seven and a half hours.

that's how long it takes to turn my hair into something that my ultimate crush would say "nice" to.

what's dumb though was that since the entire process took seven and a half gruelling hours, i was left with only three short hours to flutter my eyelashes and do the high school pa-cute thing in front of me. now, considering that we were at an event where (1) pa-cute antics are highly discouraged; (2) one of his crushes danced, sang, and generally wowed the world with her sheer talent and beauty; and (3) a hundred and fifty other people who would, at one time or another, demand his or my attention, the only thing that he did get to say was "nice" and the hateful joke that people say when you do something to your hair, "sh-in-ampoo mo lang yan?"

i swear. if i become rich enough, i'd take out an injunction against anyone using that line. it trivializes the 7 1/2 hour process. (and i'm willing to be that those commercial girls had to sit in a salon the same amount of time to get their hair looking like that too. the gall to claim it was all the work of a miraculous shampoo.)

moving on, it really did take that long. being as poor as i am with estimating time as i am with estimating parking space, i ended up being three hours late for the event i was supposed to attend. i could've sworn that the last time i subjected my hair - and myself for that matter - through the same kind of torture it only (only! ha, i make me laugh) took me five hours.

now of course the torture doesn't end there. there's three days of water-free existence for my locks (i pity the drone who'd have to sit beside me in an fx), a couple more of shampoo-free days (again, pity for the drone, and my smelly smelly scalp), and my wallet which, after having bled out already, will be suffering more as treatments and other implements are required.

all this for hair that's supposed to look naturally straight, shiny, and attractive. the irony of it all.

so men, the next time someone you fancy (even slightly) appears before you one day with a-little-different-from-normal-in-a-good-way hair, please take time out to say something more than "nice". you never know if she's actually spent half a day stewing on her ass in hunger to look halfway decent.