Hair today, gone tomorrow

I had my hair cut today, which is always a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. After years of looking for the elusive perfect hairdresser, I eventually found THE ONE, recommended by a friend.

Moga is now the place for my hair to be chopped off in peace. They pamper to my hair needs – this includes a hairwash + head massage that seems to last for ages, which is followed by a soothing hot towel placed just under the neck. Not only this, they also give you a head, shoulder and back massage – now this is what I call service.

So, back to my hair cut. After watching my hairdresser, Hiroki, spend an hour sculpting and perfecting every strand on my head with immense precision (how I enjoy watching his hands work), I feel slightly guilty knowing that I will end up ruining his creation after the first wash. And I wish that I could have the ability and patience to preserve the salon effect. However, my laziness means that I can’t even be bothered to use a hair dryer (in fact, I didn’t even own one until my friend came to stay at mine).

So, for those of you who won’t get to see me before I ruin my new haircut (which will be most of you), here is a photo in memory of it (with my head looking a bit squashed):

And here’s one of the back. As you can see, I’m a bit of a mullethead, but I think I can live with that for the sake of fashion. (The white flecks are actually from my phone – where’s Photoshop when you need it!).

Graffiti, a very big fluffy penguin, and the important thing about ice cream

So finally, the sun has decided to come out and project its rays of hotness on the UK. Yippee! Which also seems to give license to people to not wear much (spotted: bikini-wearer in Hyde Park – it’s only April!).

With the sun shining on us, Andy and I decided to do some exploring of this fascinating city we now live in. So, to Portobello Road we went via the No. 27 bus to Turnham Green (this is my favourite bus – takes me to Hammersmith to see my friend Agathe one way, and to Chalk Farm with the yummy ice cream parlour the other way).

The market was packed – and we walked the whole length of Portobello Road. On the way back to the bus stop, we missed out the busy market road and walked along Kensington Park Road instead, on which I took a photo of this brilliant graffiti on the front of a bathroom shop (which I’m not sure was or was not closed down):

So that was exciting photo number one. Exciting photo number two I took today in front of HMV on Oxford Street (Bond Street). This one is for you, Elisa! (Wow, it’s REEEAAALLY BIIIG!!!!!)

I shall end on exciting photo number three, which will also serve as my thought for the day. Walking along Oxford Street past Selfridges, we also passed an ice cream stand where the servers wore T-shirts stating a very important point about ice cream that I firmly believe in (this one’s for you, Chris, my ice cream buddy)…

The Internet

There are a number of reasons why I have neglected my regular thought-purging duties these past few months.

1) Now that I’ve moved out of my parents’ place, I have to do my own laundry, cleaning, keeping the flat looking tidy etc etc (I have my own live-in chef so I don’t have to worry about the cooking Except when the chef’s ill…).

2) I now live with my boyfriend, so I tend to spend the time I would have spent writing a post chilling out with him instead.

3) It took NTL about a month to get the internet hooked up for us at our new flat. By then, I’d gotten used to not using a computer at home which is when I’m in my best frame of mind for blogging.

This last point is an interesting one. While living at my parents’, after dinner I would immediately switch my laptop on and start internetting away all night. Whether it’s surfing, instant messaging, emailing, blogging, I could always find something to do online. There’s something quite addictive about going online – searching on a list of things that you thought about while driving or in a meeting, reading up on stuff, ‘just checking’ to see if you’ve got any emails etc etc.

And then I moved from constant internet access to a place where we didn’t have internet. And so I had to do all my internetting at work. And I found I really liked it. No longer were my days consumed with staring at a computer screen day and night. I had my evenings back, and my boyfriend had me back (although sometimes I’d lose him to his laptop doing work or the Xbox 360).

