The day before yesterday, I decided that I needed to rid myself of the fluffy grow-out from my 3 months ago bob. I had about 2 inches of natural brown haloing my scalp beneath the brilliant, fake red and it all just looked like a strange, unbalanced, foofy mess. This is how my hair tends to operate. I clean up very well- a good cut, a good colour, a little bit of eyebrow shaping and I could pass for quite acceptable. Left to my own devices (read: laziness, hatred of hairdressers), I tend to be naturally inclined towards She's Really Let Herself Go, Hasn't She?

So, the day before yesterday I willed myself out of the flat and down the street and into that very intimidating place, the hair salon whose staff doesn't speak your language nor you theirs. Luckily I excel at miming and pointing and deciphering complex utterances without actually understanding the individual words spoken.  Point at hair dye, point at preferred colour, point at hair, point at picture of hairdo in magazine, point at eyebrows, point at model's eyebrows, do a little price negotiation on a calculator and all is set.


Except.

Except that the dude who did my hair ignored the photo I had pointed to and initially gave me a Mrs Brady helmet-mullet. See below.


I especially loathed the little mud flaps over the ears and the flippy mullet at the back. So I pointed to his scissors and pointed to the offending hair flaps and after considerable negotiations, I got the haircut that you can see in the second photo.  That was taken yesterday, before I washed the salon hair gel out. The first photo is how my hair actually looks when I wake up, untamed. I forgot how very very suggestable/malleable my hair is. When I stumbled half asleep into the kitchen this morning, D. exclaimed, "Your hair looks like its on fire!"  The bright red mohawk upsweep indeed resembled an out of control head-fire.  Must buy product. Loathe product but can't very well go around looking like my head is on fire, can we?

EDIT

This is what it looks like after washing and then drying naturally en route to the supermarket (no comb, no goop, nowt). Is it scary? Acceptable? The little wings intrigue me....

Pinto gallo experiment successful. Have lovely big pan of spicy rice and beans. Half a huge onion and 3 elephant garlics and the last 3 inner stalks of celery and 3 long red organic chilis all sauteed up, then spiced with my precious (oh, so precious) bottle of Cholula hot sauce and a mix of cumin and coriander and such, and the last of the rice and the leftovers from the black beans I cooked up for the minestrone on Saturday. A squeeze of lime at the end. A lovely lunch on a very hot day.

So. First official un-workday of my newly liberated self. I inevitably woke at 6am to the tune of the light waterfall that gushes forth most mornings from the bedroom's air conditioner. However, normally I am up long before it starts to drip and am out the door and in the metro by the time D. usually texts me to mention the bedroom's sporadic irrigation system. Thus, although 6am may seem quite early to most normal, sane, healthy folk, this marks a new departure for me into the land of rising after 4:30am.  I also bore witness to the zen garden tai chi theme music down below that doesn't usually start until around 6am.  All very civilized.

And what have I accomplished on this first day not involving 4 hours of commuting and a lot of wasted time in the office? Laundry, lots of laundry. Had a spare-bed covered in handwash-only shirts that have now been handwashed and hung out to dry. Also dusted the flat and cleaned the kitchen. Drank a pleasing amount of coffee. Went grocery shopping and finally remembered to buy dish soap. Bought some very nice kiwis and some organic red chilis. Am currently in the process of assembling the bits and pieces needed for a pinto gallo lunch.

