All You Need To Know About Hair Extensions.

It's really a serious blog drought here. No pictures all words makes JPD a boring blog wtf. I asked Shu Shan to lend me some of her photos to entertain my readers haha if not how!! Plus I really love her photos and I think she takes amazing photos. Serious. It was said that anyone can buy a DSLR but that just makes them a DSLR owner, not a photographer, like me wtf. I can spend fortune to buy a DSLR but I don't think I can ever see the beautiful things that she can see and make (not take) a photograph. It's talent.

Anyway why am I talking so much shit. Aren't I supposed to post photos to entertain you hmm.

Since I haven't really organized photos from recent weeks, let me blog about my hair extension today.



This is my long hair before I chop it off. I had always have short hair, really really short hair like boy cut short until University time. The longest I ever had is at my waist length.

In that 5 years I always wanted to cut it short but never really had the guts too because I don't have the kuaci face and short hair should look quite fugly =( In July 2009, I finally did it.



Taken 1 day after. The photo should show quite clearly the front & side view of my hair albeit mirror a bit dirty plus accidentally focused on the scissors instead of me wtf.



My hair was this length when I did my hair extension.

Hair extensions in Malaysia is too freaking expensive. For every strand, any saloon would charge you RM15. Don't waste time asking around, the good saloons would charge you that price and trust me, you really do not want to go to the dodgy ones even though they're cheaper because you need the good skilled ones.

There are many types of extensions (refer here) but after a hell lot of research, I strongly suggest you to use the normal braiding type. DO NOT, I repeat coz very important, DO NOT go for the glue ones. You can google all about using glue as hair extension and I can guarantee you none of the websites would tell you any pros about it. AND PLEASE ONLY USE REAL HUMAN HAIR not the synthetic ones. They would start braiding from the most bottom of your hairline, line by line, all the way up to the root.



Line as in this is considered 1 line =D. Can't find a better description. This is not me. I googled and this is the best and clearest photo I can get. Hence, if you have lesser/thinner hair, good for you. They probably only need 2 lines or so. But mine need a full head of 4 or 5 lines. The whole process took 3 hours and 2 professionals braiding at the same time. I seriously sweat maximum coz for every line they braid means you need to pay more and more and more. My whole head took 490 strands. Luckily I did it in Singapore which is way cheaper, otherwise I would have bancrupt-ed wtf.

The original hair length is until my butt crack. SERIOUS. IT IS THAT FUCKING LONG OK. I had major headache the first day I did my hair extensions. The braiding itself wasn't really tight. It's probably the extreme hair length that's pulling my hair hence causing the headache. So I vomited. Haha really wan. I puked for 2 days coz I felt so unwell. Then I went for a haircut. They cut a whole lot off.



My hair went from my butt to a bit above my waist line. Still, I feel it's a bit heavy and messy. PLUS half of the hair extensions' hair quality is not fine. It's a bit too frizzy whilst the rest are quite satisfying. I went for a 2nd haircut PLUS a lot of layering.



I look a little bit less like a barbarian with layered and shorter hair. Yah I know you are thinking that I am that crazy bitch who did hair extension and then want to cut it off wtf. I want it to be long but NOT THAT LONG until can act in ghost movie okay!

FINALLY I can haz long hair.

At first it was great fun having long hair again. But let me tell you, maintenance is the real bitch. As you can see, you have braids all over so you can't scratch your head when you wash your hair. You can only scratch it bit by bit, section by section. Then you CAN'T let your hair air-dry because first, it will take forever, 2nd, it can never get VERY DRY at the hair root where you braid because you have like a ball of hair tied there. So no matter how lazy you are, you have to blow dry it and not just simply blow drying. It takes ages because you have to hold up layer by layer of hair to make sure the braiding part is COMPLETELY DRY else within 3 days, you will have dandruff. That's what happened to me. NEVER IN MY LIFE I have dandruff but within 3 days of hair extension I start to have dandruff. No matter how thorough you wash and blow, you will still have dandruff. WORST OF ALL, the hair is lifeless so in order for it to be straight and proper and neat, you need to straighten it, layer by layer.

So there you go, *breathe*, the whole fucking torture you have to go through EVERY SINGLE DAY, that is, if you wash your hair every single day la. Trust me, you will never be able to stand not washing it daily.

To top it all up, if you go to the beach or go camping or a weekend getway or whatever shit like that, you can't wash your hair unless you lug along your hair dryer and hair straightener. Remember my camping trip? I can't go swimming in the sea because I can't wash my hair because there's no electricity anywhere for me to blow dry my hair. And after a whole day of sea wind blowing, I have to go to sleep with fucking salty dirty sweaty hair, and watch the others casually washed and airdry their REAL hair. FML MAX.

Usually hair extension braiding can last for 4 months. Mine was 3 months but I've had enough. That's it. I just HAD to take the hair off. I missed touching my kulit kepala wtf and my whole head is extremely itchyyyyyyyyyyyyy thanks to the dandruff =(



Plus the reason I decided to take it off at 3 months because I've heard and seen people who kept it to 5-6 months and the whole head started to tangle because their real hair is longer and hence the braiding section start to cross each other and tangle maximum. At that time, taking the extensions off would be a real bitch. I've met many people who shared their experiences with me after they knew I did hair extensions and NONE of them told me they would ever do it again.

I have a friend who kept her extensions for 6 months to get her money's worth to realize one day that her REAL hair is dropping out along with the extensions. She went to the saloon to take everything off to realize strands and strands of her real hair keep dropping out and in the end, she had bald patches at a few spots. She was terrified! But now a year has passed and with loads of hair serum and hair growing products, she has hair growing from the bald patches again.



When I took off my extensions, I had also quite a lot of hair dropping out but not as bad as my friend's so I was quite relieved. You can keep the hair and reuse it the next time you do the hair extension again but I don't recommend that because the quality of hair dropped tremendously as it had to go through all the daily hair straightener heat.



A closer look at the dandruff at the hair root. Now you get what I mean?? Even my hair stylist told me that almost no one can survive hair extension without dandruff.



First day after I've taken the extension off. I felt 500 times lighter after all that hair was taken away. But the sad thing is my real hair is only almost at shoulder length which sucks because it's so hard to take care of it. It gets real curly at the end and no matter how long you blow dry it or straighten it, it's not straight =(

If you take off your extensions at the saloon you did it, then they won't charge you for the service. Otherwise, you have to pay maybe less than RM20 to take them off.

Overall, it's a good experience. I had fun with long hair these few months albeit the fucked up maintenance effort. I learnt all about hair extensions, the pros, the cons. To be honest, there's NO PRO besides the fun of having long hair again. I'm being extremely honest here. I don't get paid for advertisements or shit like that so you can trust I am not being bias now. CONS, I've listed it all above.

Many asked me if it's scary to have real human hair on my head. Other people's hair on my head and sleeping on it every night. First night, really, I felt eerie. But then after I washed it, I start to feel like it's my own hair. I don't know whether it's from a dead person or some Indian or anything (I'm not racist. I just think it's from an Indian because only Indians can keep hair THAT long) and I don't really want to know wtf. From what I know, the poor people in 3rd world countries would normally keep their hair very long then cut and sell it off for money so I guess at least I helped some poor little girl out there to buy bread or something wtf.

So there you go, all about my hair extension experience. Would I do it again? A BIG NO. Not unless I have too much money and no where to spend. And most importantly, I missed my short hair and I honestly think I look quite good in short hair mar. NO MEH lol.

Go ahead and ask me anything. I'd be glad to help if you have any questions.