the bud And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.-- Anaïs Ninit is time to move on from titian madness, for reasons previously mentioned and also simply to find a space where my words can bear more truth and clarity than in the present.these pages will remain, however foolish and inadequate the words were at times. they contain enough of what deserves to be remembered.but thank you, with all my heart, for reading and for sharing your thoughts. if you wish to keep reading, please email me at titianmadness@gmail.com with the url of your own webpage. the bud And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.-- Anaïs Nin a reminder and a glimpse tonight, an extremely rare (read: i don't recall the last one) phone call from my brother. we've been a little out of touch since he settled down at his job (read: stopped going on about his daily exploits at work). his brotherly agenda this time?"when you have the time, give mom and dad a call. they're starting to ask me why you're so busy.""because i seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth.""exactly."oops. i've been so caught up in studying and, admittedly, problems with men, to provide my family with anything more than the odd sms reply asking about their health, the weather, the puppy, and occasionally the papaya tree in the garden. i haven't been home for a little over two months now, and haven't even had a decent chat with them in the meantime. the daughterly guilt is starting to accumulate.but when he asked how i was, i realized that i could hardly tell him the truth about what has been going on over the past month, even though he's only a tad more conservative than i'd like. and if i couldn't tell him, i could forget about telling my parents. i'm projecting future months of elusive answers to their questions about my personal life. i could go on and on about the work bit, lord knows i've done it in the past, but it would be wilful deception about what's really going on. and given that i have such a wonderful relationship with my family... the idea of months of deception is painful. you can call it painting a rosy picture, or postponing the truth. it is what it is and i don't like it. the beginning of the end my most common, and well, most truthful excuse for not blogging is "i've been busy living", or less diplomatically, "i've been busy".but i know that there are some words drifting around the mess in my head that want to come out when i keep signing into blogger and staring at a blank post. if i didn't really feel like writing, i don't even get beyond staring at my comments page (95% of which consists of indy).then the questions. what do i really want to say? how much is saucy fluff and how much is real substance and emotion? when is the right time to write? and increasingly, who might read this?yes, i blame my scanty blogging on work. i failed to mention that when i discovered that the number of people i know in real life who read this blog is more than expected, and that some of them might feel compelled to talk or act as a result of my posts, my enthusiasm to write lessened considerably. don't get me wrong, i love that the people i know are interested enough to keep reading, but it doesn't change the fact that i write for myself, not for others. quite simply, this blog was not meant to be read by personal friends and acquaintances. the blurring of this line has led to more than a few annoying and troubling consequences.ahh, consequences. don't we just hate them.the only solution i can come up with is to move to a new blog/url and take more care with preserving anonymity. i would love to do so immediately but i don't have the time right now to set it up and design a template that has a little more oomph than this one (limitations of technical ability, not personality!) and perhaps set a little more direction for the new blog - less griping about my workload and more of the truth and clarity previously aimed for. there are too many worthwhile things i am seeing and doing that never make it here simply because i don't take the time to sit down, reflect and collate.let's give it a month or so. living forward during one boring class last month, as a girlfriend recounted yet another crazy club-hopping night, i couldn't help but ask her where she found the time and energy to club. her reply was "by not doing much of anything else".the truth is that i envied her terribly, her deliriously upbeat take on life, her irrepressible energy, her carefree schedule. we once spent an entire night working on an assignment together. at seven am, she was turning up the dance music, singing and shimmying away in the car, i was blearily trying to confirm my week's appointments and grab some shuteye at the same time.it struck me then that i was missing out on a lot of fun while trying to build up a mile long list of accomplishments. and really, there are few sadder things than being twenty and dull.so in the last month, i've gone from juggling work to juggling work and play. it's still bloody exhausting, perhaps even more so, but i'm having fun, doing new things, meeting new people. and there are a couple of intriguing new developments which promise to be quite an experience, good or bad.and that's the way i like to live. in life as in dance: grace glides on blistered feet There was a night, a couple of weeks ago, that marked the first time i stood in the studio and wondered how much more i had to give, and the answer