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I am not my hair

So honestly....I think I am a really boring person. Overly anxious, usually tired, rather be at home comfortable than out party with my friends and my appearance definitely reflects my attitude. When and if I decide to ‘dress up,’ it usually consist of a change over from my usually scheduled sweats and tee to some jeans and a shirt that could ‘ideally’ be fancy; but when it comes to my hair, as ‘low maintenance,’ as I am, I change up my hair pretty frequently. It maybe be because I’m trying to be hip I think its because as boring as I come off to myself, the subtle or not so subtle changes make feel less of a snore. I’m not really big on fake hair or styles that look like they could be faux so I tend to stay away from braid extensions, weaves, straight or wig styles, even though I DO pull out Mo& the gang or my flat iron ever so often, (Mo is my wigs name.) 

I do tend to switch in my usual afro/afro puffs however for twist with or without parts, bantu knots and knot outs, some braided updos for special occasions, and majority of the time, for a touch of color. My parents were really strick growing up so I really did not get to tamper with my own hair too much, that’s why I’m a rebel now.  No but really it does feel liberating to change up styles or whatever and what better way to make me feel like Zhane` 4.0 than to smack some red highlights into my usual mocha colored curls. 

Alrighty so for the actually store at hand. So this weekend I self cut 3 1/2 inches off my hair. My cousin slayed my hairs to the heavens for a wedding about 2 or more weeks ago, but not without throwing shade on how dusty my ends were. She went on to be like “look, I know your hair is hella long now, but you’re going to loose it all if you don’t go ahead and cut these ends,” which I replied “And then I can treat myself to a bomb short cut!” LOL. If you KNOW how a majority, women of color are about their hair in the states, than you can imagine all of the side eyes I got in my cousin’s salon that day. Ahahaha but yeah so I cut my hair this weekend and after having to answer frantic calls from my mom about it, I got to reflecting...

It really is just hair, but that goes in stating that changing my hair tends to be therapeutic and always is self-reflective, representing a situation I am currently evolving from liberating myself from. My mom was frantic cause back in 2014 when I made my most dramatic change of hairstyles to date, that became the origin to my first manic episode. I got my hair dreaded in to locs to symbolize how locked, at the time, I felt in my current position, and wanted to keep my locs until I felt emancipated from whatever I felt was keeping me down and holding me back from being my best me, but obviously, we are our own worst enemies, which is what I realized traumatically during that time, battling with my own mental health struggles leading to my practitioner’s diagnoses of me being bipolar.

I have come along way from then, and although I would never say I lacked confidence, I did find more reasons to love myself during that time which to this day, I would consider my lowest. Aesthetically, I gained 50 pounds, shaved my head, and although by societal standards I wasn’t attractive, working on me during that time made me see myself for the first time as beautiful without the cushion of my looks to aid my perception. I had never realized how superficial I was in regards to myself until then, because I always had my ‘good looks’ to fall back on; but now I do more than just sing the lyrics to my favorite artist India Arie’s songs. I resonate with them, try to emanate them as much as possible; because in a world of ‘Video’ girls and ig models, for our own health we need to ‘Get it Together,’ and realize that we are more than just our hair, we are intellectual queens.

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Us

In front of you now is the last Facebook message in regards to an 'abortion debate' I had with my son's father. It was April 2013, spring semester of my last year of high school, freshly turned 18, when I went to Planned Parenthood and found out that I was four months pregnant. I did not hesitate to tell the father at all; as soon as I left, ultrasound pics and verification documents with our expected due date on them in hand, I called him instead of my initial reaction to pull up to his aunt's house, and let him know what was up.

