Of Hair and Men

Well, it isn't that I haven't been doing anything with my life these few days, but it's just that some things just aren't that interesting to post about, or otherwise aren't too appropriate, methinks, to put online for all and sundry to (potentially) see. But there are some things that I wouldn't mind blogging about, but which I had to receive prior explicit permission for doing, like this one I'm going to talk about: A haircut.

Not any haircut, mind you, but one that my friends and I have been badgering for since goodness knows when! See the Before picture:

And now, behold! The After:

Extreme Makeover this isn't, but see what a world of difference a haircut makes! Ladies, you can make your marriage proposals to this right here blog. Of course, the makeover is still underway, so bear in mind there is still some room for improvement.

Really though, times are a changin'. More and more men are getting into that metro-groove. You know which one I'm referring to. Even this guy above, who used to be a slipper-dragging, collar-tugging, expanded T-shirt/singlet-wearing kinda guy - oh, wait. All that hasn't really changed yet, save for an improved wardrobe. Oops. Well, he's working on it! You go, Da Hua! Full marks for going out there and daring to change your image!

I wonder why. Is it because now it's permissible, even acceptable, for men to look good? (This presupposes that they want to, yes, but we all know the truth is that, given half a chance, they all turn vain.) Market demand? (I'm talking about the chicks and their demands.) Hell, there's even make-up lines catered especially to men! Maybe one day, it will no longer be enough for men to look effortlessly good. They will have to show that it took effort to look good. (But that's still a far cry from women, who have to look like they made an effort to look effortlessly good. Don't asl me how it's done. I'm not one of those women.)

Okay... I would love to chat more (for example, about that time I killed a fly with my bare - ick - hands), but unfort I have a tonne of things waiting to be done. TTTT!

Prime Time

"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

There are, or ought to be, logical reasons for the way people feel, I think. So why can't I figure out the roots of my frustration?

Perhaps it's true, I indeed have too much time on my hands, so that it seeps into my mind and messes with it. I have tried constant rationalising. I have tried to distract my thoughts by keeping myself busy. I have tried talking it over with friends. I have tried approaching the source of the problem (well, one of the them, maybe not the other). But it tires me out.

Why can't I seem to understand? What is it that I want? It seems that, for one, the more I vocalise my thoughts, the more I expect. With the other I am slinking away.

I'm sorry, y'all. I'm trying to seek solace in writing while at the same time refraining from revealing too much. So impossible.

Fair Ambition

I love me, but why, oh why, can’t I have alabaster skin like hers*???



Look at my skin, against my friends'’:


Ew. Terrible eye make-up, but nevermind. Specifically, look at Linghui, who’s on my left.

I know, I know, here’s where that age-old adage comes in: the grass is greener on the other side. People with curly hair love straight hair, and vice versa. Tall people sometimes wish they were shorter, and vice versa. People with full, thick lips are wistful for thinner ones, and vice versa. Women with decent-sized boobies wish they were smaller, and – oops, that applies only to Ching. Fair women go and tan themselves so much they are in danger of getting skin cancer later in life, and darker skinned women won’t leave the house without first slapping on some sunscreen (bless them, their skin will thank them for it in years to come. You now know where I stand on the to-put-or-not-to-put debate).

Sigh. No, actually, I don’t know. Why am I even reduced to writing about such infinitesimally minute matters? Because my life is put on repeat mode – everyday’s the same as the previous one, save for a few variations here and there. But that’s another blog entry for another day. Fair skin! It’s a fact men prefer women with fair skin, like the lady in the pic above. Why is that so, I wonder. Is it a biological thing? (Pseudo-science coming up, watch out!) Maybe good, fair skin would show how this particular woman has no pimples/pock marks from acne scars, and hence possess better DNA for better chances of offspring survival in future, if mating were to take place with her. Dark skin, on the other hand, hides pimples and the scars they leave behind more than fair skin would, and it’s easier to tell, if someone were fair, if s/he had good skin, than if that person were dark.

