It’s Saffy’s 18th birthday! Today she is The Oracle.
Happy Birthday, Saffron Sassafras Saoirse Schmitz Zafra Safin-Sprungli!
She is in excellent health, thank you. We thought that after she had several teeth taken out she would stick to soft food, but she still snacks on kibble and is especially fond of fried or roasted chicken. Saffy’s hobby is sitting on computer keyboards or notebook pages while her human is trying to write, and challenging her to a staring contest. Saffy always wins.
Today Saffy is the Birthday Oracle. Post your questions about your personal lives, careers, travel plans, pets, and everything else in Comments, and the Oracle will give you an answer.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 15th, 2018 at 10:49
To our beautiful debutante, happy name day, Saffy!!! May this year more treats for you.
My question is : What’s in store for me this year? Please, no more heartaches. I can’t take it anymore.
June 15th, 2018 at 10:49
Happy happy birthday! Happy happy birthday! Happy birthday sayo! (GMA Supershow version). May you and your human have many many more years together!
Saffy, how does one make friends and influence people? Pls tell me something Dale Carnegie hasn’t written about.
PS I just learned recently that one of your middle names is pronounced “Sersha”. Hehehe.
June 15th, 2018 at 11:09
brewhuh23: Thank you, and give my love to your feline overlord, Bathilda.
Unfortunately emotional pain is unavoidable. Everybody hurts, even the people who seem to be perfectly content with their lives. The thing is to remind yourself that pain ends, and everything balances out so there will be happiness. Do not be so focused on your sorrows that you do not notice when you are actually happy.
That said, this year will be better. Start making your travel plans so you are ready to go at a moment’s notice.
June 15th, 2018 at 11:16
greeneggsnham: Thank you, and my human still thinks the Metropolitan Museum should do a retrospective of Kuya Germs’s outfits.
If you make yourself fantastically interesting, you will not have to put in the effort to make friends. They will come to you. I understand you cannot wear exotic costumes in a corporate setting, but you can accessorize. What about odd tieclips, cufflinks, and small souvenirs from your trips?
Also, start taking random groups of people out for coffee or drinks.
Yes, my middle name was added after we saw Atonement and my human said, “Huwag kayong tatabi sa batang yan, magmumukha kayong supporting character.”
June 15th, 2018 at 12:05
Wow, happy 18th birthday, Saffy! Do you think I’ll ever get tired of travelling if I had the kind of money that would allow me to travel full-time?
June 15th, 2018 at 12:10
My feline overlord sends you her regards. She’s busy with her cockroach entrapment and lizard annihilation.
But thanks. That makes much sense. And I am planning my travels for (hopefully) end of the year until next year for my 40th, woohoo!!! #40@NYC
June 15th, 2018 at 12:26
Ronigurl: Thank you! It’s impossible to get tired of traveling. Just don’t be one of those tourists with detailed lists of things to do and see. That’s exhausting. Travel should be relaxing—the long flight is tiring enough. Bask in the atmosphere of a foreign town. Get to know the locals. Sit in cafes and pretend to be a native. Eat where they eat and shop where they shop, not at tourist traps. Take public transportation. That’s what money is for. Have fun!
June 15th, 2018 at 12:27
brewhuh23: Please tell her to let the lizards live. They’re good critters. Cockroaches: terminate with extreme prejudice.
See you in New York!
June 15th, 2018 at 14:07
Happy birthday, Saffy!
The question: I need your help! Is there any way I can balance my stressful career (I teach full-time and am also in the middle of thesis writing for a master’s degree) and the things that keep one sane (my TBR pile is not showing any signs of being minimized and there are also movies that I have to watch and dates to attend to and travels to experience)?
There are times that I feel guilty when I try to open a novel as a form of sanity break in the middle of doing something work-related and I hate this feeling. I hope you can share some of your feline wisdom to me. Cheers, Saffy!
June 15th, 2018 at 14:33
Glycolysis92: Thanks. First things first: Get enough sleep. Everything follows. When you are well-rested, obstacles seem more manageable. Make sleep your priority. Spend less time on social media. Turn off your phone, computer, TV two hours before bedtime. It is not true that you don’t have time for sleep. If you make it a priority, you will find the time.
Then everything falls into place, trust me.
June 15th, 2018 at 14:45
Thanks Sersha! That’s excellent advice! How does a house cat oracle accrue so much wisdom?:)
June 15th, 2018 at 15:14
greeneggsnham: Same source as Black Panther: the mighty Bast.
June 15th, 2018 at 15:56
Happy birthday! I had a huge crush on Marat Safin and actually thought I’d meet and charm him one day but I stopped ogling on him after he decided to be a politician. A politician is bad enough, a Russian politician? I don’t know. (Yes, I know I had zero chance of meeting him to begin with so charming him? Wahahaha.)
How do you do it? Staring at space most of the day and not feel like ending everything? I find myself doing that for months now because everything that I thought was fun, worth it and/or right things to do are no longer so. I’m being dramatic here. I won’t actually end everything. I guess my question is how does a mid-30s person begin again? Given personal struggles of realizing you are wrong about what you wanted and the general end of the world as we know it that is happening in this country and the rest of the world.
