I Am Not My Hair pt.1

India Arie, Testimony: Vol 1 Life & Relationship. It's a great album, truly. I very rarely listen to the actual words of a song, mainly because they're all the same and sometimes because I get distracted by all the hoopla. But not with this, no, I Am Not My Hair made perfect sense, it was clear, she was clear. I even like Akon on it and I DON'T LIKE AKON; it's nothing personal, I just dislike his voice. She describes the numerous processes her hair went through, all because society decided that afro hair wasn't attractive. She starts off with a presser curl, then a Jheri Curl and finally a relaxer before her hair breaks off. Not a pretty sight, trust me. There's nothing worse than the day you realise that there's a whole chunk of your hair missing all because you liked you hairband a bit too much.

Having lived with an afro all my life because I'm black (applause), I know that there are just some things you can't do to it. It may look tough because it's so bushy but it's actually very brittle. DON'T put too much heat into it, DON'T apply more than one chemical process to it at a time and DO condition like your life depended on it.

Each generation has their own schtick, we don't know when my grandmother was born because for Ghanaians, in those days, there wasn't a need to know. I suspect they were busy trying to live past the age if 5. When we went back for her funeral I saw some pictures of her in her hay-day, she had thick, lush hair and because she was having a special picture taken she wore her hair straight. I asked my mum about it and she said that she had pressed her hair with one of those old school hot combs, probably the ones that you have to heat on the stove, then she curled it with metal rollers.

My mother was born in the late 40's. I found some baby pictures of her when we went to the funeral too, but she didn't think much of her hair back then. She remarked about how tough her hair was (has always been) and how her scalp was chronically sore for one reason or the other. By her late teens she'd started relaxing it because it was an easier way of maintain the highly sort after straight hair. She had few hairstyles in the coming decades, but they revolved around faux afro wigs like the lady in the black and white photo.

She started braiding my hair for me in '95 when my sister and I first came to live with her in England. I had a boys hair cut back then. A 1cm long No.1 haircut, because in Ghana, school girls have boy's hair cuts. Don't ask me why, it's one of those unanswered questions, like why Mariah Carey decided to get a boob job. I think I first relaxed my hair the summer before Sixth Form (College), I was tired of walking around with my afro hair. I didn't know what to do with it and I stood out, mainly because of the way I wore it but partly because I was the only student in my year group that had afro hair that long.

For those who don't know, a relaxer is a chemical treatment used to straighten obstinately curly hair. The first time at the salon was an eye-opener, the hairstylist distributed the relaxer from the root right to the ends because my hair was all afro (virgin hair). I think she took about 15 minutes to get the relaxer in, I don't know the right amount of time but I know now that it's best not to dilly-dally. I hadn't washed my hair for 2 weeks in anticipation; that's not as abnormal as it may seem, not washing afro hair for that long I mean. It began to tingle as soon as she was done applying the relaxer. Several minutes passed and that tingle started to spread enough that it become an itch I wanted to scratch, desperately. I resisted the urge because the hairstylist used gloves as she applied the relaxer and I'll be damned if I was gonna stick my, unprotected, hand in my itchy head. While I was busy thinking about not scratching, the itch started to burn ever so slightly. And then it grew, the burn I mean. It brought heat on top of heat. It spread like a wildfire on my scalp, increase in coverage and intensity simultaneously. It burned like hell.

Learn Japanese, it's Easy

NO. It is bloody-well not easy. It's hard to keep motivated because even when you don't have a job and you've been kicked out of school (temporarily), you can get easily detracted. i.e. We just got the Food Network over here in England, and TV in general's kinda crap so my sister put it on the Food Network just so it's not too quiet. We're watching Grill It! with Bobby Flay: Chef Extraordinaire or so he thinks. Why is he so obsessed with chillis? Even though I don't care for food adorned with cilantro, it's still better the taking those two steps to my Japan Centre Kanji Book. I'm rambling aren't I?

p.s. Why do all American cooking shows revolve around a 'battle of culinary masters'? Ever heard of Rick Stein?