was, "nothing, or barely any left." Performing has never been the way I like to dance, and especially not with many couples dancing in synchronicity. The emphasis turns to uniformity, the stress is on perfect accuracy, and most of the inherent joy in the music and freedom of movement is lost, at least to me. And when there is no joy in dancing, there is no real purpose to it and all perfection is meaningless.I want to be able to work much more intensively on style and technique, then translate that on a dance floor and across from a partner, without dilution of emotion or without cramping of freedom to interpretate.There are some who would find me weak for giving up performing. I don't think I lack discipline, but I do find myself increasingly unfulfilled by it. We all have our reasons for dancing, for enduring the sweat and toil and pain, for the many sacrifices we make, and increasingly I find that the satisfaction from performing is not quite worth the price I pay.Or maybe it's just temporary disillusionment. girls behaving badly someone i know (well, obviously) went to quite some trouble at 2am last night to find a shop still selling yesterday's Straits Times, simply to buy it and show me the cover page article of the Home section, titled "wild girls". i still don't understand the insistence on showing it to me, especially since he also said, "thank god you're not like that." (and no, he is not my father.) but having read it, i invariably and unfortunately formed an opinion. not on the girls - since i hardly have the right to judge them, not ever having been in the kind of situations that they are in - but on the article. the cover states that they "spent the last eight months finding out about the kinds of trouble girls today get into". if you're going to state that you spent two-thirds of an entire year researching an article, at least have the depth of research and analysis to prove you haven't been spending your field hours having coffee breaks. the six-page article (three-page actually after excluding big graphics and half-page ads) was shamefully shallow, chockful of generalizations, and seriously lacked context.then again, i'm probably just grumpy that i wasted precious time reading such superficial reporting. hanging in the air the relationship has been plagued with all sorts of trouble for the last two months. usually drama and instability is a sign that we are approaching the end, and i know myself to be ready to give it all up. for all the dear friends who have gave advice, convinced me to talk to him and reminded me that there were wonderful times and not simply the incessant conflicts, i'm very grateful. i badly needed that reminder.now we're trying to work things out. i'm not sure how it'll turn out because i think of what he did and my defenses go back up. but at least for this week i'll be too busy to think about it. i won't be around him much, at least. música de amargue jobs, jobs, more jobs i just finished a job assignment and immediately signed up for another one with another organisation. why do i do this to myself when i'm already struggling with schoolwork and dance? it's not completely about the pay or the resume-boosting. more of a bit of both, plus the fact that i seem to be very irrepressible these days when it comes to this sort of thing. ask me to do CCA or volunteer work nowadays and i'd laugh in your face. coping I took a day off classes today, slept in swaddled in a fluffy white blanket, the sound of the rain lulling me back to sleep whenever i awakened out of habit and semi-guilt.The past few weeks have been a flurry of deadlines, events, meetings. I eat food I hardly taste. I go out and forget to have real fun. D and I hit a tough spot that we are trying to get over. Days and nights rush past and I can hardly remember how I spent them, but a one word summary would be "coping".And coping is hardly a good way to live. leading up to summer i finally received confirmation about my summer internship. it's an amazing opportunity, great company, great department, interesting work, and fantastic for my resume. i'm happy. relieved. but not content.there's still a wisp of a chance of spending the entire summer baking to death in dubai, and i'd pack my bags and jump on the plane in an instant, never mind the inevitable tan. hey, i'd get to see the HQ of the company i interned at last summer. and the real truth is that i want to get away for a decent period from the staleness that is singapore. i've been back for only two years and already i feel like i can hardly breathe for all the pressure to conform and compete. i could do it, and do it well, and think that i was fulfilling all my ambition, but it would be a mockery of that which i really desire.so, anyone wants to offer me a job in dubai? will ... for food i was positively starving this afternoon after only one meal yesterday and four hours of classes today. outside the canteen, i walked past three guys on a cigarette break with nary a glance at them, but i knew they were looking at me. as i ordered, they brushed past me, barely a centimetre away from my breasts (which in all honesty are pretty close to the rest of me) and headed into the back kitchen. all except one who stood at the kitchen doorway, still staring.three minutes later, my meal came out with none of the shoddiness and stinginess that usually characterises their food. and usually i wait up to ten or fifteen minutes for my order.sometimes i really love being a girl. filler post I'm still busy. busier than even my brother, apparently, who has a full time job but still found ample time at work to send me what follows below. I'm not sure how long this has been 'making the rounds', but i found it pretty hilarious. Which is understandable, considering all the organizational structure shit i've been doing lately.How do you know where to place employees in a company?? 