Hello,

I'm Tanya. I'm new here. I was impressed by the level of insight and helpfulness on this forum, wow.

I normally work on databases as a high priestess but my dad raised me as if I were a boy and finding a VW engine on the kitchen table was considered a normal event in my household so I like and understand cars. I founded and manage a small BMW and Mercedes-Benz engineering and used parts business. I make some pretty dumb mistakes about once per hour so I try to be methodical to limit the damage.

Maybe three years ago I bought a 1992 Ford Econoline van to help me transport the parts and dead cars that I buy. At the time I was super broke and the van's price was $1000.

At the time the van didn't have reverse gear and the seller had assured me it's just a little electronic module needing replacement. Dumb blonde, me, I believed them. So, no reverse gear until I replaced the AOD many months later.

For a while the van was my only transportation and I'd park and drive very carefully bc the only way the thing was gonna back up was if I got out and pushed. Not very ladylike but I did what I needed to do. And this was January in northern Nevada weather, sometimes 10 degrees (yeah, way north from vegas it gets COLD here, Nevada means snow for a reason) and the van's internal fan didn't work so I froze my *** off inside and outside the van. Tanya's Nevada winter weight loss program: Push a van around and freeze your *** off.

Anyway, I've never been in the army but I understand that when guys go through difficult times together such as like army buddies then they emotionally bond in a special way (not a gay way, not that there's anything wrong with that but that's not what I mean). Anyway, so I've kinda become attached to my E150 that way. By now the transmission has been replaced, the internal fan works ... better.

Happy 2B here!! :-)

~Tanya

 

A woman who's willing to enjoy a meal in what appears to be a junkyard? I think I love you!
Seriously, welcome from another noob!

 

Thank you..... the impressive lady is actually my mom ... she came along to the junkyard and brought along the food in a cooler (and not just food - dinner-party-quality food since she used to be a high-end caterer, and healthy besides since she's a dietitian), plus she brought along a sun umbrella, and a lawn chair, and some first aid stuff, and water, and she laid out and organized my tools on a flat piece of carpeted wood (that I'd borrowed from a nearby dead Mercedes-Benz station wagon) ...

Every now and then she and I have mother-daughter issues but generally she rocks. :-)

~Tanya

 

welcome to the site

Tony

 

Thank you .... people here are being really nice to me. :-)

~Tanya

 

Someone nice on this forum asked me where I'm from. My reply might derail the thread so ... I'm putting the info here instead. And way more. Yeah, I'm chatty and wordy. Please don't hate me for that. I haven't reminisced about this stuff in a great many years and one paragraph just sort of led to another.

I grew up with peculiar people around me in a peculiar place and they taught me some peculiar things. Maybe that's interesting to you. If not, feel free to stop reading. :-)

I was born in South Africa though into a German-culture family. As we Americans do, Germans tend to make a microcosm of their culture wherever they go though Germans tend to be not as nice, and more exclusionary. So German was my first language. I read German comic books when I grew up. My grandma raised me as a little German girl, blonde hair and all. :-) Not with blue eyes, unfortunately. Maybe soon. Google Stroma Medical for my plan on that subject.

German is a weird language. SO much of it is colloquial that very, very little of structural, official German (that you'd better be able to speak and write if you want anyone in the German business world to take you seriously) overlaps with every-day-use street German. You could draw a Venn diagram with one circle representing the official German language and another circle representing everyday street slang German language and you might need to go find an electron microscope to go find the area of overlap. Okay, I'm exaggerating but not by much.

I think in US English unless I speak German. Then I have to spend a few minutes rewiring my head to thinking in German. I was in Cologne in December of 2014 and I was walking around my room when I stubbed my toe on the bed frame (yeah, I'm kinda clumsy and ditzy), and I said "ouch dammit" in German immediately even though I was the only person in the room. I thought that was pretty funny. So when in German mode I think in German. And that's true when I speak in other languages too. I think in that language including its cultural paradigms and tone.

Even when I speak American English, some folks hereabout can still pick up a slight German accent in my voice. Ironically when I'm in Germany, nobody seems to notice anything non-German about me, or if they do, they don't let on.