Bikram Yoga... Break my back more like

So, I started Bikram Yoga. They were doing a New Year's deal because everyone's put on some pounds since the holidays and made all those crapy resolutions. It was a 20 quid for 14 days thing, which is pretty worth it considering a drop-in session cost 15 pounds alone. I went with my sister to to one of they're many sites in London to register and feel out the place. Bikram yoga is no more strenuous than Ashtanga yoga, which is what I normally do, except you don't have some guy telling you to relax your anus, ^_^. The postures are different and in the 40 degree celsius heat it's particularly hard; not only are you stretching and tensing all the muscles in your body, you're also trying to do it all while breathing through your nose AND sucking your stomach in. You go in looking like this...

...but you come out feeling like this, lol.

You sweat bucket loads even if your technique isn't that good.

The picture says it all.

My year in exile's taking it's toll on me. I just went to the job centre, I despise the job centre. I really do. They give me 50 quid a week, but it's not like I need it, I'm luckier than most because I have a lovely mother. I only go because I don't want to burden her too much. But... it's taking it's toll on me. I feel like I'm ready to go but... I'm stuck. And frustrated... and I can't breathe. Today's not so good.

Ice Age... that's what they tell me

We had some bad weather after Christmas. Seeing as I'm a bit of a recluse I didn't notice. They were droning on and on about it on BBC and SKY though. There were stories, lots of stories about the injuries and disruptions associated with the snow. Stories about the villages cut off, but surprisingly none about the abundance of the supposedly scarce grit on Oxford Circus and the Kensington area. We can't have the rich slipping and spraining an ankle or worse yet cracking a skull. Oh no, the working class, without which the city would not run, would fair better doing the slip-slide all the way to work... in the city.

Personally, the funniest moment for me was when they realised that public transport would be shittier than usual as a result. This from a city who's trains can't function during Autumn because of leaves on the tracks. Oh yes, London's that far ahead. London's the city of the future, didn't you know? There's always this crap about attracting international businesses to London because it's this and it's that. Well I'm here to tell you that it's overpriced... normally you'd have more than one critique of whatever you're hating on, but for me this is it. It's overpriced. It's bollocks. And it's on it's way to worse, why? Because the recession hurt the UK more than the US, because the US manufacture and there's always gonna be a demand and because our un-elected Prime Minister is a ditherer. James Brown (the name he keeps secret from anyone with a sense of humour) can't make decisions, so why is he in politics? I don't know either.

My whole point is forget about the snow, there's a huge economic storm to weather and we (in London) are gonna feel it in full force after the 2012 Olympics. Maybe that's why I'm so eager to get out of here.

Q. Does anyone like the Logo?

The World of Suzie Wong

Suzie Wong was a proactive, savvy girl, but most importantly she was stylish. Personally, I think it's hard not to find a stylish women in the 1950's. Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate and admire modern fashion, but it can never match the effortless glamour of the decades past.

The plot is pretty simple, architect Robert Lomax (William Holden) wants to be an artist so he moves to Hong Kong to see if he can make it. On route he meets Mee Ling aka Suzie Wong (Nancy Kwan) who unsuccessfully tries to have him arrested for stealing her purse. They go their seperate ways. Lomax has limited funds so he looks for lodgings at Wan Chai district where he stumbles across his accuser coming out of a hotel. Lomax goes into the hotel and rents a room for one month. This comes as a shock to the landlord; his rooms are only rented for a couple of hours at a time. Yes, you've guessed right, Suzie's a prostitute. Lomax asks Suzie to pose for him and they strike up a romance in the process. They fight, they laugh, all the things never absent from a love affair. There's more but that would be spoiling it for you.

It's a great oldie to watch when you have some time free.

Ol' Mag

The name of my new blog theme Old Magazine by Blogger Themes, I love it 0_0. I'm a bit bored... I should stop talking/writing now.

p.s. why doesn't Apple ever go into sale???