1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.2. Put your employees in the room and close the door.3. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours.4. Then analyse the situation: a. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the Accounting Department.b. If they are recounting them, put them in Auditing.c. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in Engineering.d. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in Planning.e. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in Operations.f. If they are sleeping, put them in Security.g. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in Information Technology.h. If they are sitting idle, put them in Human Resources.i. If they say they have tried different combinations, they are looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in Sales.j. If they have already left for the day, put them in Marketing.k. If they are staring out of the window, put them in Strategic Planning.l. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in Management.m. Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Senior Management.On a separate note, i've been spending the last few days neck-deep in infotech crap, seriously these IT people are just as long-winded as accountants. But it did give me the opportunity to spend an almost-sleepless night in with two very hot babes. we all look rather angelic but you couldn't imagine the level of filth in the jokes and conversation at five in the morning. welcome to the least informative sex blog ever Do me a favour and google "how to make men come".This blog is number two of 13,100,000 results!We'll pretend it's a real achievement, eh?(I have four half-assed posts in the making and promise to make a half-assed attempt at completing at least one of them once i clear some of the work that's piled up above my ears.) pick-up week update: this is turning out to be a bumper week for getting hit on. tonight it was a girl, which makes for a refreshing change. if i hadn't been so casually dressed, i would've stepped into bala on the way back just to see if this streak works with the suits. all in the name of safe experimentation, of course.it's been a good week for getting picked up. or rather a good week for being the target of pick-up attempts. it isn't usually a good thing, but sometimes a woman has her little vanities, and this week they're saying "hey i must be looking pretty okay!"which really is something considering my sleep deprivation and the all-round riots in my throat and lungs. and yes, my grades and internship are hanging in the balance, yet i still manage to think and blog about frivolities.one of the attempts was apparently a rather common pick-up trick, but since i had never once heard of it previously -- innocent lamb that i am -- i fell for it hook line and sinker. but if one were to do an absolutely anal analysis (ahh so that's where "analysis" comes from), i was hooked but turned suspicious when he dropped the line and so he didn't manage to sink it... me... it. however, his number is now saved in my phone under the name "weirdo" so i'll know when not to pick up. it wasn't that he was weird, but there have been a few generations of phone stalkers saved under that name and it's a nice little ongoing tradition.no prizes for guessing what the trick was. how do men instantly display such natural ingenuity when it comes to this? bringing sexy back sometimes a girl has a hard week behind her and harder ones coming up.last week was dreary. cancelled vday plans. catching up with choreography. boyfriend troubles. cancelled clubbing plans. cancelled post-vday plans. monday night and the to-do list hardly screams relaxation. planning birthday celebrations for the parents. scheduling internship interviews. squeezing in part time jobs in favour of leisure time. projects. presentations. midterms. networking luncheons. quick dash through a museum wing of naked sculptures and quick trip home for the weekend. all the while plagued with persistent chest pains.but if i'm not hacking and coughing my lungs out at that exact moment, i promise you'll never know i'm sick. i carry illuminating concealer, vitamin supplements, ginseng flakes, kiss-me-bite-me lip gloss, an eyelash curler that promises to flip 'em up and open. i've booked a long pedicure at JEC tomorrow, a gem of a place in the wilderness that is jurong. precisely painted nails to go with more sharply pointed mules, sharply cut suits, precisely phrased answers to lengthy questions. there's no time to dither.the week after this positively guarantees bleary-eyed, caffeine-fueled 9am to 3am weekdays, dashes in and out of campus for interviews, mandatory salsa clubbing on a weekday, we'll be burning up the floor, a swarm of lithe bodies with the infinite grace of youth.oh that sly confidence of youth, when pure exhaustion is waved off with a nap and a grin, a grit of teeth and out the door, when burnout is a word for the middle-aged, balding and boring. between the lines Is it very wrong to