I hasten to add that as to formal German philosophy (Kant, Nietzsche, Shopenhauer, Marx etc.) I have huge issues with it and think it's the cause of much that's wrong with the world. The antidote to that is what I applaud: Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, John Locke, the American Founding Fathers, Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff. So yeah; I renounce some of German culture, and I embrace the American alternative without any of the half-heartedness that tends to be a prelude to granting to eurocentric thinking an equal or better moral status over the quintessential US way of life.

America IS the best country in the world because it's based on an idea set that's based on the reality of man's nature as man. No wonder people thrive here and wherever our essentially American ideas spread. Ayn Rand explained it most eloquently in "Atlas Shrugged" and "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." And as Dinesh D'Souza points out so eloquently in his movies "2016" and "America" -- the typical objections such as "yabbut what about slavery" or "what about the Mexico land issue" or "what about the American Indian issues" and "what about Viet Nam" don't stand up well to precise scrutiny though for those spring-loaded to put this country down, any pretext will do. I hate that and I used to debate such people for hours.

My mom had been the first kid in the family born outside of Germany. She was born in South Africa. She also spoke Afrikaans and English fluently and with no accent (except for a South African accent when she spoke English). And yet she SO thinks like a German, even now. If you think I'm methodical that's NOTHING compared to my mom.

Anyway, my family couldn't afford to send me to the local private German school. And my mom had been teaching me Afrikaans anyway and my dad was Afrikaans so they sent me to an Afrikaans public school. So like Charlize Theron (my role model as to style and aesthetics) I can speak Afrikaans fluently and colloquially.

Of course by now you've figured out that I can function in English too. That includes South African and British English. I lived in Oxford for close to a year when I was a little girl, and I visit the UK now and then, so I understand much of British culture and I like most of it but I also intensely dislike some of it. Margaret Thatcher was my heroine.

My dad was weird. I mean, REALLY weird. He'd grown up as a street kid, homeless mostly. As a kid he'd steal food that people had thrown out for the chickens to eat. And he was insanely good at street fighting and in South African street fighting, there is no such thing as fighting dirty -- anything goes. One day I asked him to teach me a few street fighting tips because I was constantly being bullied in school and my approach wasn't to cowtow but to run when I had to (and I mean, literally run while dozens of mean guys were running after me, intent on severely hurting me) and to fight back when I could. I hated the bullying. I took Judo and Karate and went to blue and orange belt respectively and did quite good at the former but Judo means "the gentle way" and that wasn't quite my agenda. Also Judo meant getting very close to my opponent -- not safe.

So I kinda invented two modified throws (and gawd, I hope my Sensei isn't reading this) and a new armlock combination. One of the throws involved throwing my opponent without close body contact. In Judo, chest-to-chest contact is a cherished principle (and no lewd remarks please, I know I'm far from flat-chested any more). In my club we all knew each others' favorite throws so when I came up with this new throw I was unbeatable for a few weeks until everybody had their fresh countermeasures to my new throw perfected too. And though it looked Hollywood-spectacular and was probably very disorienting for my opponent, it didn't seriously hurt him.

My other throw I used outside the club only once. It was brutal. The throw consisted of a classic Judo throw and then in mid-air I shifted positions and essentially sat on my opponent's mid-section while we were both airborne and maybe still 18 inches off the ground so by the time we hit the ground he hit it HARD. I didn't weigh much (I was ridiculously slender) but even so the effect was very bad for my opponent. I actually felt guilty afterwards, he was in so much pain. This wasn't the sort of throw I could practice in the club so that time had been my first application of it. Also, the last. I retired it as too dangerous unless I was in very serious combat. Remember, we were still all young teenagers at the time.

My double arm lock was cool. I'd incapacitate my opponent and choke him and both of his elbow joints would be overextended. Of course then he couldn't tap out so I had to listen for foot stomps. The trick was to get into that position fast after a throw and I became good at it.