Is it a social thing? In the past, fair skin may have (or may not have, I don’t know, I haven’t done the research) been a sign of wealth, because the person who possesses fair skin obviously hasn’t gone down to the fields to do the old sow-plant-weed deal, and doesn’t need to do so. She stayed home and learnt how to embroider beautiful mandarin ducks, put on make-up and do up her hair, and cook for her future husband. Such a symbol of wealth stuck and even though times have changed, old habits die hard.

Or is it a pure aesthetic thing? Girls just look prettier fair. Features stand out more, mah. So dainty and weak and – uh-oh, we’re back to the social factor again. I’d write more but that’s it! Aesthetics. The word speaks for itself.

*Disclaimer: I know there are many other fair women out there, but hers is the first face that popped to mind when I think of white – sorry, fair – skin. I also know that she can look ghostly being this fair (re: an episode in “Beautiful Illusions” which my sis was watching when she suddenly shouted “Oh my god! Come and see! Come and see! Like ghost!!”), and that some of it may be a result of the make-up she uses, as this photo attests:



and that she may not even be that fair anyway, as this photo below suggests (or maybe it's the make-up, la):



But, all things considered, she still is quite a good candidate for my illustration.

** Nicked the pictures off these two sites:
http://www.geocities.com/fannaticsworld
http://www.geocities.com/fannmatters

Bangkok Abridged

Oh gosh. If I don’t make good my promise and finish journaling Days Two thru Four, I’ll never get down to writing about all the other happenings (IF you could call them that) in my life. Initially, I wanted to wait till all the photos from Daphne’s camera are in my hands, but I think we could make do with the re-sized ones. I really don’t have to be anal about it ‘cause after all what makes it to the net are just bite-sized versions of the originals, right? Right.

Come next morn, I found my friends were more far gone than I’d thought they’d be. Well actually come to think of it, Daphne, who was sleeping closest to the window – we’d forgotten to draw the curtains – was the first to awaken. But it was early, and you know how it’s like to be the first to wake up, right? No one else is awake! It’s not really nice to be the one to wake the rest. It is seems so loserly to go brush your teeth and stare into space ‘cause you can’t do anything else since your two other friends are still fast asleep. I know about such conundrums because for the rest of the trip, I seemed to always be the first to wake up. Which was a weird experience for me, because I never, ever, am the first to rise when traveling with my family. Maybe it was due precisely to the fact that it was my first trip alone. At the back of my mind, I always had this pressure to prove to my parents that yes, Julia is old enough to take care of herself. She can go on overseas trips on her own without mucking up.

Throughout the trip, I kept uttering irritating lines as “Who has the hotel room keys?” while double-checking to make sure the hotel room door was locked; “Be careful of your things!” whenever we passed by a dark/crowded street; periodically reminded my companions to “Drink more water”; and made sure we did not get ripped off by another cab driver again. As you can tell, a lot was at stake. By Day Four Ching was rolling her eyes at every such sentence. I don’t blame her.

Oh but all this just distracts from my exhibitionist urge! Talking about being the first to wake up early was only meant to be a way to initiate another one of those photos I took. It was going to segue in, right after I talked about my friends being far gone and that weird feeling I got to be having to be waiting for them to freshen up and go down for breakfast, this wait giving me the time to take silly pictures of myself like the one below for no other reason than to entertain my blog readers for a tenth of a second:



But because I went off on a tangent, I couldn’t possibly do that anymore. Bummer. That’s okay, though, because I can still show you guys the pictures I took at the breakfast table, while waiting for Daf and Ching to get the food. It was really crowded – I’d picked the wrong time for us to wake up and go down, my bad again (although why I make it seem like it naturally is my responsibility to make decisions such as these elude me) – so one of us had to reserve a table by planting ourselves at one of them. Shenton Way customs don’t apply in Bangkok, although bags do, which was what a couple of men did at the table I thought was surprisingly unoccupied, but by then it was too late to change to another, so I just shamelessly uprooted a chair from one of the neighbouring tables and added it, very uncomfortably, in the space where our table ended and the next began.