It’s amazing how the internet is such a big part of our lives now. There’s this overwhelming amount of information available just from typing some words and pressing enter. It was my mum’s birthday at the end of November, and unusually for me, I completely forgot about it until a week before. Panicking because I’d forgotten my mum’s birthday and I only had a week to get her something, I immediately got on the case. I email my sister in Hong Kong…’Hi Sis. It’s mum’s birthday next Monday. What should I get her?’

‘O yeh, I forgot too. What about some books on lacemaking?’

Good plan. So I look on Amazon to see what lacemaking books are available. I pick out one that looks good. Is it in stock? “Usually dispatched within 2 to 4 weeks.” Damn. I also look at some other bookselling websites. No luck.

Ok then, let’s try the traditional approach. High street bookstores. In my lunchtime, I go to WHSmiths, Waterstones and some other independent bookstores. Nothing. And there aren’t any haberdashery shops for miles around that are easy for me to get to.

Back at work, I’m on the internet again. I google the title of the book to see if any specialist lace bobbin suppliers stock the book. I find one, check out their website and phone them up. They stock it, yey! And they’re offering it at £15 instead of £20! Fantastic! They also sell some pretty lace bobbins so I ask her to pick some out and add it to the order. I pay by card over the phone and then hang up, feeling relieved that I’ve sorted out the present.

Following morning, I am extremely impressed to find that the package has been delivered to my desk at work. So I’m feeling pretty smug that I’ve managed to find a specialist supplier with all this cool stuff who delivers straightaway.

And my sister, even though she lives in Hong Kong, she managed to order online (another) lacemaking book, and some John Lewis vouchers, and it all got delivered direct to my mum in time for her birthday.

How did we live without the internet?
What would I have missed out on if it didn’t exist? If it weren’t for the internet, I might not have got together with my boyfriend, so I probably wouldn’t have gone to Newcastle to do a Masters, I might be living somewhere else, and I’d probably have a different group of friends.

Have I missed out on anything because of the internet?
How different would our lives be if we didn’t have it?
Would we be able to live without it now?

Is the internet a natural part of our evolution? It doesn’t feel natural. It’s not something we can physically hold in our hands, smell or taste. But natural elements can take it away from us so easily – water doesn’t exactly mix well with computers. Yet we’ve learnt to depend on it. Think of the massive leap backwards we would have to take if it did not exist.

Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s been a while since I last posted, but before I give out another one of my rambling essays, I just wanted to get this gushing post out while it’s still the 25th. So:

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all my most wonderful friends who have made me laugh and smile, and (especially) fed me and supported me, and have enriched my life to make me this very happy and content being.

And, because at Christmas we tell the truth (I watched ‘Love Actually’ last night…), there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…

I LOVE YOU!!!

The ultimate equation

Well, it’s been 2 weeks since my last blog, and much has happened since then. Let’s start with the new home. (And perhaps a slightly longer than intended ‘brief’ history of me and my boyfriend’s relationship.)

My boyfriend, Andy, and I have been going out for over 4 years now. Our 1st year together (June 2002-June 2003) was long distance (Andy=Newcastle; Selma=Bristol) – not too bad, we saw each other every other weekend, taking it in turns to do the 5.5/6-hour train ride. Man, that’s a really long journey. And guess what, EasyJet started doing flights between Bristol and Newcastle right AFTER I left Bristol. Grrrr!

During our 2nd year together (Sept 2003-Sept 2004), we pretty much lived with each other, albeit unofficially (Andy&Selma=Newcastle). We lived within 5 minutes’ walk of each other, which was really lucky. Although I ended up staying over at his pretty much every night as his place was SO much nicer than mine. We did get a glimpse into what actually living with each other was like (ie. both our possessions under the same roof) when he moved into my place in Newcastle during the summer after his flat contract ran out. He earned some summer money while I slaved over my dissertation.

