Wednesday, May 30, 2007

More about me than you ever wanted to know!


I totally missed my 100th post on the take charge blog – think I realised when I was at number 120 so I decided to learn from that mistake and just focus on this blog.

That said, I almost can’t believe that this is my 100th post on this blog – who would have thought I’d have so much to say about organising?!

Anyway, without further ado…



  1. My name is actually Marcia-Leigh. Nobody calls me that except two of my aunts.

  2. When I got married, I dropped the Leigh and my preferred name is Marcia.

  3. I was born in Port Elizabeth, otherwise known as the friendly city. For non-SA readers, this is a city on the Eastern Cape coast of SA.

  4. I am the oldest of 3 children. Hence the bossiness.

  5. My sister is 28 and my brother is 20.

  6. My parents got divorced after 28 years of marriage.

  7. My father’s now remarried but I don’t think my mother ever will be.

  8. My mother says I was a very good baby :-)

  9. But my stubbornness emerged at around 18 months or so

  10. When I learnt to say NO

  11. I really don’t remember being stroppy at all

  12. I started ballet at aged 4 with my cousin, Karen.

  13. And discovered one of my passions

  14. Because of ballet lessons after school, I never got involved in any sport or other extra-mural activities

  15. This is something I mildly regret

  16. I say mildly because I wonder sometimes if I’d have been any good?

  17. In all my school reports, there were two consistencies.

  18. The teachers always wrote, Marcia talks too much in class.

  19. I love how God turned that “potential negative” into good! Now I speak regularly in front of groups of people.

  20. The other thing was I always did very well, usually 1st or 2nd in the standard.

  21. I don’t consider myself a very good student however; I just seemed to remember things very well.

  22. I only remember actual studying when I was in standard 7 (grade 9) and I dropped those compulsory subjects like History as soon as I could.

  23. My favourite subject has always been Mathematics.

  24. My worst subject was PT (Physical Training). See? There’s the non-sport thing.

  25. I hated PT so much that in high school I used to ASK for extra Maths work just so I could miss it!

  26. When I was in standard 3 (grade 5), I remember organising a class library. I asked each child in the class to bring in a book and I did all the library cards, a cataloguing system, everything. It was huge fun.

  27. I’m sure I enjoyed setting up the library more than anyone else enjoyed reading the books.

  28. I used to have terrible handwriting until age 9 when it miraculously fixed itself up.

  29. I went to school a year earlier than I was supposed to (age 5) because my mother felt I was “ready”.

  30. This means that all my friends have always been a year older.

  31. I had 2 birthdays – a real one on 6 August and a pretend one on 6 February.

  32. Why a pretend birthday? Because our schools were not allowed to register kids who only turned 6 after the first half of the year.

  33. Now here’s a shocker – when I was a child, I didn’t want to eat any food. My mother had to give me milkshakes to increase my appetite and I think they worked a little too well

  34. I chose to go to a high school where I knew virtually nobody simply because it was a better school than the one near to where I lived.

  35. There were only 2 people from my previous school in the entire standard 6 (grade 8) class.

  36. When we had to choose between doing Needlework and Home Economics, I immediately chose Home Economics.

  37. The other 2 chose Needlework which was quite okay with me.

  38. When they saw me all alone in the HE queue, they tried to get me to come over and do Needlework.

  39. Nothing on earth would make me voluntarily do needlework ever again so of course, I refused. I don’t think you can tell just from this sentence how much I hated needlework.

  40. I can sew on a button and stitch a hem though...

  41. They then decided that because we had to all be together, they would do HE. Crazy.

  42. I have always, always slept very, very well.

  43. Because of this, I would wait until the last possible moment to get up so I ended up running up the hill to school Every. Single. Morning.

  44. But I was never late

  45. Clearly I was in a lot better shape than I am now ;)

  46. I am very lazy.

  47. I did Geography for 3 months before deciding that I would get my A easier in Accounting.

  48. So I switched and had to catch up 3 months’ work.

  49. It was easy because I have a head for numbers, logic (!) and reasoning.

  50. Oh, I was a prefect in primary school

  51. And in high school.

  52. While I’m on the topic of leadership roles, I was the SRC chairperson in my standard 9 (grade 11) year.

  53. I narrowly beat the most popular guy in school.

  54. I still don’t know why they chose me.

  55. That year I learnt to hone my public-speaking skills by speaking on a loudhailer in front of the entire school.

  56. At the time I didn’t even think of it as a big deal; I just did it.

  57. Being a prefect in high school was one of the most fun things I did, not because of the prefect thing, but because of my fellow prefects.

