All tressed out

a freebie hair treatment from the kerastase institute last friday = an article that came out in the philippine star's ystyle section today.

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All tressed out
By Deepa Paul
Friday, September 28, 2007

It isn’t easy being curly.

Born into your curls? You are a rarity among the infuriatingly swingy- and sleek-haired heads of the typical Pinay — and prey to the caprices of stylists who seek to torture the curl out of your hair by all available means. That is, if you don’t already do that yourself.

I grew up with big fat sausage curls that distended into long, loose and oddly uncontrollable waves, so I get you loud and clear. I once had a hairstylist refuse to cut my hair until I had it relaxed, whereupon I marched out of the salon — and started learning how to use Mom’s blow dryer. It was an inauspicious start to a lifetime of manual and chemical struggle with my curls. Fast forward to the present day: my hair is alarmingly poofy when left alone and requires an armada of styling products and tools to sort it into an appreciable shape. I’ve grown to like my hair, sort of, but after all it’s been through, I don’t think it likes me very much anymore.

Or let’s say your strands are of the stick-straight variety in the age of the digital perm. You thought your hair was boring; you zapped some curl into it. People liked it; you did it again. And again. And again. Now you’re left with repeatedly processed hair, an amorphous form of curl, a ton of new hair products, a bone-crushing understanding of why your curly-topped friends used to stroke your pin-straight strands with such longing, and maybe the occasional itch on your scalp.

Congratulations, your hair is now not just curly — you might just have blow-dried, relaxed, rebonded, permed and possibly even colored it into dryness, too. Faced with stressed-out curls, what’s a curly Sue to do?

Rx for stressed-out curls

Stop experimenting with a new product every other week, give the ceramic iron a rest, and head to the Kerastase Institute, where science is about to become your hair’s new best friend.

Using the Kerastase Professional Diagnosis System, a trained consultant takes a camera to your crowning glory to decree, once and for all, the truth about your hair and scalp. Your days of frowning over the staggering array of shampoos and conditioners at the grocery and decoding which of the cleverly-cooked-up-by-marketing labels describes your hair (Spongy and puffy? Damaged or dry? Rebonded then permed? Colored but not highlighted?) are at their merciful end.

Seeing your scalp magnified up to 500 times can be quite disconcerting. I personally thought it was nice to have a scalp so blinding white — until I was shown a picture of a perfectly healthy and normal scalp, which was as smooth and pink as a baby’s bottom. Whiteness meant I had a scalp like the Sahara. Eeep. Thankfully, my hair itself had some hope. Despite the occasional crack in the hair shaft, dryness hadn’t penetrated past the outer strands. My poor, colored, curly hair simply needed plumping up with a little nutrient TLC — and that was just a few minutes away.

Choosing your cocktail

After diagnosis, a Kerastase expert prescribes the right hair or scalp ritual for your particular situation. This is selected from over a dozen treatments for hair types ranging from normal to moderately dry hair (Aqua-Oleum, which uses nano-nutrition technology to zap instant shine and softness into locks) to the driest and most damaged strands (the heat-activated Kerathermie).

Got shiny strands, but a scalp like the Sahara? The experts at Kerastase may prescribe a Nutriose scalp ritual to soothe and cuddle your poor scalp back to life. Pumped full of lipids, proteins and glucose, one of the fab bonuses of this treatment — and a scalp that’s back in the pink — is lush, healthy hair growth.

For frizzy hair, the Masque Oleo-Relax softens and nourishes hair while keeping it frizz-free — despite infuriatingly off-the-charts Philippine humidity levels. Addicted to rebonding or relaxing? This treatment is also a perfect breather to the chronic grip those chemicals have on your hair.

For starters, I was prescribed the Concentre Vita-Ciment ritual. Engineered for chemically-treated hair, this potent potion promised to fortify the cracks in my hair shafts, rebuilding them by as much as 56 percent. Plus, it would prep my hair to receive the full benefits of my Masque Oleo-Curl, whose curl cocktail of softening oils promised perfectly defined curls (or waves, too) and anti-deformation protection. Sounds good, I thought, but it was just about to get a whole lot better.