sometimes wish, despite residing in an easy happiness, that i were striding down a strange street in a strange land, no one's person but my own. Loneliness is one of the greatest freedoms I've ever tasted and I am never lonely these days. Is it so inevitable that being loved robs me of so many liberties? True, I receive much in return. But one does not weigh these things on a scale when the heart is trusted to judge irrationally but correctly. Is it too late to dream of other things? the candy & the fall i have a weakness for men. i have a weakness for candy. so it figures that i have a serious, almost fatal instant weakness for men who give me candy. it could be chocolate, sweets, apparently even baked goodies make me go ga-ga, as long as they contain the requisite percentage of sugar.there are lovely guy friends who ransack the kitchen to bake a batch of brownies. there's my brother, who regularly leaves, unannounced, some unfamiliar new brand of confectionary on my desk at home. there was the russell-crowe-lookalike tutor who gave us mallowmars in class. and of course, D, who had chocolates, strawberries and flowers sent to my doorstep when he was in the states, and mysteriously produced candy for no reason at all on countless other occasions. the list goes on and on. it's a wonder i don't look like a hippo (yet).women who give me candy? very sweet, but it's just not the same. yet if you're a man, it makes no difference if i love you, like you, am indifferent to you, detest you, or don't know you, because the presentation of confectionary melts me into a gushing, cooing puddle, dissolves all my defences and eliminates all possibilities of critical judgement. yes, it's okay if i don't know you. i thank my lucky stars that when i was a little girl, no smiling stranger ever stepped up to me, gave me a sweet and led me to a waiting car because i wouldn't have minded. i would have been gazing at the sweet in rapture, thinking that i was riding on a cotton candy cloud. all i want for v-day is to be tied up & Ravaged... ...with this pair of delicately binding lace handcuffs from Ravage. Chantal Thomass offered them earlier, but in a much shorter version. the length of the Ravage handcuffs makes them are almost like gloves, which ups the sexiness a notch.speaking of Chantal Thomass, there's a video interview of her at Chantal Thomass & the Art of Seduction, but in French. i'm off to find myself a hot Frenchman to translate. off home i'm off to home sweet home, packing lovely new clothes and a USB drive crammed full of work to do. i might be too busy to blog, or so bored that i keep blogging, but either way, happy chinese new year to all! singapore's too small a lot of my singaporean friends say that sg is too small, that everyone knows everyone, but i never quite experienced it personally until last week when...1. i bumped into J, a good friend and fellow naughty babe of T's while dancing with D. apparently D used to sleep in J's room when their fellow roomies in college needed a little space and privacy for a little hanky panky.2. A, with new gf in tow, spotted me at citilink mall with D, just hours after he called me for a little flirting (at which i promptly cut short the convo, i do have some semblance of morals). despite not having the guts to come up and say hi, A texted me saying D was disappointing, never mind that that is exactly what i think of A these days.3. grabbing a quick lunch on the way to town, D and i stopped at a place which i belatedly realized is where ryan and i used to have sunday lunches because it was so near his old apartment. later after dinner, someone pats me on the shoulder and hey presto, it's ryan, because we are so near his new apartment. my mind blanks out completely, i am forced to introduce ex-boyfriend to new boyfriend without any useful white lies (what, "this is my... high school bandmate"?!), and my inward cringe is timed perfectly to the one split second they blatantly size each other up. god knows what they were thinking. i think it might be somewhere along the lines of "i could take you, you fucker."there are several things that can be learnt from all this. men you once dated should never meet men you are currently dating. men you are currently dating should meet your naughty girlfriends because it opens up possibilities of umm, sharing the fun. and last but not least, i am spending way too much time with D. those who can't teach.... i've just had to turn down two terribly lucrative one-off teaching jobs. though i'm not usually one with the spare time to make a quick buck on the side, these offers are too good to resist. except that i myself have a weekly mandatory class that makes me unable to scream the words "look no further, take me" down the phone to my prospective re-employer. the class is called accounting for decision making and control. i should score very well, because it's taking ALL my control to decide not to skip a month's worth of classes.i've worked for this guy once and also turned down a holiday job as his PA. we all know the subjectivity of being an 'assistant' and my gut feeling says his intentions aren't that honorable. yet at the same time, i can't bring myself to recommend the job to someone else for fear that it'll take me off his part time hiring list.don't you just hate it when you know the guy's not just interested in your professional capabilities but the offer's too good for you to say an outright no? the angel says you're