I was so into Judo that I'd walk around the school yard and then just do Judo rolls for the heck of it as if I'd tripped and was falling forward but without actually tripping. One day I was carrying a heavy rucksack of books and walking rapidly down a steep concrete incline when I really did trip. Most people might have done a faceplant with severe injury -- and a heavy bag of books on their backs only would have made things worse. Not for me. I did a Judo roll, and didn't even stop walking. Two other teenage school kids were watching this. They were impressed, which is good because my reputation needed all the help I can get.

One day I got hit by a car. I was crossing at formal pedestrian crossing and the light was green for me and I walked across. This was on a fast, busy street. I got about mid-way and then a lady driving a VW Golf ploughed through her red light and hit me, hard, as in her windshield broken, me flying. A close friend of mine was watching all this. I think she'd been across the street and I was crossing to join her. Anyway, as she told the story to me later, she emphasized that there was no break in the motion as I flew through the air, hit the tarmac, did a judo roll, stood up and pointed accusingly at the traffic light as in "hey lady, the light was red for you." And of course, this was Africa so no cops, no hospital, no paperwork, just apology offered, apology accepted, and everyone moved on.

I don't do Judo any more though I can still recognize the names of most of the throws below black belt, all in Japanese, of course. And no, I don't speak Japanese. :-)

Karate ... I know just enough to be dangerous ... to myself. I'm not good at any of it except that I used to be able to do a really good roundhouse kick but I had muscle memory for only one leg and not the other. Kinda weird. When you're slender and slight, a roundhouse kick can be a good equalizer to a heavier and stronger opponent. Of course everyone can see such a kick coming as if I'd announced it ahead of time so I never used it outside the club except for practice.

You'd see this little blonde teenage girl walking around the schoolyard doing judo rolls and roundhouse kicks ... apropos of nothing. Maybe that's why I didn't get picked on more yet. I was maybe so weird the other kids were wary of me.

I still have really fast reflexes even now. People sometimes socially comment on that.

My favorite Judo moment might have been when the school bully had me bent over backwards on a school bench and his prelude wasn't anything other then G-rated but even so it was definitely going to hurt me. Just a week or two before he'd cut up another kid in my class using a ceramic shard and the other kid had gone off to the ER and had gotten an impressive number of stitches. Yeah, this was Africa. Brutal.

Anyway, I got him in a Judo choke hold and he had me in a choke hold too. I liked that. I was used to being choked. I tended to lose in Judo tournaments but my strength was my tenacity on the floor. I would be able to stay in choke holds or arm locks and endure it to where my opponents were so puzzled they'd sometimes drop their guard. Their faces were funny to see, almost comical in their puzzlement. I'm not double-jointed and yes, of course it hurt, and I don't have gills and yes, I need to breathe too, but I just chose to hold out longer. My Sensei would yell at me, furious, saying "he could have broken your arm" and I'd think "yeah, but he didn't" but wow, if they gave an award for the most foolhardy Judoka I'd have gotten it. I never won any medals though, not ever third place, ever. I was not good at Judo though I loved it.

So anyway back to the school bully. It was sort of like the Cuban missile crisis as in who would back off first. I was lying there placidly and simply choking him right back without me being upset. He, however, was very upset. His face got redder and redder whether from being choked or from fury, I didn't know. He finally jumped back, breaking both chokeholds. Of course then I expected a major punch or kick while I was still bent over backwards and it came quickly as I'd expected but I ducked that too by rolling away quickly at the last split-second. After that, he just sort of lost steam and made light of the whole thing.

And this all had happened in science class with maybe 30 kids watching. Yes, Africa is weird. Some science class, huh.

From that day on the bully was super-friendly to me, sincerely so. He was not the biggest kid in school but even by African standards he was insanely strong, brutal and cruel, and he was maybe the only kid in that grade who was already shaving. I think he'd maybe been held back a year or two. His nickname was "Wild Animal Tamer" so having this terrifying guy now permanently off my radar screen of dangers was useful to me. And my "don't mess with Tanya" reputation was probably helped by that too.