In the grocery store, plugged into Manu Chao on the ipod, basket of unweighed veggies in hand, I queued for the weighing-lady in the produce section. The produce section is a brutal place, crowded and passive/aggressively violent. Everything must be weighed and priced by the lone weighing lady and on busy days, the queue for this backs up to the point where I give up entirely and decide I don't actually need or want nectarines or garlic or mangoes and head back to the dried beans aisle. However, today I had energy and determination and kiwis and broccoli and chilis and I queued. Midway through my queuing, I was accosted by a very short grandmother who tugged at my basket and started yelling at me, pointed index finger in lecturing-position. Bark bark bark! she shouted. Bark bark bark!  I looked at her utterly confused, as I really had no idea why I was being lectured (am I in queue? did I queue jump? did I bang into or block anyone? no no no). She grabbed my elbow and pointed at a baby (curly haired, blond, not at all Chinese) in a stroller and barked at me again and tried to place my free hand on the handle of the stroller. Ah! Baby blocking path with stroller was mine! I totally forgot I'd left my baby there! Whoops. Yes, yes, of course, the lone white baby that i had never seen before (but was, of course, neglecting) was inevitably mine because, well, I'm the lone white woman in the grocery store. How could I have forgotten?  She seemed quite put off when I shook my head and shrugged her off. I'm so negligent. So cruel!

So work is done. No more insanely long and early treks out to the wilds beyond Pudong. That stopped last Thursday. I'd have noted it sooner but our stolen wifi has been down and China has been on a harmonizing binge lately due to Events Taking Place Somewhere Else so I've been laying low on the net front.  Visas are being sorted, awkwardly and inconveniently. Timing was misjudged and papers weren't filed on time by people beyond my ken and so my bureaucratic workload has increased exponentially over the next fortnight. It's fine though. I need some focus and if going to Public security Bureau then to Foreigner Police then back to PSB all in one day, across both sides of the river Pu and spanning many metro transfers and long walks in 40 degree heat, then so be it. It builds character.

Our wifi came back this evening, after a pleasing day out at Dino Beach- a waterpark at the edge of Shanghai, brutally expensive but still appreciated for our sudden ability to spend hours floating down fake canals in an inner tube being sprayed by water jets.  The fake beach was packed and the water slides had queues all the way back down to their bases so we just stayed on our tube built for two and circumnavigated the fake primeval park. I steered, D. floated. It was pleasant. We pinkened. My soles are scuffed and slightly shredded from scraping the bottom of the canal. Like a pedicure in reverse.

Tomorrow is Monday and I don't care.

Woke at 4, feeling somewhere between like death and fresh as daisy.  My sleep and my dreams are all weird these days- lots of dreams but not much sleep, like it's all been concentrated like the freeze-dried durian I found at the metro station (it still smells, just less so).  Today is the last day at work but it will only be a half day because I must go to the police in the afternoon to get a one month visa extension because things took, well, a little longer than expected to process my Foreign Expert Certificate transfer. At the moment I am in limbo and my expert status has been artificially cancelled early by my current uni but not yet renewed by my next uni. Apparently I am briefly not an expert.

Hot this morning. When I woke in our cool, dark cave, my skin was normal to the touch. Upon leaving cool, dark cave, I immediately started simultaneously sneezing and sweating and itching. I'm still being eaten by invisible bugs. My back felt itchy last night and so I turned to D. and asked him to put some of the tiger balm he'd picked up for my itchy toes on my back as I couldn't reach. Lifted up shirt for him to inspect back and he exclaimed in (I thought, mock) horror. Turned out his shock/horror was spot on- yes, I was indeed itchy because I had two huge, swollen bites the size of an Arizona mesa on my spine. Hooray! I am tasty!  Went to sleep, tingling with the cooling sensation of methol slathered all over me, reeking like an old school hospital yet again.  So yes, woke feeling still a bit cool and tingly but as soon as I emerged into the sauna that we call the rest of the flat, my body went haywire and the itching resume and I sneezed a dozen times for effect and my pre-bed shower freshness was immediately nullified.

Sigh. 4am. Tired!

Note: Firefox spellcheck underlined 'durian' but didn't have anything to say about 'cxooling'.I found that one myself.

35 degrees and a bazillion percent humidity. It's very very hot today and nothing seems to be air conditioned.

