to fizzle or to Bang?

I've had bangs for most of my life, as (or as my mom would argue) it would make my tiny narrow head seem more normal shaped. My mommy-biggest dearest would call a fringeless-face a 'bare-ass head', so that was possibly another motivation for me to keep my fringe. 

When I was little the fringe bothered me, then it became my statement (partly also because of Lanvin FW 2010), and after that it was just this thing that was a part of my forehead - always there. The Thing that would not leave. 

Currently though I am in the process of growing my bangs out. This decision came hand in hand with growing my entire hair out as I had it very short for a while.  I suspect 'them' throwing short haired girls in front of rapidly moving objects though (But everyone looks so alike and so dull and so bimbo-esque with their perfectly styled long plastic curls... and then here I come marching in with my toilet brush hairdo )

My hair is very fine, so having my full fringe growing together with the rest will  - hopefully- give me a bit more volume. Only thing is, now I have these baby hairs at the front popping up like antennas, and impossible to tame down. Except when I decide to cut my bangs back. But then how will I continue to plot with outer space?Which brings us to.....


The Saturday Night dance-off! :D 

Fuse ODG feat. Wyclef Jean - Antenna

China's neglected backyard

Hebei province seen from the train looks like China's neglected backyard. I noticed that on one of my last trips for work. 'Work', where getting dressed up as princess Bubblegum means a positive turn of events.

Usually any of the train trips I had to take so far it was foggy (= heavily polluted) and therefore I was unable to look around much. Or, we left ridiculously early (or late) so it was already dark. One time, however, it was squeaky bright. I could see Tianjin and the Tianjin tower from the window of my train, and before that moment I only knew of Tianjin because one of the stations we'd pass was called 'Tianjin West'. Also there were villages, and abandoned factories, and piles of stuff, and peasants toiling in the heat. All by all, it looked like a neglected backyard (a backyard nonetheless).

I must have pictures somewhere that will paint a picture. Once I took as video as we crossed the Yellow River (in fog and haze), other times I'd try to commemorate the view in combination with a can of beer, which is never the same on a Chinese train (I've only boarded high speed trains in China. Don't judge! Train travel is still my favorite way of travel. Czech trains in particular. Go try them!).

I've sipped through quite a few epic cans (because there were a lot of trips *ahem*, not so much because I felt a need to drink my sorrows away, although that was usually the case after the gig). There was a specific type that 'American Troopers'  preferred apparently, and there was a beer from Tibet.

And I always felt obligated to, in the first place, plop myself down into the restaurant car the minute the train would start moving. There are plugs there for my laptop, and without chord the screen goes black after 15 minutes. Also, more often than not, the travel companions weren't always the coziest.

Anyway. Let me see what material I can snort up from the hidden nooks and crannies of both phone, camera and hard drive.

This is either very annoying, or incredibly sad, but please tilt your head a 90 degrees to the right in order to view properly. Weekly quiz: what's the guy in the background saying? Send in your lucky guess before next week, and maybe you're the lucky winner of a fresh batch of uncontaminated Yellow River silt! 

It's not easy being Geek....

I learned about a game today, a very intriguing game. The name of the game (according to my friends)  is 'Fuck this game" or 'this game sucks'. There's islands and forests and graveyards in the game, which, I think, all have different colors. Graveyards suck, and so do human wizards. Them's a nasty bunch, because 'Fuck This Game!'

There is also a thing called 'the Black Lotus', which apparently is worth thousands of dollars. We're not talking about ladies from the ancient Orient here, we're just talking humble playing cards.

This game does not even have a board, like with Catan! No sheep to obtain, no villages to raid. There's cards with creatures though, and cards for brainstorming, and mountains which have a color, different from swamps or forests or graveyards.

They're playing this game on an enlarged mouse pad of sorts. One of the guys playing won it. If he would not have won it, he would have counted out ten euro's for it, the enlarged mouse pad (which has the name of the game on it though, and an angry man waving about with a ball of fire. Looks pretty cool).