Reveling in the ritual

The Kerastase Institute uses the word “ritual” instead of treatment, and it was just as well. After all the torture your hair has survived, it certainly deserves to be given the royal treatment, nay, practically adored back to life. (And maybe you do, too.) This is where the fluffy robes, satisfying hair bath, mind-numbing, eyes-rolling-back-into-the-head scalp massage and sigh-inducing back rubs of the Kerastase Institute do their best work.

After your chosen product is slathered on, your hair is popped under the Kerastase Micro-Mist Machine to be softened like no other salon steaming machine can. A blast of cool air from the machine ends the ritual, fixing the product from within. An expert blowout from the adjoining Salon ESA reveals the results of the ritual — gorgeously defined curls and vibrant shine, as promised. And if you have any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment (or are just innately suspicious, as I am), you can always have your hair re-diagnosed just to check.

Baby’s bottom my scalp is not (yet), but it definitely isn’t the Sahara anymore. And now I know to make a beeline for the shampoos labeled dry (not damaged) when the time comes to buy a new bottle of shampoo. Less time at the grocery, and hair that bounces at my beck and call once more? Love it.

* * *

The Kerastase Institute is located at Salon ESA, 6750 Ayala Ave., Makati City. Call 819-1040 or 819-0886 for an appointment.

Home sick, still

it's day two of being red and spotty. the spots have now spread all over my body, although my mom and i are definitely sure it's not measles. (my mom double-checked with my pedia, who said that i completed my measles vaccination in 1982.) i think i actually look worse than i feel, and i'm really starving for a good book now.

i don't know why i'm thinking about my birthday, which is a month away. i guess it's because i'm bored. here's my birthday wish list. (talagang walang effort na mag-segue.)

• calligraphy pen with purple or turquoise ink (to address invitations with)
  
• lomo or holga
• rajaton's new album, maa, out october 10th
• something from kate's new store at greenbelt 5, opening this october
• anything by orhan pamuk. i'm not quite sure i really got my name is red, but i'm willing to give him another try
• anything on my sidebar wish list, hee hee -- the books about house decorating would especially bowl me over
  

bored bored bored. i don't think i've been this whiny about being bored since i was eleven.

14 hours in Sevilla

i discovered that i've been keeping this as a draft since march. march!!! since i'm feeling oddly sentimental about europe now, i thought it would be nice to finally finish this and post it.

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after a four- or five-hour bus ride from granada, i arrived in sevilla with pia and jeline at about eight in the evening. i left at ten in the morning the very next day, staying a grand total of fourteen hours.

it was enough. enough at least to do the following:

• get lost in a square full of shops that sold flamenco shoes and wedding gowns
• somehow find our way to our totally unmarked, anonymous hostel
• lug thirty kilos of luggage up a narrow, steep flight of stairs
• meet the world's cutest, most harrassed and spaced-out all-around swiss-french muchacho (the guy at the front desk at oasis)
• be shocked that we were checking into mixed-gender dorm rooms
• join a free tapas tour with least a dozen other travelers
• snap pictures in front of the catedral
• get a minor crush on one of my tapas tour-mates
• stuff my face with sodium-packed tapas and sangria
• laugh uproariously and take photos upon seeing that the tapas bar was on a street called calle gago
• walk downtown to a bar called la carboneria for a free flamenco performance
• put away my camera as requested
• wonder why polka dots seem to be an integral part of a flamenco dancer's wardrobe
• watch flamenco
• fall in love
• marvel at the passion and intensity of flamenco all the way back to our hostel
• be not-so-secretly pleased that we were sharing our mixed-gender hostel room with my minor crush
• go online
• sleep
• wake up and get ready to go
• misplace my room key and pay a 5-euro fine
• have sardines and toast for breakfast while looking at la giralda in the distance
• walk briskly with my minor crush to take photos of the catedral and la giralda in the excellent morning sun
• part ways (he had to catch a bus to portugal, i had to catch a flight to barcelona)
• get totally lost on the way back to the hostel
• acquire a pair of leopard-print flats in the process
• decided "ah f*ck i'll miss my flight, f*ck the money, i'm taking a cab"
• have a twenty-minute conversation with the cabbie in atrocious but oddly serviceable spanish
• turn down a free cab ride to cordoba
• make a friend (if i ever need a cab in sevilla, i know who to call)

incidentally, i bought a taschen book on moorish architecture in andalusia, and i found out (among other fascinating things) that granada used to be called elvira. la lang.

i am soooo going back there someday.

