Next to my work, there is a Japanese restaurant owned by a Korean lady. I’m not a regular customer there; I only treat myself when I’m dying of hunger in the paid week. Last week, I went to that restaurant since I got to know the owner lady for being a Korean. When I was ordering california rolls and gyoza in Korean, a yakuza type sushi man, who looked about 30-40 age ranges, stared at me like I was naked. I thought to myself, he must been curious about me. Speaking Korean with the lady revealed my nationality and that was interesting enough to stare at. The next day, I started work at nine, and about ten, the sushi man walked by my store, and again, stared at me like the day before. I felt uncomfortable so I looked away. The same day, at about two, the sushi man came into the store and stood on the doormat, not moving one step at all. I was sweating with other customers asking difficult questions, I couldn’t greet the sushi man. When the store started to empty out the costumers, he came up to me and said in a very, very, weird Korean accent, “You Korean, right?” Due to his accent, I thought he must be born here so I started to speak English to him to make him feel more comfortable. But he kept on speak in broken Korean with hard to understand accent. Is he, a little retarded? With a bit of pity I tried to be nice to him. I asked what he needed, and he said something that made him looked like he had unscrewed parts in his brain. He touched his eyebrows and said, “Girls cut their eye brows, do you have?” I wasn’t sure what he asked for so I showed him eyebrow shaping knives and scissors. However he didn’t seem to be interested at all. Then he asked me, “Do you have oil to put on your head?” “Oil?” “Yeah, oil to put on the head” I looked up to see his hair, which was already oily. Again, I wasn’t sure what he wanted. “Do you mean, pomade?” “I know nothing.” He said he doesn’t know so I showed him the pomade. “If you want slick back style and make your hair shiny, you would use this.” “Yes, this is what I look. How use?” “You just put it on your hair and go like this.” “Ah, ok.” He was talking to me in broken informal Korean the whole time. I assumed that he was a retarded second generation Korean who learned Korean the wrong way. I was a little surprised when he said he would buy all the products I recommended to him. I even asked him to make sure if he needed all the products, but he just shrugged. I wasn’t even done with registering the products (eyebrow knives, one Tweezerman eye brow scissors kit, and travel size Crew pomade) he impatiently flashed the gold colored debit card to me. “Thank you.” I held his debit card on my left hand and registered the products into the register then swiped the card. After that, I asked him to sign the receipt for me. I waited until he was away to glance at the name on the receipt. I knew for sure that name wasn’t Korean. It wasn’t either Japanese or Chinese. Not only his name was impossible to pronounce, I could not even guess his nationality by the name. As I realized that he wasn’t a retarded Korean, I saw him still walking around the store (now the nail polish section) with unknown nationality. And all of the sudden, I felt creepy.

here's another random one . . . this is for FGR's invasion of "Almost Faces" where your face is supposed to be partially obscured. Well, my face isn't really too obscured, but I had focus issues with all the shots where the scissors were covering my face more . . . I suppose I could re-shoot, but ehhhhh. These are my hair cutting scissors. I very often cut my own hair. It's kind of a compulsive thing I'm ashamed of . . . like how some people bite their nails, sometimes I just can't help it. The thing is, I'm kind of oddly obsessed with the way my hair is cut and shaped around my face and in the back . . . I'm very self conscious about my profile and I feel it is either helped or seriously hurt by my hair! The reason I'm given to cutting my own hair is that I know the "problems" I have with my profile, and I have a hard time explaining it to a stylist well enough. (Also, I sound a little neurotic trying to explain it.) So 99% of the time I end up in tears after I've been to a hair salon because a) they've done something "wrong" and b) I PAID for it! I'm trying to get over that. And I'm trying to grow my hair longer right now so that when I DO go to a salon there's less room for error. But every few weeks or so I'll see something in the mirror and i can't resist the urge to reach for the scissors.