These are the men I was speaking to you about:



Our hotel was rather old and a teeny-tiny bit creepy (though I didn’t tell my friends that), but it has some nice décor in the breakfast room, whatever you call it, nonetheless:





The croissant looked yummy, but in reality was heavy and not in the least flaky.



By the way, in the hotel lobby was a lounge that had cakes on display, for sale. Each day we saw the same forlorn pieces of baking sitting there not being eaten, and joked about how we should take pictures everyday, just to see if any were sold at all. We never did, but on the third day (I think) one of the cheesecakes looked noticeably skinnier, and on the following the cakes were cleared (correct me if I’m wrong, girls). Maybe whoever it was that bought the slices of cake threatened to sue?

Thanks to Dad, our hotel was located really conveniently. Everyday, all we had to do was walk down this little stretch of road, maybe a 5 minute walk, probably less, and we’d hit the main road, where we’d usually take the train or catch a cab (which we took a lot. Cabs are actually cheaper than trains in Bangkok!). While there were cabs and cab drivers heckling on the way out, somehow we (rather, I) was wary. For what reason I think you guys know as well. At night for some reason (grocery shopping at Foodland, a supermarket-cum-eatery near the main road; we walked home after dinner at a nearby hotel) or other we’d walk in too. There was only one time that the cab took us right to the hotel door. By day, that stretch of road is nice and bright and friendly.



At night, the street comes alive, with hookers, street meat stalls, fruit stalls, what-have-you. Smaller hotels dot the street all the way down, together with little shops offering long-distance calls home at dirt-cheap rates, internet connection, and so on. And did I mention the numerous massage parlors offering Traditional Thai massage (which we considered patronizing on our last night but in the end we were too broke to. And maybe we wanted to shop just that little bit more.)? Or hairdressing salons promising a good wave or two?



But we never did check out what exactly was on the fourth floor of our hotel…



Shopping. Shopping in Bangkok involves some degree of dexterity. If you thought the changing rooms in Far East are bad, you were wrong. Usually the places we went to were cramp and small, with no space to fit in a fitting room (no pun intended), so we had to make do with sarongs. Again, for your amusement, I illustrate:



The coolest thing we did that day, and I think the highlight of the trip for me, was to take one of the public buses. We’d just ran out of money shopping at Siam Square (yes, it can happen to you too), and so were on our way back to our hotel to refuel and recharge. But we had trouble getting a cab, and since we were already at a busstop, we asked a local which bus to take, and at the same time put the Thai we learnt to use: “Soi Ha. Soi Ha. Soi Ha.” (Translated, it means: “Street Five. Street Five. Street Five.”)



You can’t tell, but that day was swelteringly hot. That night, I noticed small red welts all over my neck. Over the next two days they morphed into pimples, and the skin on that area got really scaly and altogether very unpleasant to look at. Thankfully it didn’t irritate me much.

Bangkok has quite a few old-school theatres, screening movies that are, I heard, much cheaper than what we have over here (duh). I took down pics of some of the more interesting ones.







Did I mention we ate at Foodland that afternoon? The food’s really good for the price (S$3-5). On our last day we ate there again, and met this old Swedish guy who was really friendly (maybe a little too much). He’d been here every year for twenty-eight years, each time for a stretch of two months. Mostly to Pattaya for the summer sea breeze, so he says (Ching wondered aloud after what he meant by his “girlfriends”), but he has friends here as well so he drops by.

At Foodland, you order with the waiter, and you wait while they cook your food on the spot for you.





After you’ve eaten you slip the cash into this little green container where they have your order written on a slip of paper, and wait for someone to take it.



Your change gets returned on a small metal tray, whereupon you usually leave a small tip since the food was so dirt cheap and as a gesture that you enjoyed the food and so that the cooks will not send you off with a scowl.

