Vanity, Hypocrisy, Turncoaty

This blog piece is in three parts.

Once again, it is not terribly cerebral given I have had little to challenge my brain 16 months into our resettlement.  However, I am justifying yet another moronic post because I do have a potential job in the offing.  I am just awaiting the Ministry of Magic here in Singapore to approve my application. 

They rejected my first application because I did not submit any supplementary information in support of my request.  Given they never asked for any of that information demonstrates that I am clearly the idiot in this scenario.  I have submitted a second application with every possible piece of information on myself including my bra size and favourite colour.  Fingers crossed it gets approved.

If not, the Interpol building is just about completed so the subcommander position I applied for might still come to fruition.  Otherwise, they might still offer me the job supporting the EXCO.  I look forward to demonstrating my fluency in French, Spanish and Arabic in this role.  Is it the same thing if you only speak English but do it in all those accents really convincingly?  I am hoping so, in which case I will do very well working for Interpol.

So, we begin with Hypocrisy which relates directly to the potential job.  Of course if I do not get Ministry approval and don't become an international man of mystery then you can disregard everything I am about to say.

Hypocrisy
I don't know any working Mum's here who don't have a helper.  In fact, I don't know many people who don't have a helper but definitely those ladies who have very young children or a job do have in house help.  Again, this was something we really never wanted to do given we do not have a large apartment and any poor lady who would move in with us would have to live in a cupboard in the kitchen.  Terribly Dursleys.  Furthermore, because our landlord curiously decided to remove the toilet and tile over the plumbing, the poor young lady would have to go to the toilet in the sink in her little bathroom out back. 

All of this sounds rather icky which is generally how I feel about the whole helper thing, particularly when one cannot really provide adequate living accommodation.  I don't care that people say "oh, but it's so much more than what they had back in their home countries".  Unacceptable.  If it is not good enough for us, it is not good enough for someone else.

This gives us two options.  One, we move apartments which we will probably do when our lease runs out in May because we could probably have bought a small house in the UK with what we have spent on rent here in two years.  And the other option is just not getting a helper.  Admittedly, I will leave it to breaking point managing this imaginary international media espionage job I have with still being an average parent and take it from there. Of course, if I do get posted to the depths of the Pacific Ocean in the next month then a helper it will be and in a cupboard she will live.  Hypocrisy 101.

A wise friend did tell me to think very seriously before employing anyone as once someone is living in, you are never ever on your own and having a young lady working for us and living in our small quarters will definitely put a spoke in our walking about the house in our pants time which you may be surprised we do regularly.  This is due to the heat but having been the victim of social media verbal violence I have learned that one does not complain about that to friends back home.  Ahem ahem.

Turncoaty
I think when we moved here we were quite clear on the fact we would not get a helper and we would not get a car because they are so unbelievably expensive.  The helper discussion demonstrates we failed on point one and are now on the cusp of failing spectacularly on point two. We have completely changed our position on a car given we recently found out that there are alternative ways to have a car which does not involve paying $150,000 for a new Nissan sunny.

The answer to this is leasing and you can get an "on its last legs puddle jumper" for a slightly less gut wrenching amount of money than buying and your costs cover everything apart from petrol so it seems a sweeter option.

The reason we are reneging on this is recently I feel we have been missing out on things due to the lack of a car.  I think if it was just the two of us we would have continued to putter about on public transport but with Whingey 1 and Whingey 2 complaining their "legs hurt, they can't walk anymore, 8 miles is too much, I am so hot, I am going to die, I hate you, my feet are bleeding blah blah blah" the idea of a car does seem appealing. 

There is no way to justify the ownership or leasing of a car on the grounds of cost as it's a dead argument so you just have to accept it is a luxury to make your life just that bit dandy.  We are investigating at present but even the cheapest banger is still too much for our liking cost wise. 

The other option which I did consider is becoming a taxi driver, as long as I can own the car, use it personally whenever I am not working, only work during school hours and cover an area that does not exceed a radius of 5km from my home.  I am confident that this option is as realistic as my linguist's job at Interpol and I am a much better driver than the Mr Magoo's at the wheels in Singapore.

Vanity
Those of you who know me well, know I am mostly devoid of vanity given I dressed like a bag lady in the UK and dress like a sweating slob in Singapore.  My dress sense remains gross and unflattering and nothing I own costs more than around twenty bucks. 

However, as I have said in the past, humidity and the frizz ball hair caused by my Sri Lankan genes are not sympatico and after a year of steadily turning into Leo Sayer I had enough.  The breaking point came when my husband on asking him to sit down with me to discuss some holiday options said "I am sorry but I can't actually talk to you, listen to you or take you seriously with that hair".

My dear friend who is now my best friend in the whole world for ever and ever because of how she has ended my hair plight recommended this lovely little salon near where I live.  The salon is called "Hair Today" (which I think is strange because I instantly think "Gone Tomorrow", not a good tag line for a hairdresser's).

It is owned by a sweet Korean couple.  They are a bit White Stripes in that they are young and I have no idea if they are brother and sister or boyfriend and girlfriend.  Nevertheless, they could not have been nicer even though there was a bit of a language barrier given I can't speak Korean or even speak English with a Korean accent.

They were so utterly nice that it took me back to when I had my haircut after my second child.  I had grown it out and had no time to comb it in the 18 months since he was born so it was mostly dreadlocks.  My Mum came round to comb it out which took about 2 hours but there was one massive dread we just could not unknot.  I went to Toni and Guy the next day and the bitchy sweeper dolly (I use this derogative moniker because he was so rude) sneered to my stylist as he floated past on his broomstick "oooh, good luck with that".  Unfortunately, I only thought of a biting and mean retort to say about an hour later when I was back at home by which time it was too late and he was probably laughing at some poor ladies grey roots.

Anyway, back to the present day.  I went through a procedure called rebonding which is the Asian term for relaxing.  It took four hours with multiple layers of cream that smelled like Veet (again, not what you want on your head hair) being applied between various helmets of Steam, Darth Vader, Kitt the Trans Am, Lady Gaga and multiple washings.  After three hours and many of the above helmets and Veets, she washed my hair and it looked dead straight.  I actually began to cry with joy I was so happy.  She then blasted my hair with the dryer and I went from looking like Miss Silky Bob to Ann Widdecombe electrocuted.

At this point my tears went from joy to misery as it clearly had not worked.  She then used hair straighteners on my hair but because it is so short in places burned my head twice.  I never complain in such situations but it was so painful I did yelp and she was very apologetic.  Yet after 20 minutes of this tonging torture and a few second degree burns to my scalp, I still looked like a human microphone.  Luckily, it was not over.  Another layer of Immac, a wash and a quick dry with the hairdryer, no additional styling and my hair was poker straight.  I cried with joy again.

I am SO happy.  I am a simpleton.  I don't want riches, fancy clothes, jewellery and posh nosh.  Good health and an absence of piano hair is really all I ever wanted for a happy life.  And now I have it.  Well, apart from the good health but who needs that when you look like you just stepped out of a salon when actually you haven't showered yet and just stepped off a bus.