A new look

Okay, okay... you may not be able to see the curls in my hair in the photograph above. I do not have the software to crop photographs (but then again, my fellow members of the 4D club will tell you that even if I have the software, I would not know how to use it anyway. As LSD said in answer to the quiz question as to whether I am computer savvy - "of course not". *grin*).

Why the change in hairstyle? Well, my brothers and I have natural curls. However, unlike my brothers' hair, my hair is more unruly than curly. As such, I have been waging this on-going battle with my hair from my younger days and I have over the years alternated between rebonding my hair and perming my hair. Whenever I rebond my hair, the hair becomes messy within a short time and as the new hair grows out, my hair becomes "pong-pong" (that is, voluminous). Whenever I perm my hair, the curls last a L-O-N-G time as my natural curls tend to "hold the perm" very well. I remember an incident several years ago when I cut my hair one year after I had permed it. When my hair was cut, the curls bounced back and my colleague thought that I had just permed my hair.

About two to three years ago, I was busy at work and had no time to visit the hair salon frequently. As my hair grew longer, it started to curl naturally. In fact, some of my favourite photographs (of my hair, that is) were taken during my company trip to Hong Kong in March 2008. One day, I cut my hair short on a whim - goodness me! If you have unruly curls, unless you know an extremely good hair stylist, never never cut your hair short! My hair ended up very unmanageable but there was nothing much I could do until the hair grew longer. Sometime in July 2008, I went to a hair salon at Parkway Parade and had my hair rebonded. I have to confess that in the one year since the rebonding, I have only had my hair layered a few times (on quick visits to the hair salon) but I have not done anything else to my hair. As my hair grew longer and new hair grew out, I ended up with two obvious sections of my hair - the lower half of my hair was straight (due to the rebonding) and the upper hair of my hair was "pong-pong" (that is, voluminous).

It was time for a change.

This morning, I woke up at 12 pm (gasp!). Before you call me "lazybones", let me give my excuses. I was at work till about 3.30 am this morning. As such, by the time I reached home, had a quick shower and crawled into bed, you would probably have been halfway through your seven levels of sweet dreams already.

When I got out of bed, I debated whether to go ahead with what I had planned to do today. Half the day was already gone and I was not looking forward to going out when the sun was blazing hot. Looking resolutely at the wall clock, I made a decision to proceed with my plans. I got ready and made my way to Parkway Parade. It was a long overdue visit to the hair salon that I had in mind.

By the time I arrived at Parkway Parade, it was almost 1 pm. I contacted Da (who was at work) and arranged to meet him for lunch first. From past experience, I knew that I would be at the hair salon for several hours and I needed some "petrol" to last me till the end of the session at the hair salon.

While waiting for Da to arrive at Parkway Parade, I went to Isetan department store. They were having their Mid Year Sale. After browsing some of the displays in Isetan, I bought a lovely black handbag that was of a size that I could use for work as well as during weekends. It cost me S$15.

My mobile phone rang. Da had arrived. We met at the entrance to Isetan and proceeded to the food court located at the basement level of Parkway Parade. Da ordered beef noodles while I ordered duck rice. I am not very fond of duck (although I do have a weakness for peking duck) but the rest of the stalls did not tempt me today.

If you do eat at the food court at the basement level of Parkway Parade, I would recommend the teh tarik and kopi tarik sold at the drinks stall. The Chinese stallholder tariks the tea or coffee (as the case may be) expertly, which is quite an achievement considering that teh tarik and kopi tarik are usually the speciality of Malay stallholders and Indian Muslim stallholders.

After lunch, Da and I parted ways around 3.30 pm. He went home to rest and to shower (before he went to his secondary school reunion dinner) while I proceeded to the hair salon.

Gosh... when the hair stylist attended to me, one of the first few questions that he asked me was when was the last time that I went to a hair salon. Oops... the unruliness in my hair was that obvious, huh? He took quite a while to trim and layer my hair. Thereafter, he gave my hair some treatment before he permed my hair using "digital perm". I asked for a natural perm because I have natural curls and I do not need tight curls in the perm. We had a good laugh when he ran out of curlers while perming my hair as my hair was thicker than he had thought. Not to worry - he took out some more curlers from the cupboard and continued with the perm. After the perm, he treated my hair again. All in all, I was at the hair salon for... five hours! Gosh, it was as long as the time when I rebonded my hair in July 2008.

When I left the hair salon around 8.30 pm today, I went to the Cold Storage supermarket and bought a can of chick peas, a bottle of ground coriander seeds and a bottle of ground cumin seeds. I had watched an episode of "The Naked Chef" on the Asian Food Channel where Jaime Oliver made some lovely bread using bread flour, yeast, water, chick peas, ground coriander seeds and ground cumin and I am eager to give this a try. I do not know the proportion of ingredients that Jaime Oliver used as I did not take down notes as I watched the programme. No worries - I shall do some "trial and error". If I succeed in baking the bread, photographs will be posted soon. *grin*

After I brought the groceries home, I drove to my mother's home to show her my new hairstyle. (Actually, the real reason was that my mother said that she would toast some sandwiches for my dinner. She had already had her dinner by the time I contacted her.)

When I arrived at my mother's home, the three mahjong buddies were in the thick of their mahjong game. I had barely watched them playing for about 5 minutes when my brother (LG) won that round and effectively, won all the chips of his girlfriend (ZT).

Time for a break! I had brought a loaf of cranberry bread that I had baked yesterday. My mother decided to use the cranberry bread to toast some open-face ham and cheese sandwiches for me. Yum, yum....

While waiting for the sandwiches to be toasted in the oven, my mother and I shared some chicken salad that ZT had bought.

Sandwiches complement a hot cuppa. As such, my mother had a hot cup of coffee while I had a hot cup of tea.

Ta-da! Open-face ham and cheese sandwich. If the slices of bread look so thick that they can rival those sold at Hong Kong Kim Gary Restaurant, let me assure you that they are that thick. As such, I was full by the time I ate one of the sandwiches and I shared the remaining sandwich with my mother.

My mother also spread some margarine on a few small slices of the cranberry bread and toasted them as a snack for herself.

Snack time (for my mother) and dinner time (for me)! Bon appetit!

After the meal, Boy-Boy watched intently as some preparations were made in the kitchen. What was happening?

Ah... home-made mixed fruit ice cream (made by me recently) topped with orange chocolate biscuits and cappuccino wafers (which wafers were a gift from the three handsome boys who live opposite Da and I on the same floor in our apartment block).

Da managed to get a lift to my mother's home from SIL's husband (TYK) after the old boys' reunion dinner. Da and TYK were schoolmates in the same secondary school (although from different batches). When Da arrived, I carried Boy-Boy to the gate to greet Da. Boy-Boy wagged his tail when he saw Da's two pretty nieces but he started growling when a male stranger happened to walk past at that moment. This little rascal likes to show off. He is a ladies' man but he tends to growl at male strangers. Hi SIL, SCT and MAT - I hope that Boy-Boy did not frighten you when he growled. It so happened that the male stranger walked past when Boy-Boy was being charming to SCT and as such, he went to his "macho guy" mode immediately. tsk, tsk....