setting yourself up for unnecessary trouble and dire consequences, the devil says, hey baby it's all part of the game and you can handle it.arrgh. a very sweet doggy i used to see every week has passed on due to old age. he really was the sweetest old boy, a little slow in gait and movement but absolutely content to lie down beside the couch and close his eyes sleepily as the tv blared. he was very affectionate, sometimes amusingly persistently so, and would pad around the house steadily, toenails clicking a drumroll, looking for company.rest in peace, my dear. temptation the past few weeks have been good ones with D. i always meant to write about it, but it was a period to relax and enjoy the living instead of straining to reflect upon what was happening. to put it simply, the complications lessened, it was no longer so difficult to compromise, and i felt happy, safe, loved, content. but as always, once i let my guard down, that foolish vulnerability attracts the worst kind of trouble.when he finally left me alone, coincidentially a couple of calls came in from A and T to go out. with either guy or girl, it would have been easy as hell to get half wasted, screw around and mess things up again. but i've done that before, and that little release causes ten times more trouble than what prompts it in the first place. the kindness of strangers is rarely kindness at all, merely a twisted kind of opportunism. never mind that it was how i met D.but it would only be ironic if i went out tonight looking to get myself into trouble. one night last week, i walked him to the door of a club in chijmes and as i turned to leave, he asked if i was going to wait around in the other clubs and pubs. once, not very long ago, i would have but that night i headed to a starbucks and read, because i didn't intend to make it harder than it already was for us.i think that still holds true now, and that is all that is stopping me from hailing a cab downstairs. but at this very moment, there is so little to keep me from walking out through that door. no rest for the wicked & less for the virtuous i've made several pathetic attempts at blogging over the past week, sitting in a numb state with my fingers poised over the keyboard, realizing that my mind is ahopeless blank and then desperately squeezing out a few incoherent sentences. needless to say, those sentences shall never see the light of day (i can't make sense but i can rhyme). so what's been stopping the flow of words?salsa - the practising, the partying, the publicity, the planning - is taking up a shocking amount of time, not least because once i finish up for the day, i'm already tired to the bone and can hardly lift a finger to flip open a textbook.what's really more important now is finishing up the bulk of my internship applications, which are highly repetitive yet require a certain amount of careful research and customization, which is where my annoying perfectionist tendencies emerge. i'm spending too much time crafting out these things, though in all honesty and a smidgen of arrogance, i know i'm really rather hireable. i'd like to skip past the applications to the job-0ffers-pouring-in-i-can't-possibly-choose stage but this will probably drag on for a couple more months. what i didn't quite expect was that the application process would trigger a string of under-table jokes over the past month from several friends, and seemingly targeted only at me. but more on that another time. heels, hot pants & bruises to match today, during training...partner: where did you get that bruise on your thigh?me: where i got the bruises on my calf. and the one on my other thigh.partner: what the hell have you been doing?me: dancing. with you.bruises are inevitable, but it's a bit of a waste when you're toning up your legs so much yet can't show them off without simultaneously displaying several lovely shiners.to add to the list of injuries, half of my big toe nail fell off during today's training. which i know perfectly well is a terribly mundane and trivial thing to blog about, but honestly, the heartache. i'd booked an appointment for a terribly expensive pedicure tomorrow morning, and now on top of the cny surcharge, i'll have to pay for an acrylic extension, which won't last for long anyway because of the tremendous pressure on my feet while training. it's the same old vicious cycle. it's the return of days when just before leaving for classes, i glance longingly at my row of heels before glumly slipping into a pair of comfy flats. when i flex my feet, i can hear and feel something inside - several things in fact - popping merrily.yet despite all that, i've fallen in love with dance shoes. they're lovely things, all satin and leather and felt, diamantes and glitter and sequins, and completely impossible to resist. puddles and ashes i loved snuggling up to him on a worn couch in a quiet pub, drinking myself into a light and giddy daze. i used to watch him from across the room in parties where bottles lined the wall and a heavy haze of cigarette smoke hung over us for hours. i loved the taste of cigarettes on his lips and sometimes, just sometimes, would eagerly lift my head to kiss him just after he took a puff. I loved the scent on his clothes as he came back from a midnight smoke and held me close to him.for months after we parted, the faintest hint of that smoke in the air sent me delving into memories of those long, deep nights. it was him, those soft yet