'09 Year's End

I love New Years. I know, shocked right? But I love New Year's. It's celebrated all around the world. I think the Solomon islands are first to see the new year. I love most of all watching as BBC 24 goes around the world, showing how each country makes the last few seconds special. The fireworks (hanabi) displays, the countdowns, the new year. And with the new year comes New Year's resolutions (made to be broken), new hopes, new aspirations, new dreams, new desires and in some few cases conclusions. Yes, New Year's is one of the best, it's quick, if you blink you'll miss it. It's always exciting.

Happy New Year everyone xx

Side Story: Boxing Day

It was Boxing Day, the day after Christmas Day which makes it the 26th. I woke up around 10 am then spent the next 10 minutes trying to regain consciousness. I have freaky low blood pressure so I tend to have blackouts and sleep a lot (at least that's the excuse I'm using for that one). I trudged down the stairs with my heavy ass Toshiba, soon to be Apple, laptop. My older sister was getting ready for an outing I still haven't asked her about. My other sister and mum were gloating about a successful attempt at the "world famous" Banana cake. I sat down and plugged the energy-sucker (my laptop) in. Apparently, it can't go an hour and a half without charging. I stared as the energy-sucker slowly, very slowly reanimated. Then it hit me, it was so tremendous, so powerful, like a flood washing all over me. The New Year was imminent and I was waiting to go to school not waiting to go to Japan. I had set my life back a year. A year in exile. I felt helpless, like I was gasping for air in that flood. I couldn't breathe. My eyes started to well up, and I felt embarrassed most of all. I didn't want to show that emotion to the rest of my family. I didn't want anyone to see me like that.

I'm used to sorting those things out on my own. And that's exactly what I did. I locked myself in my room, cried a bit but slept mostly for the rest of the day.

I'm a bit better now. It's the 27th. I think I'll be okay, eventually.

This Christmas: Day

Trading Places circa 1983, to the left Louis Winthorpe III. Masterfully played by Dan Aykroyd, the ultimate privileged, yuppie idiot who gets turned on by his "own kind".

The film doesn't have that much to do with this post, I just think it's a classic. I'm always filled with disgust and the wonder and then disgust again when I watch this scene. Wonder because I'm surprised that anyone would wear such a filthy Santa suit. Disgust because that's salmon that he's eating, eww. Personally, I'm not that into Christmas. I think it's kinda boring.

We don't behave any differently than we would any other time of year, no, that's wrong; my family irritate me more than they would any other time of the year, lol. The day's schedule is as follows: wake up (at some point), dress up (most of them don't want to), drink some cocktails, eat some Walker's Sensations and eventually have the Christmas meal including the dessert. I could do that any other day of the year with less fuss and get a nap in between.

The most annoying thing about Christmas for me is the insistence that I wait till Christmas Day to open my present. I'm 2 months shy of my 21st B-day, do I really have to wait to open my presents, apparently yes. Why? I suspect my family gets some sort of sadistic joy from making me wait.

The Christmas tree's a whole other kettle of fish. Every year I have to get it out, I have to decorate it and I have to pack it back up around New Year. It's even more irritating because I'm not the one who insists on putting it up. It's definitely not for the children's benefit because I'm the youngest in the house and I outgrew Christmas like 10 years ago. Bah Humbug. The icing on the cake is that this year my mother had to buy a new one because the black whole known as her bedroom swallowed up our beloved 15 year old Christmas tree. We've searched high and low but it's nowhere to be found. Can you believe it a whole Christmas tree has disappeared from my small English terraced house.

For those who love it, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year xXx ^_^ and if you haven't watched Trading Places you should. It's a great film.

This Christmas: Eve

This meal is important to me, not because it's Christmas Eve but because I haven't had it in a while. A Ghanaian classic of Waatse (pronounced Waatche), which is similar to the West Indian Rice and Peas, but we use black eyed beans instead. In Ghana it's eaten mid-morning because no one wants to be farting late into the night, lol. It's an unusual breakfast item but that's what happens when you live in a hot country. There's always and excess of chilli and salt, just the way I like it.