Did I mention that I don't get this game? There's two huge stacks of cards the table, two players, and each player is supposed to know his stack by heart. There's druids, and swamps (again with the swamp!), creatures, green creatures, elves, forests, but no meadows, because the meadows are still swamps due to lack of technology (I assume the game is set some time in the middle ages, in a parallel universe).

The goal of the game is a it unclear to me. My friends play and practice on a 'quality deck' they found on the world wide web and then printed and photocopied. Buying the whole stack would take too damn long, and would cost too damn much (you can either by packs, or buy single cards from the internet, and those prices tend to be steep).

So, by copying decks from people who know how to play, who have acquired the right cards, you hope to gain enough experience to play in a tournament somewhere and win a load of cash (or, and over sized mouse pad), which you then can flip into more cards. Really good and/or rare cards go for thousands of dollars sometimes on Ebay (the game got invented about 20 years ago, many cards are not being made anymore).

The essential goal of the game? I still don't know. To eventually beat the dude (I think this more of a game for dudes) who got his hands on an original black lotus. However, it does not make for a cosy night of fun and whimsy around a campfire, unfortunately.

You've got mail!

This morning I woke up to find this on my newsstand. Isn't that just the best way to start an icy Monday morning?

A French man with Down syndrome got over 30.000 cards for his birthday on Saturday, after his mom put on a notice on Facebook. Cards and presents started to drip in from all over the world. First a few, then by the truckload, quite literally.

That must have been the best birthday ever! Wish I'd known about it, so I could have chipped in a card and a cake as well. And, going by the motto of 'better late, than never': 

Joyeux Anniversaire, Manuel! :D

Kaljanpaska

Maybe now's a good time to throw in a quick introduction, done the proper way. It might explain the stream of China paraphernalia, cheap dresses and complaints about winter being too damn dark.

I lived in China for little over two years, worked as a model (Here you can read some background and prepare yourself for an array of, let's say, 'colorful' stories) whilst studying.

Swapping Beijing's excitement (the jobs, the drama, the Mojito man) for Finland a few months back was a bit of a culture shock, but I'm adapting accordingly. And learning Finnish. I still like snow, but ask me again in February.

My hobbies include an array of things, many of which I don't know how to share with the folks around me (ever had a conversation about mushroom collecting? Discussing Diana Vreeland and how awesome she was/is? Finding ways to make windmills out of wood?) so I figure I put them here and make more room inside my brain for more gibberish (there cannot be enough gibberish).

So, strap in, and get ready for Mojito man anecdotes, stew recipes and beauty editorials from outer space. It'll all be on here.

Seagulls #1

http://stevenseagulls.com/

These guys are amazing! I saw them cover 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC on the telly, and they made my morning. And many mornings after that. Gotta love a standing up base and a mandolin and a banjo and a set of spoons for the beat!

On how to get started by not starting at all and simply staring out of the window while poking a stuffed hedgehog.

I once had a blog, a pretty awesome one. and then I moved to China, no longer able to maintaining it (mainly because of this). I suppose it still floats around somewhere in Hyperspace, don't look for it though. And even if you find it, it's in Dutch. So...

Anyways. The amount of gibberish that goes around in my brain is enormous. Kind of like the great swirl of garbage (the Eighth Continent) in the Pacific Ocean. The gibberish needs to exit the system, just like the Pacific Garbage Continent (Yet here at the Daily Doris we firmly believe that procrastination is a virtue...). So I figure I put it all here, instead of bugging my better looking half or worse - random people on the bus.

If I keep this up, I can tell people that I have my own newspaper, and how cool is that? If things really take off, I could even get it to print, become a lumberjack, revive the collapsed paper industry... and then we got a stew going! Stubb will thank me for saving the nation!

We're not there yet, though, but a start is a start, amiright? :D