June 15th, 2018 at 16:56
bulan: Thank you. My name-father is not just a politician, but apparently a friend of Putin so yiiiiiiiiiiiii. However, my human still sleeps in her oversized 2000 US Open T-shirt because the politics suck, but that was still good tennis. (Oy, what could’ve been.)
This is not a consolation, but the whole world is going to hell in a way anticipated by C.M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons (in which a small, thinking population is stressed out from having to keep the much, much larger population of morons from destroying everything including themselves). Global events are beyond your control, but you can still decide what to do with yourself.
If the news are depressing to you, avoid the news and social media. Being well-informed is not a good thing if you have to keep up with minute-by-minute stupidity and feel like gouging out your eyeballs. Do your job as well as you can, or if you hate your job, quit it and find one that you enjoy. It can be done. There will be a period of anxiety and perhaps poverty, but you will stop loathing your life.
If there is something you’ve always wanted to do, do it now. That big project you were preparing for–why wait. Spend time with your friends, the supportive ones and not the ones who will cast doubt on everything you do while saying “I’m just saying.”
Mid-30 isn’t old, you have time to regroup.
During especially glum times, my human watches the complete Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings. You think your life is hard: Buffy was broke, her mom had died, she was raising her bratty sister, her house needed repairs, she was in a terrible relationship, and she still had to kill demons and save the world.
June 15th, 2018 at 19:47
Happy birthday, Saffy Saoirse Ronan Scherzinger. Last week, I met a cat and decided her name is Cathy. Can’t take her to my unit because bawal. I think she’s a slutty cat because I caught her having s** with the other pusakal twice in one week.
I just started reading Alberto Moravia’s ‘Boredom’ and I really like it. NYRB books are pretty. I think I’ll start collecting them to give my life meaning. Been working out a lot, too. Just sharing!
June 15th, 2018 at 20:24
If only Buffy went with Spike. Hehe.
Thank you for taking your time answering that. It puts things in perspective.
Again, have a great birthday and hello to your human!
PS. Naku, sabi na nga if you find success in Russian politics chances are you’re friends with Putin. Anyway, that was good tennis indeed!
June 15th, 2018 at 20:26
lestat: Merci, mais je ne connais pas “Scherzinger”. Schmitz is the real name of Italo Svevo, whose Confessions of Zeno we love.
You cannot judge Cathy for heeding her biological imperative. How do you think we achieved world domination? By breeding and being adorable.
Moravia’s Contempt and Agostino are also available in NYRB editions. Contempt was adapted into our second favorite Godard movie, Le Mepris. Check it out. Our friend tells us there are specialty cinemas in Bangkok that screen restored classics and whatever the owner feels like (the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones). They serve wine and canapes during screenings. We have no such cinemas in Manila.
Keep those endorphins flowing! My human has no eyeglass frame orders at the moment because Nella Sarabia found an entire box of frames that she forgot she had. In the decades that passed since she saw them, they’ve turned into vintage eyewear (Savile Row, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Rodenstock, etc).
June 15th, 2018 at 20:28
bulan: Yes, we preferred Spike to the neanderthal brooder. The problem was not Spike, it was Buffy’s self-loathing.
June 15th, 2018 at 21:49
Happy new year, dearest darlingest debutant, Saffy! Would you know when the rains are going to end? Is there any stability in the life of a creative/artist? How can creatives fulfill their passions when they unfortunately have six-day work weeks in jobs not related to their passions?
What things should I know and remember when I adopt my first pussy? (Technically second cause the first disappeared into the night never to let its whereabouts known, ever agaynnn.)
Kindly ask your human if she has read Hadley Freeman’s Life Moves Pretty Fast: Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies. If she hasn’t, casually pop this information during a staring contest in an attempt to sabotage her and win.
Kindly read in an Irish or British accent, dear Saoirse. Love,
June 15th, 2018 at 22:54
sussiethepussie: Thank you. We want it to rain every day because we don’t like sunshine. The cold and gloom suits us fine.
There is no stability in the life of an artist, especially if she is not for hire. In fact stability is to be avoided at all cost because it is chaos and uncertainty that spur one to create. T.S. Eliot worked in a bank and his wife was institutionalized. Franz Kafka worked in an insurance firm and had terrible health and worse neuroses. Shirley Jackson had to raise four children and deal with her husband’s frequent infidelity. In short, jobs do not get in the way if one is determined.
When you adopt a cat, keep them in a large cage or closed room for a week so they don’t run away. It is best to have them spayed/neutered soonest so they are less inclined to wander. Basically, suck up to the cat so they don’t leave you. Better yet, don’t just pick up a cat at the shelter unless they come to you. Let the cat adopt you.
We do not read books with “lessons learned” or “before you die” in the title, although the human has edited a commissioned book with “lessons” in the title.
Non ho accento britannico o irlandese. Good luck with your feline companion!
June 16th, 2018 at 00:05
Thank you for your birthday wishes and for sending us your questions here and on Instagram. Saffy the Oracle’s work is done for the year. The next birthday is Jacob’s in October. Good night.
June 16th, 2018 at 13:15
Happy Birthday Saffy! Why am I always late?
Muahness from Pasig Cirrehhh
June 17th, 2018 at 18:40
Holy crap, it’s the invisible Momelia!
June 22nd, 2018 at 06:05
Hahaha! Invisible is right on the head, Madame! It is how my hair has been becoming lately har har har!