During our 3rd year together, we did long distance for the first half of the year (Sept 2004-Feb 2005, Andy=Shrewsbury/Morzine (France); Selma=High Wycombe). After Andy came home from his snowboarding mini-season in Morzine, he spent a month or so working in factories in Shrewsbury canning ox tongue and packing nuts (ie. peanuts and hazlenut, as opposed to ox’s nuts). In February 2005, after finally leaving the nuts and oxen parts behind, he found a contract job in London earning big bucks while living with me at my parents’ place. So Feb 2005-Sept 2005, Andy&Selma=High Wycombe (+ Selma’s parents).

As a computer genius boy, Andy realised he wanted more than just earn lots of money and play computer games at work at lunchtimes. ‘Yes, I would like to be a MEGA geek and become a computer scientist.’ So then came the Microsoft sponsorship and the NUS card (10% discounts at Top Shop for me, not a bad thing). But it also meant Sept 2005-Sept 2006, Andy=London; Selma=High Wycombe.

As the end of Andy’s flat contract drew near in August 2006, we were faced with two options:

1) I stay in my job in Oxford where I am quite happy, although while I work in Oxford, I will stay living with my parents. If so, Andy carries on living where he is, and we stay as Andy=London; Selma=High Wycombe.

2) We move in together in London. While I like my job in Oxford, I don’t like it enough to commute there from London. So the 2nd option is for me to find a job in London.

Since finishing uni, my ultimate goal was to live and work in London. So I decided to bite the bullet, and pretty quickly I found a job! Around the same time, Andy and I also saw about 15 different one-bedroom flats around North West London, the most memorable being one whose tenant had just been evicted with force and there were still bottles, cigarettes, dirty pants strewn everywhere, plus a full fridge complete with mouldy rotten very perished perishables. Oh yeh, and it was ‘above the chicken shop’ as the estate agent so lovingly pointed out (it was one of those KFC rip off places).

We eventually found a one-bed flat, right where we wanted to be in central London (well done Andy for finding it! And what a brave man for taking it without the girlfriend’s approval first!).

We collected the keys on Friday 22nd September, with the intention of moving in that weekend. However, on the Saturday morning, my mum helpfully (or not) pointed out that that Saturday was a bad day for the year of the Rooster (me) to do big things such as move house. And that Sunday was a bad day for the year of the Dog (Andy) to do big things. Now, this might have been part of a ploy to keep Andy and me at my parents’ for as long as possible. Andy had already been living with me and my parents for 3 weeks until we moved into our new place after his flat contract ran out at the end of August.

We figured that another couple of nights wouldn’t do any harm – we keep the parents happy by avoiding the bad luck, and we get fed. So that weekend, we did lots of driving to and from High Wycombe and London moving our stuff bit by bit (it’s ok to move things in, just can’t actually start living there). And then, finally, on Monday 25th September 2006, Andy and I reached our ultimate equation:

Andy&Selma=London

Parachutes

Two days after I saw the parachuters from my last post, I saw them again! Although this time there were only two of them – and they might not have been the exact same people that had done it two days before. Unless they’re really keen parachuters.

I’m still not very clear as to whether they were parachuting or if they were skydiving – I’m not sure how to tell. But this time they were using a different shaped parachute. The first time, they used round parachutes, also called ‘jellyfish chutes’, like this:

And from the distance that I was driving at, it looked something like this (loads of jellyfish!):

The second time round, they used square-shaped parachutes, also known as ‘ram-air’ parachutes – they give you more control over the parachute or something to that effect. They looked like this:

Although the ones I saw weren’t quite as colourful.

And this second time I saw them, I was closer to the junction of the motorway that I exit at (Junction 9 of the M40), so I actually got to see where they landed while I was taking the exit. And it’s on this field by the motorway, so that’s why it looked like they were landing on the motorway when I saw them the first time.

I’ve found out that there’s a Royal Air Force Sports Parachute Association on Weston-on-the-Green near Bicester, and they’re based here – I spotted the parachutes just to the right of there, closer to the M40. (Google is amazing, the Internet is amazing.)

So, now I would really really like to go parachuting (hint hint).

