What goes up...

I know I know, what goes up must come down. I just didn't realise that applied to my self esteem as well.

Three weeks ago I straightened my normally insanely curly hair with hot straightening tongs. As long as I keep it dry, it will stay straight for about 4 or 5 days. I do this every few months as a change, and a way to appreciate (or at least learn to live with) my unruly curls.
The Chinese, with predominantly straight hair, are mad on getting their hair permed. They always assume that my hair is also permed, no matter how many times I tell them otherwise.
The day I showed up to work with staight hair, I had to endure an onslaught of comments such as:

"Wow! So beautiful!"
"Oh your straight hair looks more beautiful!"
"Beautiful straight hair is better than your curls!"
and even...
"Now you don't look like a sheep!"

Baaaa.

This was a great ego boost (aside from the sheep comment), and I proudly flicked my straightened locks out behind me as I swaggered around the halls of my school.
But then of course after five days of not washing my hair I realised that I could rival the middle east in oil production, and so I had to wash it back into it's usual mass of curls.
The first look of dismay when I walked through the door at work was priceless. The second was humourous. The third, fourth and fifth were annoying, and everything in the two weeks since then has been downright depressing.
My students still feel the need to tell me that they think my straight hair is more beautiful, regardless of the number of times I tell them that the curls are natural and I cannot keep it straight all the time.

Yes what goes up must come down, and right now my self esteem is sinking faster than a lead balloon.

Phil Quote of the Day

As I muttered maniacally into my poorly cooked meal, Phil looked at me with fearful wonder: "Seriously Lou, sometimes you are like Goldilocks on acid!"

Whining and Dining

All the ingredients were there for a romantic dinner: We were away from Shanghai, finally relaxing after a hellish work week, there was a good bottle of wine, great food, an almost in-key jazz vocalist, and of course a candle.
Oh, and a guy sitting behind Phil's shoulder hoiking up phlegm chunks the size of small meteors, complete with extended palatal vocalisation, and spitting them from a height into the ashtray on his table.
Nothing says romance more than the public sharing of respiratory fluids.

Lost in (Cyber) Space

I pity the poor american fools who have lately been stumbling on to my blog from an MSN search for "Aussie Babes". The site meter I have on this site allows me to see how people have found the blog, and I find it highly amusing to see this one come up time and time again. What did the poor blokes think when my site opened?! More amusing is that my blog is listed at 35th of 128,310 results! Those are some good odds!
Other lost cyber travelers have found me my searching: "anonymous proxy servers to get past college firewalls", "japanese porn", "big breasts", and disconcertingly "what to do with my babys placenta".
What the...???

Link...

Of course I am biased, but check out Phil's great post about riding a bicycle in China.
Very well done.

Happy Birthday Me!!

My Birthday arrived yesterday, and for the first time in many years I felt like an excited child. I don't know if it was because it was the first birthday Phil and I have managed to share in the same country, or if it was because it was my first birthday in Shanghai. Whatever the reason, I felt happiness rather than my usual complete ambivalence.
Phil surprised me with a gorgeous jacket... something I was desperately lacking in the onset of the Shanghai cold winter. It looks to me like an Aussie standard winter coat, but he assures me it is only an autumn jacket, and that I'll have to get a warmer one by January. God help me come winter.
The birthday happiness was increased to ecstatic joy upon the arrival of a new member of the family:


My great friends John and Miriam delivered this little bundle of joy. Pablo is named after Pablo Picasso of course, though the only masterpieces he has created so far have been several "nuggets of goodness" on the floor. I am going to attempt to toilet train him... don't laugh yet, it is possible... but so far he is more interested in eating the magazines under the coffee table than pooping in his litter tray. Understandable. I am considering pasting some articles to wall beside his tray to amuse him when he's there.
Big thanks to Miriam and John for giving Pablo to me, and even bigger thanks to Papa Phil for letting him stay!
Off now to Bunny-proof the apartment!