More dread care

After nearly six months of dreadlocks, there are some more things to know about. For example, and this is perhaps not revelationary knowledge, it turns out that hair grows. Bear with me. On average, hair grows around a centimetre a month. Also, hair falls out, at a rate of around 100 hairs a day. If you are not follicularly challenged, the old hair is replaced by new growth, much in the manner of a shrubbery.

The problem with this whole set up is that the new hair doesn’t automatically know to grow itself into the dreadlocks. So you end up with dreads that are mostly made up of the old hair, with fuzzy new hair surrounding it. And after six months of new growth, the new hair is probably going to be around 6cm long. Some kind of solution is required if you want to keep the dreadlock thang going instead of the fuzzy head thing.

The answer, if you happen to have an incredibly willing girlfriend / partner / friend to hand, is to enlist their help with a needle and some sewing thread, and then literally thread the new hair into the existing dreads. Then, in my case anyway, fix it in place with a home made hair wax, courtesy of some Tasmanian bees and a dash of tea tree oil. This process, when you have seventy six dreadlocks, is not a short one. We spent pretty much all day yesterday working through my hair, and still have a fair few left to do. The price of looking like a beach bum. Yep.

So what else is happening today that isn’t fascinatingly hair related? Well, Germany and England are both partaking in their second world cup games. We watched Germany take on Serbia from the fine venue of a local pub, where I observed the nations Friday afternoon productivity take a wonderful nosedive. Sadly, the game was not as pretty a sight as watching Germany take on Australia. Trying to win a game with ten men when 1-0 down is always going to be a challenge. The Serbian keeper, who looks mysteriously like John Cusack, covered himself in glory when saving Germanys main chance at equalising with a second half penalty. In conclusion, I really need to stop supporting teams, it never ends well. So.. England later then.

In other, quite spectacularly unrelated news, the worlds largest entertainment expo is upon us, with the three major gaming manufacturers touting their wares. From what I can tell, Sony and Microsoft are desperately trying to catch up with Nintendo on the “oh my god there’s a gaming market who don’t want to take gaming too seriously” front, with all manner of interactive motion capture type devices. Expect Playstation Move and Microsoft Kinect marketing messages to be liberally thrown at you over the coming months.

Nintendo, in the meantime, not one to rest on its laurels even with the unexpected success of the Wii, are embracing the wonders of the three dimensional world with their next handheld gaming device, the Nintendo 3DS, which lets you play games in 3D without glasses. Quite how this arcane trickery is achieved is a mystery to me, but it sounds like it could be a deal breaker. Expect to see people peering mystically into these screens on the tube in early 2011

Finally, in cultural news, we took a walk around a graveyard in Bonn, where a number of luminaries are buried, including Beethoven’s dear old mum. The graveyard was, well, a graveyard. Dead people and tombstones.  However famous you are, it seems you end up pretty much the same. Awesome. Enjoy your weekends :)

Fast cars

Yesterday evening we popped over to a friends house for a birthday party. The trip to the party involved a drive on one of Germany’s autobahns, a wonderful motorway system where speed limits do not exist. There is something fairly frightening about this - high spec vehicles whizz pass like fighter jets at over 200km/h. You are veritably encouraged to perform any overtaking manoeuvres rapidly and to scurry out of the fast lane as fast as you possibly can so people with real cars can get to their destinations on time, whilst you bobble along at a pedestrian 130km/h, wheel shaking with the effort.

Surviving the autobahn aside, I can also report that my German is not massively improving, in fact some would suggest it has not improved at all. I was responsible for navigating us the sixty or so kilometres to the party location, a bit of a challenge what with the Google Maps instructions being printed out in German, but I did learn on the way that we live pretty close to the Nürburgring. Which was nice. Legendary race tracks and minor diversions down tiny side roads aside (in the name of exploration, naturally), we succeeded in our mission to get to the party, mostly on time. Hurrah.

At the party, I learnt that there are some advantages to being a non native speaker of the local language. For example, you can happily avoid that bug bear of mine, largely involving small talk. I think I’ve mentioned it (well, whined about it) before, what with the travelling thing, and the scenario is the same when you meet new people at a social event, it’s just that the questions change slightly. Instead of the travellers favourite of where have you been / where are you going, small talk in more polite society involves quizzes about what you do and where you are from. The problem currently is that my answers to both of those questions are largely empty of helpful meaning, and the result is that the conversation can often rapidly tail away if desperate measures to steer it on a correct course are not taken. Still, I am able to share a top tip - if you want to avoid small talk, put an unsurpassable language barrier in the way.