Foodland was good, but this little Japanese restaurant served really nice food. Slightly more ex, though, with company of slightly more dubious backgrounds and agenda as well (local women with Japanese men. Go figure.). We went back again the following night, even though we made our next stop Chinatown.



Our last day was spent at Chatuchak Weekend Market, where the weather was sauna-hot. It was so hot it tested Ching’s patience - this being the girl who sleeps with her windows opened a silver and with the fan off. But they had everything but coffins there, so the sights and buys made up for it quite a bit, at least for me.







Us humans, with no fur, were already wilting in the heat. Imagine how the animals must’ve felt, sharing cramped quarters with twenty to a hundred others (there were Syrian hamsters, fur matted, packed so close they hardly had space to manoeuvre) for hours and hours on end. You wonder how many survive through the weekend. All kinds of creatures abound: from puppies and kittens to hedgehogs, stoats, squirrels and chipmunks, and even snakes. There were a lucky few which had the luxury of air-conditioning, though.





Chatuchak was huge. We got lost.



And in the end, the heat got the better of us (burnt a hole in my pocket!), and we headed back to the hotel earlier than we’d planned. Which was fine by us, because we were badly in need of a shower. But because we had checked out of our room earlier on, we could only bathe in the pool loos. At first we were worried the personnel wouldn’t allow us to, but luckily they were quite obliging and left us alone. Which was a good thing, too, because as things turned out the weather was bad and our flight was delayed some three hours. I was surprisingly okay about it, while Ching was surprisingly grumpy. To pass the time, we took pictures and gave each other massages. We changed three boarding gates, the last one at the farthest end of the airport. We’d been in the loo washing up, and so were one of the last to leave, so we rushed down to the boarding gate Amazing Race-style. That turned out to be completely unnecessary, because they were, once again, late to let us through, although this time it was a mere twenty minutes. The flight home was turbulence-filled (though everyone asked very politely what exactly it was that caused the long delay) but the view was rather breath-taking.



May I also mention, by way of conclusion, some of the more thought-provoking things I saw that is simultaneously current yet already talked to death?

At MBK, Bangkok’s Ngee Ann City. Our bags were searched. :



At the airport:

Bangkok, Day One

I am now standing at the promotions counter, on what will be my final day of being a working gurl. After returning from the bustling streets of Bang Cock – I couldn’t resist it any longer – I had to get back to work, get prepared for The Boyfriend's arrival back to Singapore and various other things, none of which involved trying to Get A Real (meaning permanent – after this stint, salesgirls/cashiers have earned my respect) Job.

But what a pity it would be if I were not to record down, for posterity's sake, my experiences while there! Adventure lay in wait for us the moment we stepped off the plane:

Where were the immigration counters?

That bit I wrote on Sunday. Ok ok, in reality we were not quite so pathetic as such. We did find the immigration counters without any problems, who'm I kidding right? There're signs all over airports so that even dumbos like me can follow them without much trouble. After standing in line for 10-15 minutes, it was finally Ching's turn to walk up to the counter. We were naturally excited: it was for both girls the maiden voyage to the city and my first on my own, with friends instead of family. In fact, we were so excited and giggly like girls go when they're excited we snapped pictures of seeming non-importance-complete-mundanity like this one below:



We watched with bated breath for Ching to get that first stamp on her then untainted passport, only to see the lady behind the counter sternly shake her head no, looking at us as if we'd brought some contraband into the country, raise her hand as if directing her elsewhere – a flat denial of entry.

Turns out, at Don Mueang International Airport, T1 and T2 are connected, and being the travel virgins we were – well, kind of – we strolled into the T2 immigration counters instead of the ones at T1. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem at all, 'cause all we'd have to do is to follow everyone else as they walked out. But
1) This was a small plane, being a budget airline that we were taking
2) The plane didn't take off at full capacity
3) Everyone made a bee-line for the loos (for what, your guess is as good as mine. Plane no got meh?! Past the immigration counters no got meh?! Hotels no got meh?!).