I remember my older sister used to buy it for breakfast when we lived in Ghana. It came packaged in a Banana leaf with extra Shito (not sure if I spelt that correctly ;0), because she loved the stuff. To her Shito is like Ketchup, lol.

Shito is made out of prawns generally, but Sprats today because that's what my mother could get her hands on. Any seafood would do basically. dried chilli peppers, oil (lots), onions, some salt or a Magi cube (I think it's made out of prawns compressed into a small concentrated bar). It is stewed until it turns black et voila, you have Shito, it's a peppery hot condiment. I can't eat too much of it personally, because I'm a light weight when it comes to peppery hot stuff. I'd rather have chilli in my food than not though. I always find myself nauseous when its not there.

My mum also fried some Sprats (those tiny fish that you can eat whole) and prawns. Apparently, in Ghana they eat shell and all. My memories of the motherland aren't as clear as the used to be. It has something to do with the benefits of the calcium… OK, that’s a lie. But it could be true.

Along with that you get some tomato sauce, and Gari which is Cassava I think. It's shredded then dry fried, I think my mum mixed it with some of the oil from the Shito. The thing about Gari is that it's rock hard, so whatever your going to eat it with you need to dampen it a bit. All that's left is the egg, which I don't quite understand the reason for, but who cares. It's delicious. Well, that was my Christmas Eve feast.

P.S. I hate Blogger's picture uploading system.

New Moon and Roger Federer!!!

So I went to the O2 arena, formerly the disaster known as the Millennium dome, with my friend Steph. I dragged her along, willingly, to watch the second installment of the Twilight Saga: New Moon at the Vue cinema. I like to watch a new film the week after its release, and preferably on a weekday if it's a child friendly film (they tend to ruin it for me).

The film was OK. I mean Robert Pattinson was great as Edward, it was like reading the book. Taylor Lautner was better than I thought he'd be, but I worry about his longevity in the movie business. He seems pretty one dimensional to me, that's okay for life in general but not for Hollywood. Personally I like Kristen Stewart, I'm not one of the stupid, hormone-ridden fans who hate her purely because she gets to play Edward's love interest and may be the real life love interest of Robert Pattinson. Most of these kids won't or can't make the distinction between the character and the actor. I appreciate her because I hardly know anything about her. That's the type of relationship I want with, specifically, the up 'n' coming celebrities. The problem is I don't think she plays Bella effectively, she just doesn't do sad that well. She does awkward, teen angst great but that's about it.

We were discussing the film as we left the cinema, when Steph dealt me a huge blow by telling me that she would've picked Jacob. After the initial nausea I thought, who am I to try to convert or judge her icky tastes. I won't hold it against her... much. We decided to explore the O2, the great thing about that place is that you never have to worry about getting lost. It's a circle so you always end up where you started.

The O2 was also hosting the ATP Master's end of year tournament with the world's top 8 players. They battle it out through 2 rounds: first is the Round Robin; were the play against every member of that group, the two best out of the group proceed to the next stage. Second is the Knock-out stage; they play to the death (not really), they play the best of 3 sets, only if you lose this time you're out for good. We stumbled upon a tennis court and we (I) decided to hang around for a bit. First I saw Roger Federer's father, then his mother. I knew they wouldn't be out there for any old reason, so we lingered around a bit longer. Steph was getting restless but around 3 o'clock he finally came out. It was great, it made my day. I wish he'd been practising with Rafael Nadal. That would've made my year.

Neighbours from Hell... or in that direction

So yesterday the neighbours decided to make themselves known. My relationship with the neighbours is a lot like my relationship with the strangers I encounter on the London underground; they're invisible. I mind my own business and they mind theirs. These neighbours are African but I'm not sure which part they're from; I know that they're not Ghanaian but that's all I know.

