Powderpuff Mae

I knew an English couple, Sarah and Robert, who were seconded to Malaysia for 2 years. Their daughter, Charlotte was 5 and took a school bus to kindi. Sarah found Malaysians to be extremely polite people, they often refer to anyone and everyone as uncles or aunties. They found it even more amusing that Charlotte had picked up that habit from her friends. Even if she didn't know the name of the aunty or uncle, it didn't matter, every uncle and aunty had a special name. Thus the bus driver was officially named "uncle bus" by Charlotte and her friends. We had a good laugh, but as I recalled back, all the 4 designated school bus drivers who ferried me and my siblings throughout our 12 years of schooling were either called uncle bus or aunty bus.

Parents at Jesse's kindi had to pick their kids up in an orderly manner. We had to queue up outside the kindi. Everyday when I wait for Jesse in the queue I meet two aunties who were the designated drivers for some of the children at the kindi. The first aunty drove a Toyota Unser and she had 16 kids under her care. Imagine all 16 kids in a van. It was really amusing watching the kids get in. They just keep hopping into the van of unlimited space which reminded me of a tv commercial for Toyota Unser sometime ago where they showed the "forty vertically challenged thieves" getting into the unser in a similar manner as the kids. Indeed the Unser is great for space.

Both the aunty unser and friend had brownish yellow hair. They have kept up with the trend of having their hair coloured and bleached. Similarly, some decades ago, they must have kept up with the trend then and had their brows and eyeliner tattooed black and that event must have slipped their minds when they coloured their hair recently. The tattooing must have happened some decades ago. Today they have grayish black eyebrows and eyeliner (the black must have faded of) with light brown hair. Not good. It was quite excruciating looking at the pair of aunties everyday under the hot sun. Somehow under the bright natural sunlight, every colour and flaw seemed accentuated.

According to a professional makeup artist, she pointed out that the colour of the brows had to match the colour of the hair. As such black hair, darker or black brows; brown hair, brownish brows. I never saw the importance of such colour coordination until I saw how ghastly aunty unser and friend looked in their trendy new hair colour.

Chinese New Year is around the corner and I know many of my Cantonese (Canto) speaking friends who are itching to do something new and drastic to the hair. Just yesterday two of my canto friends, with great enthusiasm and in anticipation of the New Year coloured their hair brownish yellow, it did look very stark with their black brows. SO do be careful if you intend to colour your hair for the New Year, choose wisely.