This concludes today’s lesson on parachutes.

Down, down and away!

I was on my way to work yesterday, driving up the M40 when I saw an airplane flying in the distance straight ahead of me. I noticed it was flying quite low, and then to my surprise, I saw 5 parachuters jump out of the plane! This feeling of surprise turned to delight as I watched the parachuters descend. As they were directly in front of me, it looked as though they might land on the motorway itself, but then I saw them disappear into the horizon … actually, it wasn’t quite as romantic as that, they actually disappeared behind one of those ugly concrete motorway bridges.

But what a lovely sight it was, seeing this group of parachuters floating down through the air. As you do on a Tuesday morning. How random is that??? Although, even if this were a frequent occurrence, I wouldn’t know since the route I was taking wasn’t my normal route to work. It’s only because of the stupid roadworks at the Headington roundabout that I decided to go the long way round so I wouldn’t have to be stuck in traffic for half an hour and exit at the next junction.

And to think that if I hadn’t gone the extra mile (literally – well it’s actually an extra 10 miles), I would have missed this lovely sight!

So stupid roadworks can bring happiness (in a tenuous way).

(I want to go parachuting now.)

‘enough’ or ‘in love’?

After eating dinner today, my dad asked my boyfriend, Andy, ‘enough’? It actually sounded like he’d asked him ‘in love’? I mentioned this, and then Andy and I spent the next hour trying to teach my dad how to pronounce the ‘n’ and the ‘l’ sounds.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been helping Andy with his Cantonese pronunciation. It’s well-known that Chinese is a difficult language to learn as it’s a tonal language – so a syllable such as ‘lei’ can have a different meaning if you change the tone in which you say it. For example, ‘lei’ can mean ‘you’ or ‘come’ depending on if you say it in a rising tone or a low tone. Mandarin has four such tones – Cantonese has seven tones! So you can appreciate how difficult it is to learn – poor Andy for choosing a Cantonese-speaking girlfriend!

Going back to the ‘n’ and the ‘l’ letters. It’s funny how we find these pronunciations so trivial, yet it’s actually quite difficult for a Hong Kong person to distinguish the two. (In Cantonese, the ‘n’ sound and the ‘l’ sound are interchangeable.) I found that my dad tended to say the letter ‘n’ more than ‘l’ – maybe it’s because it’s easier to pronounce.

So next time you think you hear someone asking you if you’re in love, if the person is Chinese and you’re in a situation where food is involved (chances of this are rather big in the UK) then he’s probably asking if you’ve had enough.

If not, then you’ve probably got a silly grin on your face.

Shunted in the rear

‘Someone shunted me in the rear the other day and I’d like to get a quote to get it fixed’.

Yes, those were the words that came out of my mouth when phoning around to get quotes to get my car repaired. The rear in question belonging to that of my beloved Micra, not of yours truly.

So, I got back-bumped on Monday morning last week, on the way to work. It wasn’t a big bump – we were just crawling along in really slow traffic (as per usual around Oxford’s Headington roundabout). It was enough to scrape my plastic bumper though. I spent the following day working at home – I made the most of it by taking a couple of breaks to phone around and then go to workshops to get quotes. Over the next couple of days, I spent a lunchbreak getting another quote, and another day I left my car at home with my Mum while I took her car to work so that someone could come round and do a quote.

I spent all this time phoning up places to see if they do bodywork and then getting quotes. And not just one quote but 4 so that I could get the best deal for the guy who bumped into me! HE’s the one who bumped into me! HE’s the one who’s caused me to waste my time doing all this phoning around and driving to places to get quotes. He could have saved me and my family so much time, and so much of his own money, if he’d paid more attention whilst driving and braked sooner. All this is just so UNNECESSARY! GRRR!

Lesson: Drive carefully and try not to get shunted in the rear.

Hello world!

Right, I am a virgin to blogging so things will look a bit simple until I get the hang of things.

So here goes…