I am working from home today. By this, I mean I'm drinking my 2nd big mug of coffee and sweltering at the kitchen table, where our borrowed wifi comes in clearly.  It's pouring rain outside, driving away any casual strollers or tai chi practitioners from the manufactured calm of the courtyard pagodas and ponds. Last night, the thunder rumbled viscerally and the lightning flashed horizontally.  I inevitably forgot my brolly. Was drenched like a drenched cat upon arrival home last night, orange shirt plastered brightly against my skin, jeans glued on. Sandals squelched. Sigh. The rain is good though. Am big fan of monsoons and plum rains and suchlike- and indeed there are many excellent plums out now. Nectarines and mangoes too. In the supermarket, there was a display of fresh seasonal produce- live frogs in a bucket and stacks of newly harvested, still wet seaweeds. 

Massive photo-spam under the jump. Mobile-phone upload mania!
( Pickaboos! )

They put in my foodie bit!   And the very first comment liked me me me!

Meme
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. (Please note: If you simply wish to comment on something I've said but don't want to participate in the meme, that is fine. I will only give you five words if you specifically comment you with 'Words!')

used_songs gave me the following:  food, photographs, colors, travel, teaching


( Here! )

If anyone is on facebook and is as bored and deluged with office hours as I am (we won't go into the visa stresses here), I have a new creation who needs friends. His name is Barry Zombi and, well, he's a zombie. He and Hector Lakemonster have a bit of a thing going on but it hasn't been going so well. He's a bit lonely. Hell, so is Hector Lakemonster (who is, as you may have gleaned, a lake monster).  If I had more time and energy, I'd write a novel but for now I'm content with just making up facebook pages for imaginary beings and orchestrating conversations between them. Lola Kedi is also needing attention.  They all enjoy playing Mafia Wars very much and would be happy to join you if you also fancy whacking rival mobsters.

One and a half more weeks!

My favorite kind of bible camp.

PS I bought not one but two pairs of jeans this weekend. That fit. In a city of women the size of a thimble.  A thimble with no hips or booty. But in an unmarked bootleg-goods shopping mall full of 7 layers of demons tugging at the hems of our robes as we passed through it, at a tiny little hole in the wall called, simply, Jeans, I found 2. One is a fake Dolce and Gabbana and the other is a real Chinese brand I'd never heard of. The changing room was at the back, ducking under the overhanging merchandise, through a small closet door, in a long and very narrow storage room amongst boxes of fake jeans.  The fake Italian jeans are 4 sizes smaller than the real Chinese jeans but they fit exactly the same. Go figure.

I got it! I passed the Lucrative Testing Thingy exam!  I am a Certified Lucrative Testing Examiner!  I can now be shuttled off to cities along the Eastern Seabord, put up in cushy hotels, given a 500rmb food allowance, and oral test students for a few hours over the weekend, then head home Sunday evening significantly wealthier. If I do this twice a month, I can save a pleasant 7-9000rmb apparently- more than my current base salary. Seriously. This is f*cking madness.

And in other news, my legs are all bit to pieces by the silent mosquitoes that are lurking under my desk at work. I couldn't figure out why my feet and ankles and calves were covered in nasty, bleedy, hot, swollen bites when our flat is bug-free and I hadn't heard or seen anything anywhere.  However, much like my doofus students who don't expect to get caught cheating but who still think it's safe to sit back and chortle over the fact that they copied word for word from bloody Wikipedia (*sigh!* Google strings anyone?), the mosquito who landed silently and stealthily on my calf this morning didn't think I'd notice and lingered just a bit too long over her sweet blood cocktail and I mashed her into my swollen flesh. Sigh.

Off tomorrow. Working from home.  Will actually sleep from home. And drink coffee.  I may mark a bit. May.

My favourite link du matin (though tis only 5:42 am)

Note: Edited to add a few more pics under the cut

And some photo spam from my students' presentations last week

This first one just struck me as marvelously evocative.



Hmm...okay, sure, I'll give it a shot- if you insist!

( It's all here )

Seriously. It's hot. The Amazonian birdsong in the metro only reinforces the sauna atmosphere.

