of books and hair

It's almost two in the morning, my hair's reasonably dry, and outside it's raining. It would have been a perfect setting for sleeping my ass off like my roommates. Yet I'm still awake.

Earlier I bought a Haruki Murakami book when I dropped by National Bookstore after going grocery shopping. We decided to have spaghetti for dinner [for the first time in several weeks] so I had to go out and buy the ingredients. Not quite keen on going home yet after that, I went to NBS first to look for this month's issue of T3. Unfortunately, the blasted magazine still isn't out [Ed Geronia, anong petsa na?] so I went looking for interesting books instead.

Now, I've seen some of Murakami's books at another store before and I found my curiosity piqued. Besides, I saw in marie claire that Sam Oh loved his work as well as Neil Gaiman's and I figured if he could rank up there with Gaiman then his work is definitely worth a look at the very least. So I chose one, called The Elephant Vanishes, and even got a 20% discount to my pleasant suprise.

It's a collection of stories rather than a whole novel and I've read but a couple or so. And so far its magic hasn't worked on me yet. Maybe it's my high expectations for it or something, but the stories somehow left me hanging dry. But then again there are still about a dozen I haven't read yet, and maybe I'll find what I'm looking for there. I reckon maybe I should have opted for a novel instead of the rather disjointed stories.

Anywho, the spaghetti was not the only reason I went to the supermarket. Lately my hair's been falling off at a rather alarming rate and I knew I had to do something before I wake up one day with all my beloved hair gone so I went ahead and bought Sunsilk's complete Hair Fall Solution system. Yeah, all three of them. Cost me plenty too. Now, I never was one to make a fuss out of my hair as much as I love it--like hell, I haven't run a comb through it in months--but seeing all those long strands everywhere just sent me to a panic.

I love my hair, I really do. I've never had it this long before, reaching down almost to my waist, and it's actually a childhood dream come true for me since I've wanted long hair as far as I could remember but never had the guts to before [Mama wanted me to keep my hair shoulder-length or shorter]. And it's been left relatively untreated except for a hot oil treatment ages ago and a DIY dye job in which I colored it blue-black but instead it ended up getting lighter rather than darker so now it's brown with a slight reddish tinge. To my relief it didn't get damaged by that bang-up job and I have no plans to do it again anytime soon.

But the point is my hair's pretty important to my well-being that's why I'm going the extra mile to keep it nice and healthy. I could totally understand Say [of PBB season 1] when she cried while getting her long hair cut inside the house even though half the nation thought she was making a big fuss out of nothing. Long hair must never be counted as insignificant since after all, attaining and maintaining it is no easy task.

It took me a pretty long time [read: years and years] to grow it out to this length, and keeping it from getting all tangled up and everything is another story altogether. Though some really go all out with treatments and such, I've so far managed with just shampoo and my fingers and the rare occasion when I feel industrious enough to use a conditioner. My hair's not perfect, mind you, but in the very least it doesn't look like strands of wire and lets me pass off as a normal human being instead of a witch. Just for that it deserves a nice treatment or two, unfortunately I have neither the time nor the money to go to a salon so I settled for the HFS which cost me a pretty penny nevertheless. Oh well. It had better be worth it.