Home sick

after feeling feverish and achey most of yesterday, i woke up today with little red spots all over my face, chest and back. (charlie's unsympathetic-but-well-meaning text: "magiging ganap ka nang pinya!") thank goodness it's not measles, but i've been doctor-advised to stay in bed for the next couple of days... and withhold my cilium intake. (but... but... ang traje de boda!)

guilty confession: i kind of like the thought of staying home for the next few days. my only misgiving is that i have nothing new to read.

i have an odd book craving: v.c. andrews' flowers in the attic, which i've never read or watched. charlie was working on a couple of title card studies for a new show yesterday, and they reminded me of all those creepy v.c. andrews' covers with the under-shadowed faces and inbred families. so i dug up all the v.c. andrews' book covers on the net (charlie was not impressed), and read the dollangager series' plot summaries on wikipedia.

This was NEVER gonna happen

zambales. august. midnight till about two-thirty, three in the a.m. a couple of beers, a bottle of ginebra, and two bottles of a mountain dew-alike called sparkle. one glass, shared in turns. (ika nga ng mga tao sa opisina, parang naka-lips to lips ko na siya. at guilt-free pa!) peanuts, i think, and some leftover chicken wings. porch steps. the ocean to my left. the most unexpected, amazing, fun, surreal conversation ever. ("magkaka-despedida ka ba? imbitahan mo naman ako.") a goodbye that someone in the office, when i told them about it, described as "lingering."

a new friend -- one who would pass by me the next day and stop me for no reason at all except point to both our shirts, and point out: "terno tayo!" one who would pull up a chair opposite me during a lull in the workday, and share a bar of dark chocolate with me.

my all-time work crush for two years (!!!) and me.

definitely a first, and maybe-hopefully-not an only.

i love my job!

In the background

i was writing this over at the wedding blog. but then i realized it really didn't have any place there. so i'm bringing it over here.

i wanted to post the sketch of my wedding dress today, but i didn't feel like it. and i felt bad that something could happen that would rob the joy of sharing my wedding dress -- my beautiful, beautiful dress -- with all of you.

see, marlon and i are sad about something. it's there in the background, and we can't simply wish it away.

i remember a conversation we had with gerwin late last year, right after his wedding to charlie. he said something like, expect that everything that can happen, will happen this year. all the conflicts, arguments, and everything our good friend murphy can come up with, will come up.

wala lang. i just remembered that.

this is strange and mysterious; i'm finding out just how much i love -- want to love -- someone. and it isn't marlon. i hope someday she finds out too.

it's times like these that i remind myself that our commitment isn't to being sad and wishing things were different or better. it's to a whole and joyful family, to love, to aliveness, and to our special day being a day where all these are present -- not just for marlon and i, but for everyone. and we're committed to finding love, aliveness and joy each step of the way.

even in the little things. like my wedding dress. if it's up on the other blog, then you'll know i've picked myself up and not let the sadness rule me.

so even if i don't feel like blogging about the wedding right now, i will keep blogging -- and sharing. and even if we just feel like rolling over and giving up, we just won't.

You had me at "verbal barrage"

with me in charge (more or less) of the wedding, the boyf has been tasked with planning the honeymoon. it took us the greater part of a year to decide, but we finally set our sights on a couple of days in boracay, a short visit to the family in kolkata, and a week-plus roaming the wonders of rajasthan and agra. (palace of the winds! taj mahal! amber fort! gorgeousness!)

yesterday, marlon forwarded me a lengthy missive from a mr. tapas banerjee of trinetra tours in delhi. and by lengthy, i mean three pages when cut-and-pasted into a word document! within seconds i knew this was going to be interesting.

'Namaste' & Greetings Mr. Plazo !!Good Morning !!Many thanks for your mail. We take this opportunity to confirm our best intentions and knowledge to the cause of your trip. It is a pleasure to welcome you & your traveling partner to our country.

