direction, and cut my potatoes into fat slices. I also read that pre-boiling them creates a gelatinous layer that fries better (see idea #2)That was a complete disaster, because they didn't clump up like hash browns at all. All I ended up with were lightly fried slices, and they weren't even crispy at all. I ended up trying to break it into smaller pieces in the pan, and just ended up with mush (it's the "hash brown" in the top right side of the plate, in case you were wondering). I also didn't add enough oil, and once I added a heap of oil, it started to crisp up, so there are bits of crispy potato in the mush.

The poached eggs. I just followed this. Don't forget the vinegar, it helps keep the egg together (or so I'm told). Having fresh eggs also helps, as well as a wide pot, apparently, as the whirlpool whirls more (I don't know if this is true, I used a small-ish pot). I was actually pretty freaked out when I dropped the egg in, as there was a cloud of white everywhere. I guess my egg wasn't very fresh, and I ended up losing a heap of the white. :( But it turned out OK. MrFodder said the yolk was a little overcooked, probably because I didn't put it in the cold water bath - oops!

The other issue I had was, how on Earth do you keep the stuff you cooked earlier warm while you cook everything else. A trick I learned from GMJoe is to warm up your oven slightly, then turn it off, and leave everything in there. The food wasn't piping hot when served, but at least it wasn't cold.

The best part about cooking your own English breakfast is that you can use as much tomato sauce as you want. The restaurant we went to gave you a tiny, tiny thimble of tomato sauce. :'( Although MrFodder said you shouldn't need it because of the baked beans, but I completely disagree.

The International 5

Fell asleep before getting to write about The International. :(

The International is a yearly Dota 2 tournament run by Valve, which brings together the top 16 teams in the world. This year was the The International 5, with the current total prize pool passing $18 million USD ($1.6 million funded by Valve and the other $16.4+ million contributed via a percentage of in-game purchases), and first prize being $6.6 million (split between 5 players). It is the top tournament on the Dota 2 calendar, and the entire thing is completely free to watch, either in the game client, on Twitch.tv, or live-steamed on YouTube (until this tournament, I didn't even realise YouTube did live streaming).

Since it only finished yesterday, I'll avoid mentioning any spoilers in case there are people who are still trying to catch up on the games. Instead, I want to talk about the great job Valve did in addressing some of the complaints from last year.

So at TI4, a lot of people considered the grand final a wash, in that the two teams who made it (Vici Gaming, and Newbee) both had a playstyle that made for boring games to watch. However, I don't think they are to blame, as that was just the best strategy at the time. 2013 was the "Year of the Rat" where the winning strategy was to avoid large team fights while one player tried to sneak around and destroy buildings while the other team is busy elsewhere. While it was also somewhat boring to watch, there were a lot of exciting plays, and it was mainly one team who had that strategy  (though they went on to win the tournament). 2014, however, was the year of the "deathball", where the main strategy was to group up, destroy buildings, and get an overwhelming lead. Many games were quite short for this reason, and even the grand final felt a bit disappointing (though it was still cool to see the top teams executing their plays so flawlessly).

The other complaint was that Valve puts so much more focus on the popular Western teams, like Na'Vi and EG, so there were many player interviews and background videos on them, and none for the Chinese teams. In fact, before the grand final, they featured a video discussing some of the background on North American team EG, despite the fact that they had just been eliminated, rather than anything about either of the finalists. Although the fact that both teams were Chinese speaking might have been a factor, but it did mean that as a spectator, you found yourself not really caring about either team (though I imagine for the streams that aired in China, things might have been different).

This year, due to quite a few changes in the way the game works, the games were much more action-packed and exciting to watch. One of the changes made it tougher to just steamroll down a lane and take all the towers, as when each of the outermost towers fall, it causes the spell to protect all buildings for five seconds to be refreshed, so it can be used again immediately. Plus, a the way that gold is rewarded for killing enemy heroes made it more advantageous to try and kill players, rather than buildings. Another change was to increase the amount of gold awarded when killing a player on a large killing spree, nicknamed the "comeback mechanic", it meant that even though your team might be behind, if you managed to get some key kills, you had a chance to improve your position and potentially turn the tide.

The thing that I loved most this year was all the background interviews of the players. rOtk's interview was so emotional.

Here's the ones I could find on YouTube on the dota2 channel:
EG.SumaiL
C9.N0tail
EHOME.rOtk
Na'Vi.XBOCT
Secret.s4
COL.swindlemelonzz and COL.zfreek
Fnatic.Kecik Imba
VG.fy
LGD.xiao8
Empire.ALOHADANCE
VP.fng
MVP Hot6.Heen
IG.Ferrari_430
Newbee.Mu

OK, I lied, I guess I spoiled the qualifiers... but they were back in May, and if I had time to watch them while on my honeymoon, you should have as well!

