Mint.Music: I really have Long, silky & beautiful hair...in my dreams.

I've always wanted to talk about my hair issue.

I've had hair issues ever since I know the name of those dry, black strands growing on my head... From the day I can remember, I already knew I had really thick, rough and brittled hair.

They are so unmanageable that it will always curl to one side. During my bad hair days, the tip of a bundle will prominently stick out from behind my ear. I'll cry to mum that I want to stay at home and refuse to go to school. Check out the thickness of my hair:

Sometimes I wonder if it's due to overcrowding that my hair didn't get enough nutrients they ought to.

Up until I was 10years old, I was never allowed to grow my hair long. People termed my hairstyle as "mushroom-head". I wished they had called me 'Super Mario' instead. Some of my primary school mates even suggested that the saloon had probably used a bowl as a measuring tool to cut my hair. Young children have great imagination, don't you think? But hello, that's my grandma you're talking about, the one who cut my hair for me until I was Primary 4, and she had used blades. That's zero points for you for the wrong guess.

I had a very close cousin who's a year older than me. She was my role model then and I had wanted to be everything like her. She plays with Barbie dolls, wears pretty boots and floral dresses, her mum loves to dress her up and plaits her hair with the prettiest ribbons. My naive thoughts were, if I had hair smooth and silky like hers, my mum will dress me up pretty like her...

On my way home on the bus one day, I overheard a conversation,"Daily washing will dry up one's hair. If you don't want to have dry hair, then don't wash your hair. My sister's daughter tried it and..."

I heard my call. I wanted my hair to be smooth and straight so badly, I tried not washing my hair for a week. It got so bad that I developed dandruffs. That was in primary 6, when I was 12 I think. Come to think of it, I remembered amusing myself by rustling my hair and watched the dandruffs fall onto the wooden kitchen table, imagining they were winter snow flakes! Mum busted me, gave me a beating and got me 'Head and Shoulders'.

OH GREAT.

That cured my dandruffs alright, but guess what?

My hair texture got worse.

Since young, I played a lot of sports.

Side note:I am a highly accident-prone person, but I don't care,

I just love to play sports: basketball, netball, women's soccer, captain's ball...

I was never soft-spoken and feminine so I was never bothered with beauty and hair care.

I went for swimming lessons too. The chlorine in the pool made my hair so dry that I would pull off strands of hair stuck to the rubber strap of my goggles *OUCH x 100000*

And the thing is, when girls go to school, they have to tie up your hair once it reaches a certain length. For such a rule, my hair was ALWAYS be tied up into a ponytail. It became such a habit that I go everywhere in ponytails too to save the trouble of combing and making it neat.

*School days are from Monday-Saturday. I spent more time in school than at home. Of course it becomes a habit*

Oh my god, I can't believe I've just shown you photographs of me when I was 17!

Anyway in secondary school, I joined the Girl Guides.

Guides march, play outdoor games and do PTs in the sun.

I'm always out in the sun. In fact, I love the sun- tanning, marching, sports etc.

During my teens, Rebonding was in fashion.

I did my first hair-rebonding when I was 15 years old as I heard after doing this my hair will be long and silky! Mum paid for my first hair-rebonding session and ended my 15 years of suffering from messy, lousy-looking hair.

*got scalded in the ear and neck by the saloon auntie and still suffer from mental-nerve wrecks till now doing subsequent rebondings*

Then I got to know that there's actually D.I.Y. dye hair chemicals.

I did my first hair colour. It was a small bottle which cost about $40- suppose to give you a head of natural-looking brown hair. Disappointingly it didn't work, so I visited a neighbourhood saloon to re-dye the brown. They said my hair is stubborn and just would not 'eat' the colour. So the saloon added a lot of the chemicals and made the chemicals stayed longer on my head. I got hooked on colouring. Over the years, my hair colour turned from brown > gold > maroon > red. I manage to salvage a picture of myself in red highlights when I was 19. Sorry if the picture is too small.

Then Curls came in fashion and I did a lot of temporary curls:

Little did I know...

that damage to the hair is usually caused by:

Heat- blow drying, irons etc
U.V Rays- Sun, lights, tanning beds
Mechanical devices- curling irons, straighteners
Chemicals- hair dye, perms etc.
Poor diets- lack of proteins.

But I want beautiful hair like Zhiling jie jie!!!!

I don't understand why leading cast in TV dramas wakes up with beautiful hair- neat and non-frizzy, the way how it look when they go out to the streets. This is how mine looks when I wake up:

This was the longest hair I had grown all my life(Taken when I was 22.)

The length was so irritating because the ends kept getting tangled up under my armpits. And when I was in bed, I will accidentally pull my own hair whenever I toss or turn. In a fit of anger, i decided to cut it short that very same year to this:

And if u think it looks smooth and neat, it's because I did rebonding to my hair at the same time I cut it short.

Look at the fuzzy tip of my hair(Taken on my 23rd birthday). The rebonding only lasted a few months! My greatest headache was to have to spend hours and hours at the saloon doing rebonding, straightening and treatment of my hair- to the extent sometimes got burnt and scalded by the straightener.

The most daring thing I did to my hair was probably this:

I spent almost a month, once weekly, for about 8 hours to turn my hair into a beautiful green/purple/blue/turquoise as a hair model for a friend. Within an hour on stage, he cut my hair from this: (2010)

To this:

VIOLA.

Imagine the amount of chemicals, bleach, straightening etc done to my hair. For one thing, I was back to my 'mushroom-head' style. It was nostalgic for me as i recalled how much efforts I've made begging my mom to let me keep my hair long and spent years trying to make it pretty and nice when I was younger.