Don’t, however, get the impression that I am no longer my usual sociable self. The party we attended last night was certainly good. The food and beer in particular were of the highest quality, and I made friends with a chap for whom the punk movement was clearly still very much au fait. I want you to think bright pink mohawk and multiple piercings. He seemed incredibly bored, and as I had complemented his hair, we chatted. Admittedly as neither of us could really speak the others language, the conversation was largely sign based, but I learnt how you achieve that spikey mohawk look (sugar water it turns out). Sadly the conversation stalled after I enquired about football, he didn’t have an interest, and I had run out of hair based conversation.

Speaking of football, I managed to miss the first half of the England / USA game. I did find a TV set at around the half way mark, where I discovered that the game was a 1-1 tie, and therefore I had to watch the second half, party be damned. The party was not full of people who were overly interested in watching England play terribly, in fact only one other person took a passing interest, and he watched bemused as the chaps in white all failed in the primary mission of getting the ball thing into the net thing. I think perhaps the most interesting part of the game was the facial hair on one of the American players.

Tonight is the Germany / Australia game, and having concluded that England are unlikely to be raising the cup anytime soon, I have decided I may as well expand my support to other nations for whom the queen’s birthday is still an important day. So I expect to be lynched later on tonight as I cheer Australia on to an inevitable victory. Football punditry is not going to be a career move for me I suspect.

Finally, if you have made it this far through my ramblings, here is your reward. It’s not much of a reward, some in fact would not see it as that at all, but what can you do. Anyway, if for some reason you are sitting at home with a peculiar hankering for a surreal journey through the Nevada desert with guitar playing samurais and Death, check this out. As always, continue to enjoy yourselves.

Dreadlock maintenance

I figure the care and maintenance of dreadlocks is probably not necessarily that high on most people’s radars, but as I've now had dreads for a few months, I thought what the hell, it’s a Sunday afternoon, I'll share what I’ve learnt.

First off, dreadlocks are not the easy option in hair styling that I originally thought they may be. You know, get dreadlocks, abandon hair to the fates for the rest of time. Apparently not. It seems I should perhaps have stuck to the “soon to be back in fashion and seemingly always popular in the outback” mullet look if I’d wanted low maintenance hair.

Secondly, the internet is not the unbiased source of truth for everything. I know, I was as shocked as you probably are. There are multiple theories on both dreadlock creation and maintenance, ranging from the fill it up with peanut butter option through to the roll around in the mud and leave it for a while option. Apparently the downsides to peanut butter are that it attracts insects and mud is well… muddy. Great.

After reading a lot, I came to the conclusion that you basically need to figure  out what works for your hair type. If I happened to have naturally frizzy hair, this whole process would have been a lot easier I think. Dreadlocks are not the easiest to maintain when your hair has a tendency to remain straight and tangle free. So. What do you actually do.

It turns out, it’s pretty simple. You just have to spend about an hour a day rolling the dreads between your palms. You can use beeswax if you want, or pure aloe vera, if that helps. You can keep the dreads tangling at the root by using a crochet hook, a technique that a wise beyond his years german friend (featured in the photo) attempted to teach me, which I am still struggling to master. The important thing is to have lots of time to play with your hair. Which most people don’t I guess. Unemployment certainly has it’s benefits.

When it comes to washing, the key is not to condition the hair, and to use a residue free shampoo. Something organic without a thousand worrying sounding chemicals should do. Which is actually pretty hard to find, you become slightly obsessed about visiting every pharmacy in sight. Or you can just use soap I am told. They also take a while to dry, and you shouldn’t ever sleep with wet dreads. You can wash them between once a week and once a month. If your scalp itches, a tea tree oil spray can help. Swimming is fine, swimming in the sea is particularly good as the salt water really messes the hair up nicely.

Some people say wax is the worst thing, others say wax is the answer to everything. Avoid petroleum. Use petroleum. Roll them. Leave them to their own devices. It's confusing, but like everything, trial and error appears to be the answer. And yes, it hurts to buggery getting them put in, like having your hair pulled for hours should.

Well, that’s hair care tips 101. If there are any questions on the topic, feel free to ping them over and I will add to your pool of confusion the best I can. Otherwise, hopefully I helped pass a few minutes of your time with some deep and fascinating knowledge on the subject of hair. Next up, achieving the perfect tan and thoughts on German sausage…