When a woman’s feeling blue, hitting the hair salon’s always the best medicine. Finally got my hair professionally coloured and highlighted today by the ever lovely Maeda stylist. One reason I’m in a much better mood - yes, my hair looks pretty good. Not as radical as I wanted it to be, but natural looking and easy as a base to style punkish, posh, nerdish looks which I suppose is the whole point of having a good and versatile crop on your head. The trim also got rid of all that nastiness we know as split-ends and dry ends, etc. Two, I’ve waited so long to get my hair done by Maeda it’s a dream come true (yes, he’s that hot)! It’s bad when you totally fancy your stylist.

After washing off all that painted dye on my head, here’s what happened during Maeda’s inspection: (pardon my attempts at typing a Japanese accent…my thoughts are in brackets)

Maeda: AAH! so much black-ku! Soka.
Diva: Yea, I know. Sorry. (too much black dye in the past)
Maeda: Iie. I have idea. -nods away optimistically-
Diva: (gosh I love you.) Great. (I love your ideas.)
Maeda: Hai hai. -continues to nod and work away at my hair-

…time passes…after the second dying attempt and many attempts at forcing the dye into my hair with space-age alien-looking heat machines:

Diva: (scoot aside assistant-boy; you ain’t not wanted here)
Maeda: Waa. Kirei! Nice-su!
Diva: (yea, you’re mighty pretty yourself) Finally. Looks real nice! (reckon we’d look real nice together?) -thousand watt smile-

So much for fantasies. Good thing my stylist has no Mel Gibson What Women Want psychic abilities! Anyway, thought I’d put that little embarrassing excerpt up there since it’s about hair and would relate to this awesome childhood sweet of mine - Dragon Beard!

This Chinese candy is essentially sugar that’s been spun like thread, stretched and pulled till it resembles very fine strands of hair and rolled up to look like a silkworm. I mean, you gotta admit that it really looks like a small plate of worms doesn’t it? What’s inside this wrapped sugar threads is a mix of sweetened peanuts, sugar crystals and sometimes sesame seeds. It’s easy to find this popular candy at traditional sweet stalls in Chinatown or night markets in this country. Other than that, it’ll be pretty hard to find authentic dragon beard candy but always try your luck when you hear a ‘ding ding’ sound as it’s quite often that you’ll find the Dragon Beard Candy man working next to a Ding Ding Tang (ding ding sweet) candy man.

This candy is really soft and delicate and once you bite it, all that sugary fluffiness (and by golly, it’s well fluffy) of the insides comes pouring out. It’s never easy to eat this ladylike but no one really bothers that you’ve got white sugar threads all over your lips and some random peanut bits at the corners of your mouth. It’s just too good for anyone to care about the way you look.

It brings good memories having these guys around. They’re such odd-looking sweets but yet they remind me of the times when money could buy so much more (before inflation), especially my pocket money which was all spent on junk food and sweets. These bad-for-your-teeth snacks of course led to greater rate of socialization amongst the school bus pals. Sweets are always a great bonding technique! Too bad most kids just can’t practice responsible eating or self-control and so things like sugarfree, dentist-approved sweets have been created to quell the hearts of parents. It’s not that I don’t fancy such sugarfree whatevers now and again and definitely have nothing against healthy snacks, but what’s happened to just the good ol’ candy?

*Note: I bought this candy from a nice toothy-grinned old man from the market. I don’t personally know the traditional technique to making this sweet so apologies in advance to those who are curious for a recipe.