Monica gets a mullet

On Sunday, my hairdresser gave me a mullet. Like almost a mullet- that popular hairstyle that boys got in the 1990s...kind of thick and long-ish on top and then hair cut close on the neck.. I didn't ask for it. My usual hairdresser was out of town, so her brother (also a hairdresser, and probably specialist in Asian mullets) cut my hair. The entire time, he kept saying, "your hair is soooo thick!" I didn't know this meant, "therefore let me chop it all off." This is the second time this has happened. Although this time, I think this is the least amount of hair I've had in a very long time. It just happens to be cut very close to my head.

I currently look like the boy pictured in the photo with Lassie. Except the hair in the front is a little longer. But point is, it is mullet-shaped :(

Right now, I'm trying to cope with the fact that I have very little hair. I'm trying to hide the mullet by wearing headbands and using lots of hairpins.

I will take suggestions for new hairstyles.

Living through my senses

Taste:
1) Lemon-y Neocitran tea (I have a cold)
2) Chamomile tea (I bring my own tea bags to school because hot water is free if you bring your own mug:)
3) Cookie dough ice cream (it sweetens up my day)

Touch/feel:
1) Slight ache in fingers from too much typing
2) Increasingly crisp autumn-almost-winter wind

Sound:
1) Law students coughing and sneezing at school making the building a hotbed for germs (I'm one of them now)
2) The persistent whirling of the wheels on my backpack (and other people's backpacks) against the ground(I have one of those 'suitcase' type bags now:)
3) My recent discovery of Taylor Swift music (I think it was played on the radio too many times...I got hooked)
4) I also listen to 10th Avenue North when I have a bad day

Sight:
1) Pages and pages and more pages of text, a bazillion cases a week and exams drawing nearer
2) Huge brown and yellow maple leaves falling from trees- I picked one up and put it in my locker but forgot to press in a book or something, so it's going to crackle and break any day now

Smell:
1) The guy who sits beside me in a few classes who smells like laundry detergent (at least that is a sign of cleanliness)
2) The scent of cheese and pepperoni from the free pizza we get (like every week) for various club meetings
3) The sterile scent of hand sanitizer (Purell is all the rage with this H1N1 scare)

Random Wisdom Acquired as of Late

1) The older I get, the less time I have for self-pity and for people who dwell in self-pity. I'm wondering where to draw the line before one becomes less compassionate as a result?

2) I realize that I tend to keep more of my opinions to myself these days. I think I've become better at deciding when to start an argument. This is possibly attributed to my reading of Proverbs lately. (When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise (Prov. 10:19))

3) So I was flipping through some newspaper ads the other day, and noticed this one ad for Halloween costumes. On one page were the kids' costumes. There were cute little costumes like 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz'. I flipped the page over and noticed that the adult women's costumes also had costumes entitled 'Little Red Riding Hood' and "Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz'. But let's just say that the adult women's costumes were not really reminiscent of what I remember from my fairy tales.

As it was said on Mean Girls (yes, I'm quoting from the movie), Halloween was "one day a year where a girl can dress up as slutty as possible and nobody can say anything about it". I've always wondered why this is? Anyways, I have come to the conclusion that Halloween (as we have come to understand it in modern day terms) is the one day a year where 'scary' or 'evil' or 'bad' or 'deviant' becomes acceptable and celebrated. So we wear fake blood, fangs and put tombstones on our front lawn and the more scary and the more extreme we go to show our Halloween spirit, the more praise we get for our efforts.

Apparently for women, deviance through expression of costume means that you should dress as provocatively as possible. But not only that, you have to do it in a way where innocence is exploited because that's even more 'bad' or 'deviant'. Hence the fact that an adult woman can turn a normally innocent little girl's costume like 'Little Red Riding Hood' and turn her into whore. I'm wondering if the women who actually spend money on these costumes know why they are buying them? I personally find exploitation of innocence kind of disturbing when I think about it.