  58. My school was mostly Afrikaans (only 2 out of every 6 – 8 classes in each standard spoke English as their first language) and I learnt to become fluent in Afrikaans that year because of the rest of the prefects.

  59. There were only 4 Higher Grade Mathematics students in my matric year and I was the only one in the two English classes. And the only girl.

  60. So the teacher gave me lots of homework (which I didn’t mind) and challenged me a lot.

  61. I still love a challenge.

  62. I was the only one at my school selected to participate in a Maths HG Winter School (June) at Rhodes University during my matric year.

  63. That’s when I fell in love with Rhodes and with Grahamstown. And knew that was where I wanted to go to university.

  64. I met a guy there (VM) who was supposed to go to UCT but unexpectedly phoned me late that year announcing that he would be going to Rhodes too.

  65. I was seeing someone else at the time but when we broke up, guy 1 (VM) and I got together for about 3 months.

  66. I found university incredibly hard because I was not used to studying – see number 23.

  67. I also realised that I hated working in a lab – something I thought I’d enjoy.

  68. I met my husband at university when he asked me to dance for him.

  69. I thought he was a pervert so of course, I refused.

  70. We then became friends and started eating all our meals together, but just as friends.

  71. The dinner ladies used to have to chase us out of the dining hall so they could close up after supper; we were so busy talking that we didn’t even notice everyone else leaving!

  72. One day we went to a movie together (Mississippi Masala) as friends and came back as a couple ;) and we’ve been inseparable ever since.

  73. I can’t swim. One day when I was about 6 at a swimming lesson, someone pushed me into the pool. I was half scared to death and that was it for me and water.

  74. I also can’t ride a bicycle. There’s no excuse for that – I just never wanted to do it.

  75. I don’t like anything about bicycles; that’s why I hate spinning. I tried it once and that was quite enough for me, thank you very much.

  76. I can’t do slow types of exercise like yoga and pilates. I’ve tried but I’m literally sleeping 10 minutes into the class.

  77. I’m a type A exerciser, who stands right in the front row and follows the teacher perfectly. Sickening!

  78. I told you earlier that I did ballet. I also did modern and Spanish dancing.

  79. I stopped when I finished school and went away to university.

  80. After a gap of 12 years, I started taking a dance funk class at the gym in 2003.

  81. Now I do a hip-hop class on Mondays and salsa dancing on Wednesdays.

  82. I think I’ve parallel parked maybe 5 times in total since I got my driver’s licence. So in this respect I’m a typical female ;)

  83. My full-time job is in insurance (!) and I am a relationship and operations manager.

  84. This suits my ESTJ-ness down to the ground. (What is your Myers-Briggs profile?)

  85. I don’t eat peas or brussells sprouts. I think I eat all other vegetables.

  86. And as far as fruit goes, I don’t eat any melons – watermelon, sweetmelon or rock melon.

  87. My absolute favourite fruit is the humble apple. Granny Smith, nothing else. You can always find me with an apple.

  88. And of course, I love any desserts with apple. Yum!

  89. And you know I love anything with cinnamon. Cinnabon, I love you!

  90. I drink 2L water every day and have done so since 1998. That was one of my goals for the year and the easiest one to accomplish.

  91. I’ve had 3 operations in my life – my wisdom teeth out in 1997, and 2 laparoscopies – one in 2002 and one in 2004.

  92. I was leading praise and worship in a cell group the very next day after the wisdom teeth. That’s God for you!

  93. After the second laparoscopy, I refused to get another one done because there was absolutely no difference (at least to me).

  94. Both times they anticipated a 30-minute op and it ended up being 3 hours!

  95. My gynae told me I’m a lot prettier on the outside than I am on the inside. Um, thanks… I think?

  96. So I had to spend the night in the hospital. Horrible – because I hate having to live with other people’s rules!

  97. My obsessions are handbags, wallets and watches.

  98. I buy things in threes – 3 cans of tomato, 3 boxes of spaghetti, etc. I don’t know why but that’s probably why I always spend more than we budget on food.

  99. The one place I want to visit more than any other place in the world is …New York City.

  100. I’ve never been the person who dreamed of growing up, getting married and having children. Yet I met the right guy at 18, married him at 20, and decided at 30 that if we didn’t have children soon, we probably would live to regret it. And that’s where we’re at now. Except I’ve found that it’s not the easiest thing in the world.