I don't know what type of music the were playing, nor do I particularly care, but when I could hear it in my bedroom that's when I got irritated. At 6pm, or there abouts, they started with that crappy music. Normally I wouldn't be dismissive of other people's varying tastes in music, but these pricks just pissed me off. A couple of hours later when the music got louder my oldest sister and I decided to ask them to keep it down. When the neighbour opened the door he told us that they were having a baby shower or some shit like that. Who has a baby shower with obscenely loud, crappy music. It was bloody cold in England that night so we quickly retreated to our house and waited 10 mins. No change. I walked 7 whole feet, in the bloody cold, to they're door for nothing. That was it. I got on the phone to the police who redirect me to the noise division of my local council, meanwhile my sisters went back to knock and ask the neighbour for the SECOND time to take it down a notch. No Change.

I got a hold of the council, which did me absolutely no good. The noise division arrived around 11pm only to tell us that they'll send a letter to the neighbours. A letter, that's it, what a waste of time. So my Saturday night was filled with mostly expletives aimed at the neighbours.

What will I do? Well, they rent so as soon as my mother locates the landlady's phone number I'm going to let her have a piece of my mind. My anger has been redirected at her because in the past 2 years that she's owned that house every single one of her tenants (and there have been at least 6 different ones) have been either illegal, dirty or both. She's either lazy or stupid, I'm going to find out. My mother suggested that I should go along the lines of "...I want to be a good neighbour..." blah, blah. No. That's not going to happen, I prefer to subtly threaten her with informing the council about the type of tenants she places in the house. But, with the amount of time my mother is taking to find the phone number, (I suspect deliberately) I'm running out of steam. Bah Humbug!!!

Dawn Porter, Geisha Girl!

I watched a documentary a while ago on Channel 4 about the search for love, normally I'm not into flighty stuff but it's first stop was none other than Japan - Kyoto to be exact - which is nowadays the only way to peak my interests. Dawn Porter the narrator wanted to experience the life of a modern day geisha, I think we got on the wrong foot when she revealed that her understanding of a geisha was akin to the high class prostitutes of the west. At first I thought 'how rude' then I thought 'what a fucking idiot'. I thought it was good practice to research a subject before you spoke about it. Maybe she wanted to view it with fresh eyes, but that still didn't mean she could approach the topic with such a negative impression. Granted, her position did change, eventually, but it very much irritated me. Maybe it's because I recently re-read Arthur Golden's Memoir's of a Geisha, that I felt so outraged by her assumptions.

After arriving at the Kyoto okiya to meet Mother and the other maiko and geisha living in the house, Dawn was set to work. First she had to learn the correct sitting position of a geisha; sitting on her shins gracefully (which is the key word here) making sure that the kimono is not ruffled in any way, making sure it looks smooth and beautiful, making sure it's effortless. This doesn't seem that hard on paper so I could understand why Dawn was taken aback by the pain. After getting used to sitting, she had to learn how to stand gracefully, effortlessly etc. Maybe it's too simplistic to say effortlessly, it actually involves a lot of muscle control due to the fact that you have to put all of your body weight on one leg while maintaining your balance to ensure that you glide up instead of wobble up. Not to mention having to not do the thing that comes most naturally to you when you're in that position, 'DON'T STICK OUT YOUR BUTT'. Dawn received many smacks on the arse, it was a steep learning curve. The hardest thing about this initially for a western girl who is used to showing what she feels, when she feels is maintaining a perfect, pleasant mask. As if the squats, from sitting down and standing up, hasn't left her with seemingly permanent pain whenever in a crouched position - if you can't tell, by the way, I hate squats. She did a days worth of work which completely wore her out, I can sympathise because I'm unbelievably weak and not afraid to admit it.

Later on that day Dawn got to chat with a fellow (using the word loosely) geisha. She wasn't just curious, or at least that's not the impression I got. I could happily accept genuine curiosity. She seemed like she was trying to get the girls to say that 'yes' their lives were hard, 'yes' it's not always the happiest place to be and 'yes' this wasn't really what they wanted of their lives. Well, 'NO' Dawn, sometimes women make unusual choices and it's not your job to show them the supposed error of their ways.