So with these views in mind, I think Halloween for adults is kind of ridiculous if used for the above purposes....

A belated birthday announcement...

So I was supposed to send a birthday email to my friend Jeremy yesterday, but forgot to do so in the midst of a lot of things. So instead, I decided to re-post this lovely portrait that I drew from one of my former blog entries...3 years ago!

It's a looong story about why I drew this....haha...


Happy birthday, my friend!

Despite the hundreds of pages of readings per week,

and almost forgetting to eat lunch a few times,

and the lack of sleep in the last 2 weeks since school has started,

I think I made the perfect career choice (so far).


Lesson learned: somethings are grueling and brain-intensive but sooo worth it:)

This is an example of what I'm learning in one of my classes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWia3GCzyLQ

My favourite quote after meeting some classmates at my law school's orientation day:

"Hey, you look familiar...did you dress up as a giant camera once?"


Sadly, the answer was an enthusiastic yes. And he remembered the Transformer who accompanied as well...hahahaha....

Done and done

Travel Overview during July 30th-August 24th:

Cities/Countries visited:

• London, England
  
• Brussels, Belgium
• Dole, Paris, France
• Verona, Venice, Italy
• Luzern, Switzerland
• Rotenburg, Boppard, Frankfurt, Germany
• Innsbruck, Austria
• San Francisco, CA (USA)
• Montreal, QC (Canada)

Things to remember from Europe(not a complete list):

• London Tube system is the single most complicated subway system I have ever taken! Definitely got lost at least once a day
• Going to Westminster Abbey for church service (I found out that worshippers could go in for free:)
  
• Cobblestone streets, sky-high steeples, Romanesque statues, outdoor cafes and wall-to-wall stone and marble
  
• Beautiful mountain landscape in Switzerland and Austria- you'd have to see it yourself...my use of adjectives will not do it justice
  
• My favourite question from store keepers: "Where are you from?" "Canada!" "...But where are you originally from?" (apparently, not a whole lot of Asian people in Europe speaking perfect English. We were asked a number of times if we were Japanese, Korean, Thai or Taiwanese....)
• Getting ridiculously lost in the narrow alleyways in Venice under the burning hot sun and asking a bunch of Italians (most of whom spoke minimal English) for directions and getting more lost until a random older man with white mustache and small dog motioned for us to follow him down this random path and pointed us down this an alleyway (which looked like all the others) that thankfully led us to our destination
• Starbucks, Mcdonald's, Hello Kitty and Japanese tourists were found in EVERY country
  
• Aggressive blackmarket salesmen in Paris trying to 'sell' us bracelets
• Accidentally locking my sister in the hotel room in France due to confusing lock system and having to get the porter to save her (he opened the door in 2 seconds...very embarassing)
  
• Medieval fortresses, towns in Germany

San Francisco highlights:

• Being stuffed every single night with more Chinese food than one could ever imagine or desire (courtesy of our relatives)
• Visiting the (apparently oldest/biggest?) Chinatown in the world...much of it has been preserved since Chinese people began immigrating there during the gold rush
  
• Multi-coloured mosses on hills beside California beaches
• Fresh, damp scent of the Pacific ocean
• Super-steep hills all over SF! I could feel my stomach drop a little as we drove down some of those curves
• Day excursion to Monterey- home of John Steinbeck and a wealth of marine life. It was pretty cool to see Spanish/English signs as opposed to French/English
• Since our flight from SF to Canada was delayed, we missed our connecting flight to Calgary, so we had a lovely time of extended family for...20 hours. I used that time to read an airport-purchased book, "Escape" by former FLDS escapee, Carolyn Jessop. I definitely recommend it- a fascinating read!
  

Montreal highlights:
I still love the city- what more can I say? Kind of like a time warp walking down such familiar streets and visiting old, favourite spots with some friends whom I haven't seen in years. After all this time, some inside jokes will never get old!

It has been a great summer. Now I'm ready to start school next week:)