A year or two before, at the  M.E.L. semi finals, we met at the concessions where he was volunteering. I was competing to go to the state track finals and even though he wasn't even interested in me that day, the rest is history. Both natives to the 707 area code, for generations our families have resided in this county and seen the changes brought on to it by senseless killings and drug abuse. There's a lot for teens to do in the flats, but we're advanced for our ages so once we turn 13/14, we care more about getting with boys and girls than the mall, movie dates, or car racing; that's why teen pregnancy is so high. Even in school, we get bored easily so many students, like myself who took advanced classes, are multi-sport athletes as motivation to keep our grades up, cause we would not care as much about our grades if there wasn't a current reason to keep them up.  I'll be honest, I started writing this without a clear sense of the direction for the story I wanted to tell; but I guess ya'll could call this a ghetto fairytale. 6 or 7 years ago when me and my son's father first met at my track meet, neither of us would have ever thought that this is where we would be now. Us pushing each other to be our best selves, living together raising kids, and trying to figure out our next few moves in this game of chest 'life;' we are calculated and are trying  to make sure our children can climb the social mobility ladder our parents' attempted their whole lives to try and let us climb.

We have been through HELL together, from extreme mental illness, months of joblessness, financial insecurities, imprisonment, to keep it 100%, abuse, and heartbreak, but through it all, we come out stronger and more dedicated, not allowing our setbacks to be our downfall. We live in a toxic world, and although we both have limitations on what we will tolerate from each other, we realize that every relationship has its pros and cons and what we have is better than what we would be leaving and walk into if we ever decide to split and get into new relationships. We love each other and as cheesy as it sounds, our love prevails, which is why in a world of side pieces, infidelity, and other toxicities, all we need to survive is each other.

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Instagram Famous

To help companies, celebrities, and everyday people boost their social media standings and make more people aware of their page, 'onliners' set up internet stores known as click farms to allow customers to buy social media influence and likes, but like any other capital project, at what consequences do these click farms succeed? A click farm is a business that pays employees whose work is solely online, 'onliners', to use old, faux email accounts and an outdated Nokia phone with multiple sims cards to create accounts that pass Facebook and Twitter verification processes in order to click on elements within a website to artificially boost the status of a client's personal or professional site, or product. The click farm industry averages anywhere between $40-$390 million dollars a year with workers creating around 150 fake accounts a day with a market value of about $1.25 an account. These onliners work and earn roughly $215/month, which is over six times the profit of any other local domestic jobs, without having to comply to the same physical demands. As the article, "Inside a counterfeit Facebook," suggest, Facebook and other social media companies terms of service are not international law, so in countries such as the Philippines, where click farms are a profitable market, these corporations are not illegally creating profits and thus can and do exploit labor.

Click farms are usually based in countries, where wages are lower than Western standards which means they span the globe, but are more commonly established in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. In the article, "Inside a counterfeit Facebook farm," a click farm owned by Richard Braggs is managed by small teams that as I suggest, create and edit software to give digital life to accounts that Braggs can then manipulate and sell to individuals to give their social media presence and accounts a bump in ratings. This is problematic because although many workers believe they are making a fair wages, because the accounts can be reused and have a cost margin at less than 20% of their marketed cost, owners of click farms abuse capitalism through not disbursing the profit more equitably to their workers. This issue is disdained in the 'Western' world due to the ethics of said companies not directly affecting the individuals who profit from them, and of course because western politics also solely echo  capitalism. Many of the consumers in this industry just want to buy likes and are willing to pay $30 per every 1,000 likes they receive. This brings up another concern with the click farm industry; these like persuade public interest.

We live in a very 'tech-savvy,' social media driven society so 'likes' do drive popular opinion. In regards to personal media accounts, having a lot of likes means you have a lot of persuasion and companies will pay media influencers to promote their products on their media outlets, since companies know that people with a lot of likes are popular and their followers will see the product these companies are trying to sell and potentially buy them. Even though this is a more innocent example, on the flip side think about a politicians perhaps with a less popular platform. There are usually reasons why a politician will not have a great following and faux fans could prompt public opinion to change and create more followers for the candidate. It is a legal way to tamper with election results since ideally there is no harm in the act; but a may end up getting a candidate an opportunity they may have not have been afforded. In regards to companies promoting their own products, with fake likes and reviews, you can manipulate buyers in to buying scam products and overall waste their time and money. It's not that this industry is dangerous, it is more so annoying and can convey misconception on policies and products overall.  

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This looks really good!

African/West Indian food at Art & Soul Festival, Oakland 

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I’d love to see the parallels between Shanghai and Berkeley through your future posts!

