Archive for January, 2011

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(Blow)drying Hair

January 9th, 2011 by Manda | 19 Comments | Filed in Question of the Week, Style

I’m curious as to how people choose to dry their hair after washing it. Blowdryers? Air dry? Wet-to-dry straighteners? Some other form of hair drying that I am not aware of?

I ask because when I stayed with my godmother for a weekend, she was shocked to find out that I hate using anything to dry my hair. I’m all about air drying; it’s the least amount of bother and it works well enough for me! I think part of my aversion to using hair dryers is that when I was little and used them, I had a tendency to get bits of my hair caught in the back of the dryer (the cylinder bit where the fan spins to generate the hot air).

I suppose what people choose depends on lifestyle, too. Like, if people are pressed for time and need a hair dryer to quickly dry hair before heading out. Or not wanting to wait hours for hair to dry before they can go to bed. Personally, I don’t have any qualms with going out with wet hair (unless I have somewhere fancy I need to be) and I’ve been known to go to bed with wet hair from time to time.

Question of the Week: What do you use to dry your hair? Or do you use nothing at all and let nature do its work?

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I’m Beautiful Beyond Compare

January 8th, 2011 by Manda | 5 Comments | Filed in Style, Travel

I always get complimented on how beautiful I am in China. However, this not because I am beautiful. It’s simply customary here, particularly towards white people. (Guys get complimented, too.) More often than not I get these compliments while shopping. Shopkeepers will tell me I’m beautiful before beckoning me inside their store to buy things, or I’ll be in the middle of haggling and I’ll get complimented, as if that would be enough to deter me from haggling ruthlessly. I’ve never paid any attention to it, as it’s all part of life in China.

Yesterday, though, I did a double take at a compliment I received. I think it was my first double take after being told I was pretty.

I was buying a winter hat, and the seller and I had already agreed on a price. After she had her money and I had my hat, she looked at me and said, “You’re very pretty.”

What I failed to mention earlier is that I get more compliments than my friends about how pretty I look because I’m half white, half Chinese. The Chinese seem to hold mixed girls on a whole new level of beauty. This salesgirl was no different; after she complimented me on being pretty, she found out I was mixed and said it was no wonder I was so beautiful.

Let me describe what I looked like yesterday. My hair was unwashed because I had woken up too late and had to run out the door to make it to a lunch date on time. I was in a hoodie, which, while being the comfiest thing I own, does a very good job at rendering me shapeless. My jeans were falling down, because either they have stretched in the last month or I’ve lost weight. My face was greasy, mainly because of my unwashed hair. Oh, and I had no makeup on.

Damn, my self-esteem is going to plummet when I return to the States.

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This Is When I Know I’m In Trouble

January 7th, 2011 by Manda | 7 Comments | Filed in Family, School

Scene: I’m on the phone with my mother, getting told off for one of the various things I do (or don’t do) that bothers her. In an attempt to salvage the situation, I play one of my trump cards (or, “the news of a personal success that I save for informing my mother of when I need rescuing from a lecture”).

Me: My grade1 for the semester got posted. I got a 96.
My mother: That’s not bad.
Me: …that’s 4 points away from a perfect grade.
My mother: Yes, four points.

Sometimes, I wonder why I bother with saying anything.

  1. Because I was enrolled in an intensive language study program, the grades for my language classes were combined into one collective grade. [↩]

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