Before I serve my verbal barrage on to you, I just wish to inform you that I would be delighted to offer you references from All Over The World including Singapore too.

kapow! you've got me mr. banerjee! something about the self-deprecating, candid and enthusiastic tone just got me. and so i read on.

more choice excerpts:

For your entire journey, we are upgrading your transport to a fine Toyota MUV (Innova). This car will substantially add to your traveling comfort, especially on some bumpy roads where the top quality suspension would not let you feel any discomfort. However, the biggest and the single most achievement of this car is its Air-conditioning, [natawa talaga ako dito! omigosh! this is so true! especially in india!] which ensures that you are cool and fresh even if you are traveling under the mid day sun in warm country.

Besides the car, your driver would be special. He would be your 'Man Friday'. You would of course have local guides conducting your city tours in each city, but, besides that, your driver would be your most invaluable friend. He would not only be knowledgeable about places of interest in between journeys as also in cities, but, he would be a very nice human being with a pleasing personality for whom nothing would be trouble.

pero dito talaga nahulog yung loob ko sa kanya:

I apologise for my unending chin wagging, Mr. Plazo. I love the business and the gossip opportunities that come with it. Actually, the home dinner that I am proposing is in my house. Both me and my wife, Krishna love meeting people and making friends. I got into the business primarily because I could travel with tour groups making friends and sharing experiences. However, with the business expanding in the last 7-8 years, I am more or less now confined to my office ensuring standards that we are so paranoid about. Hence, whenever possible, I invite clients to our home for a meal with myself and my wife, Krishna. Home dinners are my major personal interaction with clients and I look forward to this eagerly. Little do the visitors realise that they would be subjected to my verbal diarrhea!!

ang sweet diba? anyway, i checked out a couple of the hotels and sites on his itinerary. and. oh. my. gawd.

behold rohet garh, a gorgeous 17th century home-turned-heritage hotel in jodhpur. swoon.

i may have died and gone into a taschen book.

and check out the luxe desert camping digs in manvar.

and one of the client references describes their driver as "a prince among drivers."

i do believe we have a winner.

Say it like you mean it

you know how job objectives in resumes are always so hard to write?

you have to use the "right" phrases ("career" instead of "job", "contribute" instead of "work"), include "buzzwords", create a "hook", use it as more space to sell your skills but somehow try to get in a word about what you want to do (taking care to veer toward "hirable" and away from "demanding"), sound stable and levelheaded but not boring, and just go ahead and invoke "travel opportunities" because you never know.

well, screw all of that. the nebulous, post-college quivers about writing job objectives are over.

• To live my passion for writing daily in my work, as part of an inspiring and powerful creative team that confronts challenges head-on and makes creative miracles happen
• To contribute my ability to create, plan, execute and deliver effective communication solutions to a broadcast network or advertising organization as a copywriter
• To see my ideas come to life in a multicultural work environment that promotes creativity, vitality and dynamism.
  

this is what i want in a job. and i mean it.

absolutely no brain cells were harmed in the writing of this job objective. who knew it could be so easy?

and if the person reading it doesn't like it, then by all means, on to the next! who says only employers get to do the weeding out? ;-)

Spanish Saturday, subtitle Sunday

firefox shut down on me unexpectedly and i just lost a long, happy, impassioned post i wrote about starting spanish lessons yesterday and subtitling my portfolio today.

syet. feel na feel ko pa naman siya.

i'll recreate it when i'm not so bummed anymore. besides gotta get back to work. (work on extracurricular projects, not work work, so don't worry.) in the meantime i'll post something i wrote today that's not so long, but packs quite a punch.

toodles.

Barcelona bench

inspiration for a new painting i'm working on:

it's from a mosaic bench at parc guell, barcelona. haay i miss barcelona... and the rest of spain. buti na lang spanish lessons at pia's house are starting this saturday! for free! yay!

i have a 3x4 unlined notebook from paperchase that i use as a visual journal. been picking it up more often to draw recently. tried drawing on a big sketchpad but it seems like i've gotten used to hunching over and drawing things in miniature.

la lang.

Apology to a casualty

warning: dancing with reckless abandon can be hazardous... to others.

i must have laughed for a full five minutes when i found this blog entry on womad through google blogsearch.

note the dutiful, sincere apologies from me and marlon in the comments section. in furnez, nakakatawa magsulat itong afam (afas?) na natalsikan ng pawis.