In the final exams, which were each three hours long, he sat right behind me. I had a bottle of the African equivalent of Liquid Paper on my desk for making corrections politely. This was before the days of EnviroNazis so the stuff had some pretty intense ingredients. He asked what the little bottle was and I told him "well, why don't you take a really good sniff and find out" and I handed him the bottle. He just about stuck the bottle up his nose and inhaled intensely. Not a guy for half measures, that. Anyway, he handed me my bottle back. He didn't say anything and I didn't think anything of it. Unbeknownst to me, soon after he was out cold, head down on his desk. He woke up maybe half-way through the three-hour exam and finished his paper in whatever time he had left. Then he told me what had happened. He also told every kid within earshot. He thought that had been the coolest trick ever and after that he respected me even more yet. I felt kinda guilty about it especially since he got a bad grade but his grades were so bad anyway, he didn't care.

Anyway, so back to my dad. I asked my dad to teach me some street fighting tricks. He liked the keep-your-opponent-at-bay principle too so he taught me a weird long-distance kick. Unfortunately the venue was the house's master bedroom with limited space and he hadn't left enough space nor did he have any idea how to "pull his punches" when he kicked, so even though he tried to hold back he misjudged, and his one foot (it was a feint downward and then a drop and a floor roll and then a double-foot kick) hit me in the jaw and by the time my very proper and very German mom saw me a few minutes later my face was massively swollen and she was livid at my dad and I tried to reassure her it had all been part of training and not intentional at all. My dad felt SO bad about it. He never taught me any more street fighting again.

The problem with me fighting (as in really fighting) was that I got emotionally overwhelmed and I started crying. Yeah, it's a girl thing. And that doesn't imply weakness or that I'm giving up. Watch Meg Ryan in Courage Under Fire for a good explanation of that phenomenon. Anyway, the crying was disconcerting to me (and my opponent). Even while I was winning (which happened rarely but it happened) I cried. I don't fight physically any more but even now when I'm in a really bad argument, which happens maybe every five years, then I'm often in tears, which doesn't help my eloquence. It kinda sucks.

Anyway, my dad was super-weird. He had two engineering degrees, electrical and mechanical. He also later got a PhD in biology. And he was a rocket scientist, literally, for the South African government. He spoke Zulu, Afrikaans, German, English (and later became a British citizen), French, Italian and Spanish and some other African native languages too though not as well as he spoke Zulu because his street kid days were in Zululand. He was of French descent and he insisted I learn French and for a while he and my mom and I lived in Paris, France.

He'd love punning so he'd make cross-language puns in the four languages I can speak. He was intense.

He got pneumonia as a street kid and almost died as a teenager, and he eventually did pass away maybe 10 years ago, from his lung issue, all these years later. In some ways he was almost superhuman and in some ways he was horrible, and I like to not dwell on the latter aspect.

I'm kinda like that too. In some ways I'm charming (and if you knew the reason you'd like me even less) but if you knew me well you wouldn't wanna be in a relationship with me. I do make a VERY good friend, though.

So, yes, I speak English, Afrikaans, German and French and depending on how you count I grew up on South Africa, Swaziland, Zululand, Mozambique, Paris France, Oxford England and Heidelberg Germany.

And now I'm an American (citizen too) and I love this country SO much.

And my Christmas wish is always: perdition to her enemies.

 

Excellent thought----lots of us here share that same sentiment even if we don't express it so eloquently!

A belated welcome to FTE Tanya----good havin' ya aboard!

 

Thank you :-)

~Tanya

 

Welcome Tanya,
I believe your intellect makes up for any bit of ditzy you may pocess and the grease monkey side of you make you pretty neat. I will look forward to any future posts. Thanks for your contribution.

 

Wow, thank you .. this means a lot to me. :-)

~Tanya

 

Your explanation for your life story is fascinating, I'm a homeschooled Iowa farm boy/man so I never really had to deal very much with bullying and have never left the USA. The very few I did encounter as you said never show fear and I always apologized when I hurt them... confused the heck out of them, Lol.
This website has a incredible amount of knowledge and if anyone tries to give you crap just ignore them and wait for some good knowledge to come, it always does.

 

Thank you SO much for your kind and encouraging words. They made an already-good day extra-nice!! :-)

~Tanya

 

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I love it!! ... and your tagline.

~Tanya