Archive for August, 2011

How do you choose your own name?

Something I find often charming and sometimes weird is the English names that Chinese people choose for themselves. I believe that they routinely choose their names as teenagers during English class. Some are pretty regular names, such as John or Emma. Some are what your great aunt and uncle might be called, Fanny, Bessie or Herbert. There are others that are very much in the spirit of celebrity baby names – things that are plain bonkers such as Ice. Then there’s a whole set that are actually lovely  – I recently met a Monroe and thought it was great.

I was thinking that maybe I should choose a Chinese name. Maybe somethign like teapot or fire hydrant. Or maybe not.

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Eyebrow Raising

One thing that I have noticed about Chinese girls is that they have fabulous eyebrows. Most of them are painted on but they are beautiful. They manage to draw exactly the right sweeping arch. Compared to British and American girls they are amazing. I don’t mean anyone on TV…anyone who goes near the silver screen must get dragged off to get their eyebrows properly wrangled. Think Kate Winslet or Beyonce. Megan Fox  has amazing eyebrows (she’s dumb as a rock but still manages to have rocking eyebrows). I mean regular people in the street in the US and England. Anyone over the age of about 25 probably has plucked theirs into oblivion. So many of them have skinny sparse looking strips that start too far over and make them look cross or just weird.  Those that do use an eyebrow pencil tend to draw them on in mad half circles – Ronald McDonald style.

Anyway, I have to admit that mine are also not great. Not as a result of too much attention, more because they are very fair so tend to disappear. So when I heard about Browhaus here (international leading eyebrow wranglers) I thought I’d pay them a visit. When I asked for advice I thought they might suggest dye, or maybe sell me some eyebrow pencils. No. They suggested what they call a ‘resurrection’. That’s a temporary tattoo. Gulp. That was a rather bigger step than I was expecting so they suggested showing me the possible outcome using pencils. OK, that’s not so scary. So a girl with exquisite tadpole shaped arches drew the eyebrows on me. I was a little surprised at the result.

Not only did they not quite match but they were HUGE. They looked like exactly the large hairy variety that people go in there to have wrangled. After I mildly freaked out they made them a little smaller but I still found them pretty intimidating. Here’s what they looked like. Give me a cigar and I’m Groucho Marx.

Scary eyebrows

I think I’ll stick to using pencils/ powder now and again. I’m not ready for the tattoo yet.

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