Shoe themes:

I keep seeing the following: Crocs, probably fake, in all colours and shapes and styles. Some are those huge clunky gardening ones, but with hard puffy-sticker decals of Snoopy or Hello Kitty adorning the tops. Others shoes include horrible, horrible patent leather high heeled mary jane pumps the colour of battleships or cheap beige panty hose (and usually accompanied by cheap, constricting, anklet-height beige panty hose) and fake Converse high tops and low tops, decorated with patterns of flowers or shopping scenes or bunny rabbits.

Sidewalk themes:

The sidewalks tend to be used in place of rooms which are normally found inside not outside. In the morning on my way to work, the second noodle joint has its prep counter out on the sidewalk, with a bushel of cilantro stacked on the concrete and several skull-capped men with cleavers hacking away at handfuls of it on cardboard work surfaces.  At the first noodle joint, the one we breakfast at on the weekend, your man can be found reducing the broth in the huge pot and stoking the coal fires beneath it.  Further up, there are welders with pipes and lengths of metal jutting out of their workshop and across my path, sparks flying, fumes permeating my skin as I pass.  There are taxi drivers paused at intervals, pissing on trees. There are old men in pyjamas, shuffling past as if en route to the living room.

Colour themes

A black car means you are important or that you want people to think that you are important or that you intend to convey seriousness and demend respect. A black car indicates that you are unlikely to stop for anyone except perhaps a really annoyed Canadian wielding an umbrella and threatening to scratch the length of your blackness with its sharp tip. I had never realized before how I'd only ever seen expensive black cars before. If you have a limo or a diplomat kinda car, you paint it black. If you have a  boxy 1990 Honda Civic, it is more likely to be white or red or maybe, maybe grey. In Shanghai, even the mangiest, moth-eaten, dented death trap can be black and think it commands respect (and amnesty from traffic light responsibilities). If you aren't important enough ( in your own mind if not in reality) to command a black car, then grey is next best. 

Men wear a lot of pink here.  I see men in all shades of pink. Neal (real name Yi, but pronounced Nyi in Shanghai dialect, apparently) wears pink striped rugby shirts to work. Across from me on the metro tonight were two business men in two different shades of soft pink. Many wear little jade carvings on thin, red-thread necklaces or bracelets. Women too. But women don't seem to wear pink much.

Today's Writing Challenge (possibly first in a series, if I can be bothered).

I am reading everything she has written. I love her.

Feeling rather adrift and exhausted today, so stealing a meme fromquietgrrl 

Adapted from House Beautiful Magazine- Preferred home things

Flower:  Something pretty, simple, not too many layers of petals, sweet smelling- no preference.
Sofa shape:  enveloping, no hard edges or overstuffing, soft but not slippery fabrics
Stationery: hotmail. It has been a very long time since I have bought writing paper. i used to love that fibrous Nepalese home made paper.
Alarm clock: My mobile phone
Mattress: Do I get a choice? Firm yet accomodating. i still haven't topped the fabulousness of my vast old Erenkoy bedroom.
Everyday dishes:  mismatched, from Metro: 2 rice bowls- blue with Chinese flower design on the rim; 2 bowl-plates (the plates with the rounded up rim) with vaguely Chinese watercolour design from Tesco; 2 mugs- one blue with same flower design as the rice bowls and one more fluted and white with a whispy watercolour design on it.
Coffee table book: Last week's Time or Newsweek or Let's Go Shanghai. Hardly decorative or impressive.
All-purpose glass:  Coffee mug. We haven't bought glasses yet.
Soap: A vast collection stolen from a few years' worth of hotels. Also some pleasant smelling Christmas stocking soaps.
Towel: Big and fluffy and chartreuse
Vacuum:  Haven't ever owned a vacuum. Have a broom though.
Lightbulb wattage: Low, incandescent.
Coffee or tea:  Rhumba gusto forte
Kitchen gadget: rice cooker
Comfort food: spud 'n' egg'n' tomatilla salsa
Color:  currently, tangerine
Wallpaper:  no! clean, simple walls, painted.
Cleaning supply: Whatever is available at the supermarket whose label I can understand
Home fragrance: D's opium incense
Artist: Frieda Kahlo (for her home decor, actually)