searching brown eyes, the steely demeanour beneath his gentleness. it was the long-ago memory of leaving a cold bed and tiptoeing into the garden, sitting down quietly beside him as he nursed a cigarette and the rain pattered down around us. it was love, foolishly blind and blindly trusting.i fell very ill within hours of leaving him, and after weakly crawling out of bed a week later, i found that i could no longer really drink, that even small amounts of liquor quickly leave me dizzy, breathless, sick. that violent rejection of alcohol by my body persists until today, troublesome and worrying but perhaps not such a bad thing. and in recent days, to my surprise, the bitter acridity of cigarette smoke which i once savoured now completely turns my stomach.i can't help but wonder, silly and pointless as it may be, if my physical rejection somehow reflects a mental rejection. two months ago, he called, asking if i still loved him, suggesting a visit to his new place, describing the relationship as "one year of great sex and...whatever". a month ago, he asked for dinner and the return of a present. i returned the present and turned down the dinner, but even in that brief meeting, his cruel jibes left me shaken.i closed the door firmly and completely a long, long time ago. i hope it never opens. i hope all such doors, sweetly promising but in actuality dangerously rotten and empty, never ever open. whee finally finished the bloody law paper! oh joy! well, it was fun to write in the end. and now, at three am on a monday morning, onto the tutorials needed for class in five hours. man-i-cure "Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!" exclaimed she, rattling away at the instrument. "Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a step beyond papa's park gates: nor to go even so far without mama's permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman--her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:--Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man."--Blanche Ingram, Jane Eyrelike Miss Ingram, i am not especially particular or overly concerned about how a man looks. that said, i'm obviously not about to turn down an inverted-A physique, a cute butt or a six-pack when they comes knocking on the door, but those attributes alone merely trigger lust, not interest.so in the spirit of seeking intelligence, kindness, strength, charisma etc. in a man, in my man, looks never comes in first. and in the absolute dearth of good-looking men that is singapore, you learn to lower the standards even more. a real man is hard enough to find, wait around for a cute real man as opposed to just a real cute man, and my advice is to freeze your eggs first. but a girl still has her quirks. just as there are boobs men, legs men, butt men, the least shallow woman has her personal list of most appealing male physical traits and it's usually more detailed and descriptive than "mmm, biceps, big, nice..."(all the above to reaffirm that i'm not really all that shallow. really.) but one of the first things i notice about a man is his hands. i never really grew out of holding my father's hand or linking my arm through his. it still gives me a wonderful sense of familiarity, it reminds me of being a little girl and tagging along with him everywhere. even now whenever i go home and we go out, i slip my hand into his and its familiar shape and roughness instantly comforts me.but before i'm accused of having a daddy complex (and actually i plead a wee bit guilty), hands do say a lot about a person. while we females manicure, lotion and massage them to death to avoid the tell-tale signs of aging, men generally don't even bother with gloves when doing some roughwork. and it's roughwork that gives hands their character. the veins speak of exertion, the roughened palm and hard calluses of perseverance and i find both indicative of the strength and determination of a real man.his fingers don't have to be long or slender but they should be strong with a firm yet gentle grasp and dead fish handshakes are instantly written off. nails should be short and clean, the long pinkie nail is just awful (why, why, why do they do it?) but neither do i like to see nails cut down to the quick which is a habit of many local guys. they always give cleanliness and army day regulations as an excuse, but i don't see them religiously clean in other aspects of bodily hygiene, nor are they exactly nostalgically craving for camp rations. nails should never be cut down to the quick and if you're just the least bit careful, dirt won't accumulate under a reasonable length of nail. you can tell this is a pet peeve, can't you?physical features aside, i notice what he does with his hands. are the movements calm? are his fingers steady, taking into consideration any nicotine-deprivation? how does he gesture, hold his knife and fork, play an instrument (instrument-playing being largely indicative of finger dexterity, and at this point naughty thoughts creep into my head...)? if we are dancing, how comfortably do his hands handle my body (now forgive me for drifting into highly pleasurable daydreams)?some guys accuse me of being a little obsessive, but hands reveal your personality while abs do not and a little basic care never hurts, as long as it doesn't get to the "glove fulla vaseline" stage. and since i happily give manicures to my boyfriends, with every single one emerging the better for it, leave me my little obsession.