Bad habits to break

Eric and I made a deal last night. I would stop adding "na" to my English sentences (i.e. "I'm here na" or "I'm so tired na") if he would stop using "mu" and "me" in his text messages ("Alam mu ba..." or "Punta me sa supermarket").

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Other habits I have that irritate the heck out of Eric:

1) My sheer impatience. I'm the type of person who has to know the endings right away. I flip to the very end of books before I start reading them, or I scour the Internet for episode guides and episode transcripts of my favorite TV series in the US so that I don't have to wait for them to be shown here.

2) I tend to ask him to repeat questions he asks me, almost as if I didn't get them, but it turns out I do and I end up answering them in the same breadth. Example:

ERIC: Saan ka pupunta bukas?
ME: Ha? Ano?...May interview ako sa Makati.

I don't know why I only do it with him. I think it's because he talks too fast, and my brain takes longer to process what he's saying. Harhar.

3) I have to finish the food on my plate. Even if I'm so full to the point of bursting, I can't stand to leave unfinished food, especially if it's a portion that's too small to be wrapped and taken home. Most likely cultivated from all the years my parents guilt-tripped me about starving children in Africa. He thinks it's stupid.

4) I hardly buy original CDs anymore, because I don't see the point in shelling out hundreds of pesos for an album when I only like 2 or 3 of the songs. If I have a song that I like, I just download it on my computer. Eric says it's equivalent to piracy, but I tell him it's not because it's not as if I download the songs to sell them to others. They're all for my personal collection.

5) He thinks I'm too nice, especially with my friends, co-workers and parents. With everyone, basically. Eric's brutally frank, he'll tell people straight to their faces if they do something he doesn't like or disagrees with. I prefer to either keep quiet and just rant in private afterwards, or say it in a half-joking way (which means half the time, the intended doesn't get that I'm also being half-serious). Like the issue of his friends who smoke. Heavily. It irritates the hell out of me when they light up without so much as bothering to ask permission, but I don't want to come across as a killjoy, so I grin and bear it. The smoking doesn't bother Eric so much, ("Eh, ganun talaga sila e") so he tells me I either stand up for myself or put up with it.

Small steps, hon, small steps...