Well, I hope you’re still there and awake!

Thanks for reading, everybody. Have a great day.

14 comments:

Robin Green said...

I enjoyed reading your 100 things--you are definitely a math person--me--not so much. I started enjoying math in college-and I really do enjoy taking care of our finances--but I'm so not into higher math.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I could never complete this list right now, haha..so I totally skipped it on my 100th post. I may have to do it for my 200th though. It was fun getting to know more about you! I think Marcia~Leigh is pretty..but so is Marcia :) And my worst subject was Math, haha.

I hope you're having a great week. I'd love to share details. I might just share them anyway after my honeymoon or else I'll just email them out to my blogging friends.. we'll see. Have a wonderful weekend! :)

Char said...

Hi Marcia - glad you popped by to my lil blog! I'm always happy to find local bloggers! I'll be back for more reads in future, for sure! :o)

Marcia Francois said...

Hey Char - I know what you mean. Well, we've got Tertia in common so that's a start!

Char said...

That's right. We have Tertia in common! That, and the horrid laparoscopy thing. And the A-type personality thing. And I also decided to change subjects in school in the middle of a school year (except my fickleness happened in Std 9 in the third term, and I changed three major subjects! - maybe we also have the 3's in common too?); was also prefect and so much more! I'm a stickler for following the rules too... who'da thunk I'd find another twisted sista right here in good ol' SA?

kate said...

This was a great idea. I learned lots of neat things about you ...

Annie said...

I was a math major in college for a while. I like math!
Your list was fun to read! You need to add oklahoma to your list of places to go :o)
I don't eat brussell sprouts either, yuck.

Sharon said...

Hi there...
I've just found your blog through your comment on a friends blog... and I love it!
I'm REALLY new to blogging and as a mum of 3 (aged 5, 3 and 5 months) I can appreciate ANY tips on making life run smoother. (Blogging incl.)
Thanks for your great tips and ideas.

Anonymous said...

I loved learning about you!! You did an awesome job--I feel like I know you more now :)

Bridget

Laura said...

Marcia, what a great list. It was fun learning about you and seeing how much we have in common which was a lot. Some of them were I'm also the oldest of three, I too often got told I talked too much and I HATE brussels sprouts. Yuck.
Congratulations on 100!
Laura

Jamie said...

My husband spent a lot of his mission in Port Elisabeth. He absolutely loved it there. He's happy that his new company has a plant in South Africa, but he's bummed that it's in Jo'Burg.

Ali Ambrosio said...

Marcia,

I'm so glad you did this. I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have an incredible amount of things in common.

I also was always first in my classes, very good at taking tests and remembering facts, but very lazy about studying and always cramming for exams at the last possible minute...only to get the top grade in the class.

I was also in advanced math, and also hated PE (physical education) so much that I'd resort to things like faking sick or injury. Shame!

I also took ballet and other forms of dance from a very early age, then stopped completely, then started again primarily with salsa.

I also met my future husband at school, but this we already knew we had in common.

I have no patience for yoga, pilates, etc. and am also always front and center doing the choreography with the teacher.

I'm no big fan of swimming and also hate bike riding. I can technically do it, but am very bad and don't enjoy it. No spinning, either.

I am horrible at parallel parking and will drive a mile out of my way just to avoid having to do it.

This was great fun. I'm inspired to do my own!

Ria said...

That was great Marcia. It also took a lot of courage to write all of that.
Happy Birthday!
Ria

Anonymous said...

Hi Marcia- I almost feel like I know you after reading your 100 things! I am sorry that you had a bad scare with the swimming- I love to swim and am quite good at it. I disobeyed my Dad when I was about 3 years old- I swam out into deep water (at Onset Bay at the base of CApe Cod in Massachusetts, USA)- the water was almost as deep as he was tall- and he reached over and removed my Donald Duck tube! And I have been swimming ever since....took a few lessons, lifesaving course, and placed on a swim team. Now, it is one of the few exercises left to me. I rode the 1st woman's 10 speed bike in Chicago - so unusual that I could leave it unchained and walk away from it to shop and browse in the Old Town area- could NOT do that today.
On your desire to see New York...might I put in a pitch for Chicago- Chicago is a much more beautiful city than New York. And I think that the people here are a lot friendlier, too. I grew up on the east coast and we often visited New York City because we had family there, but, sorry New Yorkers- Chicago is a much better place to live and work. And that is my 2 cents worth....

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