The overall production value was great as well. The all-star match and the great surprise, the amazing cosplay costumes and the fact that there was a cosplay pin for the cosplayers, the awesome stage, with projectors on the floor that played the animation of major spells being cast in the game.

Valve did such a great job this year, looking forward to next year's International! :)

The Cool Girl, Part 1

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl."
- Amy, Gone Girl

That passage was so chilling when I read it. I still remember the first time I decided I wanted to be the "cool girl". I was playing vanilla WoW, and we were about to go and do a dungeon (I think it was UBRS, back when you needed a small raid group). Gravemind, our shaman, suddenly said, "sorry guys, I have gf aggro." This was back when world PvP was more of a thing, and I thought that he was being attacked by griefers. So I moused over his name to see where he was so we could go and help him, but it said Orgrimmar. I was pretty confused, as unless you PvP flag yourself, or have just come out of PvP, enemy players can't normally attack you in our home town.

Not long after, raid chat had messages like, "bl dude" and "just buy her some flowers afterwards", the most memorable being, "just get her to blow you under the desk while you play". He left the raid group and logged off. By this point, I had figured out that "gf" meant "girlfriend" (this was the first time I had played an MMO where people actually talk to each other, so I was still trying to catch up on the lingo, cut me some slack!), and I was astonished at the reaction of the other people in the raid. The thought that my partner could be speaking to other people about me in this way crushed me so much. So I decided I didn't want to be that person. OK, so I guess it was a desire not to be the "uncool girl" rather than wanting to be the "cool girl", but I think the two desires are at least unidentical twins.

I can't say that I went and picked up a bunch of hobbies purely for the purpose of trying for male attention, and that part I am glad of. However, I do think it changed the way that I saw relationships. I wanted so badly not to be seen as the crazy clingy girlfriend, so if we didn't talk for an entire week, well, that's cool, no big deal. Even though internally, I was thinking, "What did I do wrong? Is he cheating on me? Does he find me boring already?" When he did finally message me, I'd force myself to wait at least an hour before replying - because only clingy girls check their phones constantly, right? He wanted to jet off to Spain for a couple of months? No problemo, bro! I'll just.... sit at home and hope that my tier 2 robes finally drop.

Thinking back, I feel like a lot of that was my fault for not wanting to be the "uncool girl". Early on in the relationship, I was giving the perception that all of that stuff was OK with me, and then getting angry about it afterwards, which to be honest, is pretty unfair. I was secretly keeping a tally of all the times I had let him do what he wanted to, even though I was unhappy with it. Then, when I finally made a request of him, and he said he didn't want to do it, it made me so angry. From my point of view, I was thinking, "WHAT?! I'VE LET YOU DO THOSE 29 OTHER THINGS AND YOU WON'T EVEN DO THIS ONE THING FOR ME?" Now I understand that from his point of view, "Hmmm, do I want to go and see this girly movie? No, not really." He's evaluating this decision independently, but I'm evaluating it while taking into account the 29 other "sacrifices" that I have made in the past.

In some miracle utopia where everyone is empathetic of everyone else's needs, I could expect him to realise that I've made what I consider sacrifices, but that's not the real world. As long as I continued to pretend that I was the "cool girl", I would keep having these cycles of being calm and understanding, and then bursting out in rage. Perhaps this aligned with my monthly cycle, I don't know, I never kept track. I imagine that's how he rationalised it to himself though, "Yeah, she's cool, except during that time of the month, y'know?"

Since then, I have tried a lot harder to stop keeping that secret tally. I think it caused a lot of the earlier issues between me and MrFodder, and while it does pop up every now and again, it has reduced dramatically, and I can usually catch it before it becomes too bad.

I don't know if I can ever get rid of that, "Do whatever you want" mentality, as it seems like such a fundamental part of who I am, but I have gotten a lot better in uncoupling my feeling of self-worth from the actions I feel my partner should be performing. A big part of that was learning about the five languages of love, and that different people can show their love in different ways. I was getting upset that he never did one thing, while completely ignoring the other things he does to show he cares about me. MrFodder has never bought me flowers. A few times, when seeing other people get flowers, I feel jealous that I've never had that. But then I realise that I don't even like flowers, and we don't have a vase, and they make me sneeze, and they'd just go in the bin or get regifted anyway. So is the reason he has never bought me flowers because is lazy/unromantic, or because he knows me so well?

I'm going to guess it's the latter, and it's not just because I want to be the "cool girl", because I can never be her. And that's OK.