Alethea Allarey

Alethea has a wild imagination and a selective memory, a bad combination for writing an autobiography. However, she is also painfully honest (her name means "truth" in Greek) and thus most of the stuff you'll read here is probably true. Probably.

Alethea was born in Manila, Philippines on July 11, 1978, to a pair of architects with eclectic tastes. The eldest of three siblings and 12 (soon to be 13) grandchildren, she learned to do without her parents quite early on as she was often "borrowed" by this aunt or that uncle, so they might hone their child-rearing skills for their own future offspring.

Acquiring her first passport at age 2, Alethea has led a globe-trotting kind of life. She has lived in Singapore and New Jersey; she has visited Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and various cities in the United States. She currently resides in California and occasionally junkets back to Manila to visit her folks.

Having learned to read quite early with the aid of Sesame Street and The Straits Times, Alethea has always loved English, reading, and writing. In January while looking for information about the cartoon "Home Movies," she unwittingly applied for the winter internship at Flak.

Some Useless Alethea Facts

• Despite, or perhaps because of attending a Catholic elementary school, she swears like a sailor.

• The first pop music cassette she ever owned was Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual; the first one she bought for herself (with four weeks' saved allowance) was the soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She still knows most of the words to both "Time After Time" and "Turtle Power."

• She spent an entire year breeding mealworms to be fed to her uncle's chickens. As a result, she is mostly unafraid of bugs.

• Her favorite foods include corn, shrimp, soy milk, octopus maki, mochi, brussels sprouts, romaine lettuce, jack cheese and beef. She would rather be hungry than cold.

• Last year, she was thoroughly smitten with a young man who could name Pantone colors on sight. Eventually, the young man got a job in movie production and was never heard from again. She pines for him constantly.

• Her ultimate ambition is to become independently wealthy so she and her family can spend the rest of their lives traveling and playing video games.

• She's never been kissed.

— Alethea Allarey (tv-dinners@diaryland.com)