but words make good picture frames

especially when the pictures are as un-fetching as these: this is a warts-and-all post; the illustrated London-is-gorgeous post will come later on. :)

After years/months/weeks of faithful service, my three plastic hair clips broke over the same week. Just like that. So now I am left with hairties, bobby pins, this long metal clip that I've had since JC and which once set off a metal detector, and ambivalence about my hair.

In London it's mostly been either completely loose or completely bunned up (with the dangerous metal clip). A couple times I tried braiding it, which was always a reliable way to get it out of the ... way, but for some reason I wasn't happy with that. But London isn't as humid as Malaysia so I don't generally feel unhappy with my hair, although sometimes I do forget that it's relatively long.

While the last two paragraphs may have been of absolutely no consequence, you are now going to find out more about my skin than most of you'd ever want to know (I hope) because some of you may find it helpful (again, I hope). I say this because it is thanks to info on blogs that my arms now look better than pictured above.

So after I finally figured out my eyelid dermatitis (although it seems like 90 percent of hand soaps and bath gels contain cocamidopropyl betaine, which means that I have to spend a lot of time reading ingredients) and after isotretinoin cleared up a lot of my acne, my arms developed lots of little dry bumps. And then some of those bumps became larger lumps, which turned red.

Google suggested that the bumps were keratosis pilaris, i.e. excess keratin in hair follicles, and I figure the redness was KP conflated with skin allergies or something. Google also told me that (a) there is no uniformly effective treatment for KP, (b) severe KP is sometimes helped by isotretinion, which makes sense because it flared up just after I'd just stopped my oral acne treatment, and (c) topical retinoids like adapalene sometimes help KP.

Luckily, I had some adapalene (Differin) on hand which I'd been instructed to use for acne, and it did help smoothen the lumps somewhat. But the picture above is from my cousin's wedding,which was a good-ish day for my arms after approximately three weeks of adapalene application.

So I resorted to Google again, and this time found some sites recommending Eucerin's Intensive Urea Treatment Lotion. And yes, urea sounds gross (science types: I did take O Level Bio and know urea is excreted in sweat etc etc, but you have to concede that it's not a savoury name) and I can't believe I shelled out 13 quid for a toiletry item -- but it worked. In less than a week my arms looked normal, unless you were bored or creepy enough to really stare at them. And they're continuing to improve. So yay urea! Ummm. Yes. Oh my friend says this Eucerin lotion worked on her sister's eczema too.

This photo is from the one time I indulged in the vanity of taking pictures of food that I cook. And then I decided that the picture wasn't as appetising as the food and forsook that documentary exercise. But yah upwards of 500 people on allrecipes.com put a 5-star rating on this honey baked chicken recipe (honey, mustard, curry powder, butter), so I decided to try it. Or, at least, to try a version of it where I use the same ingredients but anyhow whack with proportions, since I don't own measuring implements and can't be bothered. And I was happy. Yay food.

The other day I realised that I have mostly been cooking ang moh food and mostly eating Asian food when I go out. o_O

The reason I've been eating mostly Asian food out is that I've mostly been eating out with Malaysians. Socially, coming to London has been more like visiting KL than going to Williamstown; there are so many people here whom I haven't seen for years or who are friends-of-friends.

But beyond that, London is just crawling with Malaysians. In the States whenever I hear a Malaysian/Singaporean accent I want to accost the speaker and get to know them, just because it's such a rarity. Here I hear home accents virtually every time I cut through this shopping centre near campus. The jeans in the picture from a Relief for Romania charity shop here; they were one of three pairs of Applemints jeans there. Applemints is a Malaysian (or at least some cheena) brand that my secondary school friends used to like. It's uncanny.

The internationalisation is even more pronounced at SOAS, given the nature of its academics. But in this case it's really cool. In my Arabic class, for example, the only language that you see in everyone's notebooks is Arabic; I jot down explanations in English, the guy next to me writes down synonyms in German, there's a European girl who writes her notes in Urdu since she knows that better than Arabic, and so on.

Even at SOAS, though, a lot of people form miniature ethnic enclaves. Which is of course natural. But I think what bothers me about de facto groupings by race is that descent is something that you cannot choose. Social patterns that revolve around political leanings or study habits or career choices or drinking patterns or whatever at least involve an element of self-selection. Which is not at all to imply that such selection is a matter of genuine choice -- I'm just saying that sometimes I'm frustrated that some of the impressions (good/bad immaterial) people have of me are based on things that I have no possibility of changing. Which basically means that I am a silly coward. But I'm not too worried as long as the happy thoughts outnumber the silly/cowardly thoughts. :)

This photo is from the open-top bus tour that the uni's student union organized during Freshers Week. During the tour I actually did accost someone because I heard his Malaysian accent. But anywho.

London has a good 24-hour bus system that I'd been too lazy to check out up to a week ago, since I prefer walking and trains. But it was really good that I decided to figure out some bus routes this week, because there were a couple nights when I was out late with friends and needed to get back alone, and because today the trains I could take to east London for church were all out of service.

On the way back from church one of the buses was really packed. When I first got on I was facing a middle-aged, religious-garbed man, who kept swinging his pelvis against me. I turned sideways, then shifted my large bag to the other shoulder so it was between us (probably elbowing a couple people in the process), but he still kept swaying. I didn't look him in the face because I didn't want to acknowledge him, but maybe also because I didn't dare.

Then when I got the chance I moved down the aisle, which placed me next to the seat of this guy who was picking a fight with the person standing in from of him, and who fixed a smile in my direction till I looked up and nodded to him. And then I immediately looked away. I was also still avoiding the gaze of the first man.

Finally I got a seat, which was fine till the last few minutes of the ride when the seat next to me was vacated and that first man walked over and sat down. He didn't do anything except pressing his arm into mine quite insistently after a while, but I had already frozen. I could not believe that I was neither saying nor doing anything definite. I may be self-conscious but I'm not shy. And I've walked through cities alone far later than is prudent and strategically fended off smarmy guys on the dance floor.

On the bus I was half wondering if maybe he hadn't been intentionally touching me -- maybe he was just moving in time to the bus? And I'd been reading my Bible during the ride and was also half wondering how I could say something that conveyed an utter lack of respect but still retained love. But I didn't say anything. Not even, excuse me. I always remember being on a bus after guitar club in Form 3 and hearing a girl assert to the lout next to her, "Jangan sentuh saya!" But I didn't say anything.

After getting off the bus I walked into Superdrug to buy cough syrup (my throat's been off for the last few weeks) (and to make sure that he wasn't following me) and then I got a Krispy Kreme for the walk back, and I felt okay. But it's still scary how passive I was. And it's disgusting that one player in that tableau was the small part of me that still marvels how some people find me attractive enough to be worth any effort. And it's horrifying to consider the millions upon millions who have experience unimaginably worse than my minor public transport melodrama.

Sometimes I'm not sure where the line between trivializing and inflating is. But I'm so thankful that I can be sure of the One who is merciful. And I hope so much that you perceive the sincerity of that last sentence.

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Events log

Tuesday night: Watched Beckett's Endgame (by Complicite and the Duchess) with a Malaysian friend. Superb acting; the director was a brilliant Clov. It was harrowing and hilarious with a spontaneity that could not escape its own dreadful pattern; within a room that had high brick walls and two grubby windows the quartet (trinity) of characters interacted with a violence that I inflict only on my own thoughts. I laughed, knowing full well that Beckett was laughing at me. GBP20 for a concession ticket; actually worth it.

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If you've endured the bulk of this post: here is something a bit more aesthetic. :)