Womadness

some glimpses from my first time at womad singapore, one of marlon's yearly musts.

as someone whose itunes player at work is permanently set to "stuff in a strange language", i went mad over womad. not only were the acts spectacular and well-chosen (all of them with a noticeable crossover/mainstream appeal), but it was great to just dance barefoot on the grass with such reckless abandon.

that said, i had the overwhelming impression that attendance for the caucasian expat community was being checked at the gates. kung gusto mo mamingwit ng poreyner, ay nako day, doon ka. (what am i saying? in singapore, i'm a foreigner too!)

posers not welcome

there was sort of a uniform: pretty ethnic-print dresses, chunky exotic-looking accessories and various skin-baring tops for the women, and cargo shorts and tsinelas for the men. once in a while we would spot pretentious valiant souls who defied the mold.

"look, sweetie, a poser lost in the crowd!" i pointed out to marlon, as one girl tottered around the muddy, blanket-strewn field on four-inch, pointy-toed stilettos, tugging at her painted-on miniskirt to keep from being boso-ed by everyone who was sitting at thigh level, ironed hair frizzing and sticking to her neck, clutching a teeny evening bag, and wiping at her quickly melting rampa face. a curly-haired, middle aged indian lady beside us whipped her head around to look at me, then let out a hearty laugh. "you said it, honey!" she chortled gleefully.

personal picks

we didn't get to catch all the featured musicians, but i personally loved the mahotella queens, legendary singers from south africa with full, powerful voices. like the sixty-something grannies they were, they would dispense advice between songs: "get up at five o'clock in the morning to make tea for your husband. that's love!" loved them live (i swear, these grannies can shake better booty than me!), but rather not enough to hunt down a cd.

classically-trained david d'or from israel has a gorgeous tenor that would make any filipino chorister weep -- not to mention a stunning resemblance to matthew perry. (he's got a fabulous backup band too. loved the violinist.) he asked everyone to link hands and dance in a circle, shouting "a jewish dance!" the 101 attempts and individual interpretations of "jewish dance" that ensued all over the field were hilarious. (how would you dance jewishly?)

and daara j! they made me i realize just what a huge fan of hip-hop i am, have been and will probably always be. marlon and i were eating indian dinner off paper plates when they started performing. midway into their first number, i was possesed by the urge to dance -- so i scarfed down a few bites, chucked what was left of dinner into a garbage bin and sprinted to the front of the stage, yelling "let's go! let's go!"

not only did they make me (and a couple hundred people) dance like loons for the greater part of two hours (picture an entire field going "two steps to the left! two steps to the right!"), but they made me an instant fan. and their stand is truly inspiring: that hip-hop ("born in africa, raised in the u.s.") is education, not gangsta rap. awesome. now all i have to do is make a friend or two from senegal, so i can buy their cds.

ending with a bang

the finale was brilliant -- in the succinct filipino turn of phrase, nag-jamming sila. sinong sila? one musician from just about every group that performed that weekend. another tagalog term that fits perfectly: labo-labo. at one point i counted musicians from seven different countries onstage, playing at the same time, all making it up as they went along.

some permutations: a scottish fiddler and a tuareg percussionist. a dhol drummer from the uk, a senegalese dj and an israeli pop divo. a south african granny with lungs of steel and an iranian... er, man playing some instrument i can't even name (clad in nothing but a knee-length sarong, no less). it was mind-blowing. and it sure looked like sh*tloads of fun for the musicians.

ironically, the only cd i bought was of an act that i didn't catch -- the dhol foundation. their founder, johnny kalsi, directed the finale -- when he stepped onto the stage with his giant drum, brit accent and fancy duds, i knew we were going to see a great finale. and there was one part when it was just the fiddler from shooglenifty, and johnny kalsi punched right in with his drumming -- the music suddenly became so alive, so electrified at that moment, that i knew i had to get a dhol foundation cd before the night was over. (i did. i love it by the way.)

other acts we caught: youssou n'dour (senegal), shooglenifty (scotland), clube do balanco (brazil).