The next day Dawn was allowed to dress in full maiko regalia, a $100,000 kimono, white make-up, red lips and the hair. It was wonderfully grand, wonderfully dramatic and wonderfully heavy. Maybe that's not so wonderful. Upon seeing her reflection in the mirror Dawn was displeased, not because the clothes weren't to her liking but because of the discomfort resulting from the kimono. All the padding around her waste to prevent the kimono from riding up restricted her breathing and hid her waist line. The make-up didn't look as good on her, I somewhat agreed with her on that point. Her lips were painted white except for the very centre of her lips which were painted a vibrant red to give the illusion of a much smaller - in length - plumper lip than her own. On her eyelids was the same vibrant red, following her eyelids. It seemed that red was very much the theme because there was yet more red on her eyebrows. I think on a more delicate looking western girl it would have looked just as good as it did on the Japanese girls. When they finally changed her name she was ready to be presented to the world, Dawn was now Kikutari. All this time Dawn felt that little by little everything that made her Dawn Porter was being stripped away to be lost forever. Yes, she was that dramatic, I think she lost perspective. The more I watched, the more ridiculous I thought she was, you're doing a job for Channel 4, from which you're getting paid a hefty sum to go talk to a few Japanese people. It's only temporary.

I fully admit that I'm a bit biased. OK. A LOT biased. But, I would've felt the same about anywhere Dawn Porter went, I think my issue is mainly with her method of journalism. I think with cultural differences it's imperative to observe and discuss without bringing your culture into it.

She's gone and she's never coming back

My supervisor's gone, she left the country and headed back to Germany. I'm sad, she was lovely, always patient, always answering our stupid questions and always with a never ending source of flies for us to use.

She left about 2 weeks ago, I'm not good with dates but I know it was around the end of October. Eleanor and I decided to get her a little going away present in the form of anything we could find in the local Mile End shops. We snuck out while we were trying to clean our fly tubules; one thing about my project that always grosses me out. The problem with incubating flies for 2 weeks is that you end up with fly stew; often a mixture of dead fly, mould, fly feed and paraffin. It's quite a tedious job because of the need to remove the paraffined (yes, I know that's not a real word) end of the tubule using piping hot water. Then, placing the tubules in the death contraption that is the Autoclave; it relies on the production of steam to clean and therefore reaches great, explosive pressures. We tentatively, always tentatively use the autoclave.

We told her that we were going out for lunch; something we rarely do because we often get too engrossed in analysing our data. We walked along the Mile End road stopping in shops to check out their card and chocolate collections. We settled, after several minutes of debate, on a card adorned with black cats against a yellow background, on the interior was a night-time landscape; midnight blue with swirls of various lighter shades of blue to highlight the clouds. And yes more cats, but not the whole cat just the eyes. Across the A5 piece of card there were at least 15 sets of eyes staring back at us, Eleanor loved it, I was a bit dubious but not bothered enough to argue. We went on, to another shop, to buy her some chocolates, one standard Cadbury's chocolates in a box shaped a bit like a Christmas cracker and some Smarties, not just any smarties though. These were like easter egg smarties except instead of an easter egg it was a penguin which sound like maracas when shaken, now that I liked.

We skillfully hid our presents in Eleanor's big coat when we got back to the office, unfortunately she was knee-deep in a conversation with one of the Phd students in the lab. We had to wait. So, we thought it would be best to start analysing our data. I'm not going to go too far into it but my data was faulty so I couldn't analyse. With the intention of correcting the problem I walked - in total - 12,255 steps that day, trekking all the way from the office to the fly lab was a bitch. I'm not fit and I've never tried to be but the always broken lift (I think I've mentioned this before) left me with 5 floors to walk up at least 4 times that day. I was not pleased.

When she'd finished with her colleague and we were finished with cleaning the fly tubules we handed our card and presents to her. She was genuinely shocked and grateful. She opened her card, which she loved because apparently she was a big fan of cats. Unfortunately, her husband was allergic so she couldn't have any. So, she had resigned herself to collecting cat statues from all over the world. She gave us a hug and a Ferrero Roche as a thank you. We said our goodbyes and that was the last time we spoke.

I'm gonna miss her.