So, yeah, we had to queue up all over again. It was like one of those funny moments in FRIENDS where they screw things up the first time, and on the second try, they try and do the same thing in exactly the same way, with the same brimming enthusiasm and goofy actions. We even took another one of those pictures:



Okay I was kidding. Gotcha! But I really did go: Yay!!!! Welcome to Bangkok, guys! I can't believe we're here! Yippity-yippity-jump-jump-jump. And all that trite, again.

Sadly, my stupidity did not end there. I got me and my friends cheated the moment we stepped foot on Thai soil!!! As we were pushing our trolley out, we saw people beckoning to us from behind a counter that read "Airport Taxi". The glint in their eyes served to swerve us away from them once, but like I said, we were duped. A second counter full of people with the same glint and over-eager smiles were lying in wait for us next to the exit. I really should've listened to my gut instinct and walked on, but I was worried about having to eat humble pie should we have to come back to them again, so we handed over the 700 baht (not inclusive of the additional 60 we had to pay for the highway toll), but not without some amount of uncertainty. That came up to about 10 sing pax, which isn't very ex by Singaporean standards, but I'm guessing there's a very good reason why there was that hungry glint in those people's eyes. And the most pathetic thing? I only realised why I'd felt so unsure when our limo drove past the normal city "taxi meter" cabs. I was quite pissed, at the airport staff but most of all with myself, for failing to see the dupe that was about to happen. That man must've been laughing inside when I shot back a defensive "No" when he asked if this was our first time in the country. All the way to the bank. I was duly rapped on the knuckles by my dad when I called him that night, because I really should've known better. (But that didn't stop me from nursing my bruised ego with the retort: "You told me so long ago!") What I lousy guide to my friends I was.

But ah, I'm willing to let that go. After all, Bangkok treated us quite well, as you, dear blog reader, will find out soon. One of the first things we did once we checked into our room was to, in Daph's words, "season" the mattress.



But we were focused girls, so we didn’t waste much time on stuff that ate into our shopping time. Our first stop: Pratunam, land of the Wholesale Price.

But not before Ching reports to her boyfriend.



And also, lunch.



In Thailand the food courts operate on a coupon system: no money is actually exchanged when you buy your food, all payment is made at a counter, and you pay for your food with coupons of equivalent monetary value. All unused coupons at the end of your meal you get a refund. It's a really cheap way of settling mealtimes, but not the most appetising of choices (although when I was last there in December, all our meals were decent enough for us to continue scrimping money this way – all the better to shop with!). The two prawns in my tom yum fried rice dry were black, soft and crumbly, having been left on display with nothing but some ice to sit upon for jeez knows how long. Suffice to say, this was the first and last time we ate at a food court in our four-day stay.

Now at this juncture I must add that we really didn't have many photos taken whilst shopping, because of the aforementioned reason that we are Very Focused Girls. But here's a picture taken while we were on the Skytrain there (which was a mistake, because we ended up having to walk quite a distance, due to my miscalculations. The Skytrain, by the way, worked very much like the way our trains did before the days of EZLink-to-your-not-so-small-change) :



Wow, looks like I've inadvertently given a blow-by-blow. Tune in next time for Day Two of our fumbles and wumbles!

Arigato

Today, I sold a bottle of bath salts to two Japanese women who could hardly understand what I was trying to say. How triumphant I felt after. This accomplishment was made all the more of a feat because there was no wild gesticulations involved, no loud, long drawl of words of foolishly thinking that talking like I had low IQ would allow the tower of Babel to reach heaven. Only a polite pointing to the feet trying to tell them "you can soak your feet in it too". Hyiuk hyiuk.

I coud hardly believe it when they walked away with the bottle. And, in my glee, I forgot how to say thank you so very very much (as the literal translation must be) until I didn't need it anymore.

Bangkok, by the by, was fantastic. To orgasmic proportions for shopaholics (not that I am one). Will blog and post pics later, when I have the time.