The first impression of UC Berkeley @24/07/2018

Typhoon ‘Ampil’ delayed the flight but not my heart. After a 12-hour stiff sitting in the aeroplane, my team from Shanghai Tech University finally arrived in San Francisco at noon yesterday.

What impressed me the most is the traffic here, inculding the roads and the vehicles. It is a place which deserves the so-called name: ‘a country on the wheel’. I saw various vehicles of different types and brand, from car to jeep and from BMW to  Mustang…What’s more, the whole campus and the roads nearby are built on a small mountain. So walking here is no more a relaxing thing as in Shanghai. However, ‘one road down and one street up’ might be a charming point of living here. At least, I can treat it as an exercise every day.

(more pictures may be uploaded later.) 

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I love your intro and am intrigued in learning more about your background! I have never been to Paris but plan to go in the near future hopefully during a trip to France for the Cannes film festival.

A Kellicious introduction (Post blog 1)

Let’s talk about me!

As you can see, my name is Kellie but my friends used to call me “Coconut”. You may wonder: Why “Coconut” ? It’s just simple as it is. Coconuts are exotic fruits just like me and food has always been a big part of my life. 

With my twenty-two years mind I can imagine so many recipes and match the flavour and the texture of every ingredient to make it a perfect symphony. I grew up in Paris, which is the perfect city for a foodie to learn how to cook, how select product, and mix them. I study Marketing in a Business School, in Paris which allow me to express my creativity and ideas just like in my kitchen. 

Discovering different cuisine is one of my hobby!

Bon appétit !

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This looking for jobs blog is going to be extremely hopeful in a year, post undergrad. Thank you for sharing!

Review

1.Collegiate Cook

You can learn a lot about how to cook food, such as party foods,desserts and so on.Particularly, in this blog, you can learn how to make a simple breakfast. Maybe it is excellent for some classmates who like to stay in bed.

http://collegiatecook.com/

2.Looking for Jobs

We may be confused after graduation. This blog gives us ten specific suggestions. We can do it according to what he mentioned. In this case, we may have more information than our opponents.

https://www.lindseypollak.com/blog/

3.Decorating Your Dorm

We will live in the dormitory for four years, so it may be important to decorate the dormitory. We will have a good mood when we decorate it as we like. So in this blog, the writer gave us some advice. In addition, it also contains some suggestions for freshmen.

http://www.dormdelicious.com/

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Giving me fenty vibes/90 vibes/high school era Nae vibes

🌻🌻🌻

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Blogspiration

I know a screen shot probably looks tackier than a cleaned up shot of a blog site, but that’s okae cause I’ll admit that I am flawed so this blog will be imperfect. Now for the topic of today (drum roll please,) blogspiration; realistically this should have been launched in 2008 when my cousins pushed for it, but here we are now, not Instagram famous because I’m stubborn.

Shrugs. Honestly I only started a blog now because I am in a class where my professor is asking us to because trust me, if I didn’t ‘need’ one, I wouldn’t have one right now but I thought this would be a great opportunity to give you all some context for my blog’s inspiration. 

I do not know how familiar you all are with the natural hair movement, a movement of (black,) self love where people who have hated their curly hair for years do to beauty standards, reclaim their beauty by wearing their natural, God given curls... Well, I have never hated my hair honestly and have actually been ‘natural’ my whole life, but until 7th grade when I realized wearing my hair curly was easier than maintaining straight hair everyday, I would wear my hair in straight styles. The transition to curl hair was one wear I would take a bath or shower everyday before school and instead of wrapping my hair to reserve it, I would immerse it in water and let it to do what it do. My curls were POPPIN and before I realized that my hair needed more than water to moisturize it, I would gel it back everyday and let my curls break in the drying process because my black hair was desert dry; which is where we come to blogspiration. There were a few main bloggers back in ‘08 when I started wearing my natural hair curly that taught me the ins and out of how to properly care for my own hair. HeyFranHey, Curly Nikki, BlackGirlLongHair, and Urban Bush Babes, are a few of these sites whose blogs changed my life! I learned hair typing, that my hair was different than my mom’s and sister’s and thus needed different care, pretty much all the advice I later would share with family and friends as they started their own transitions originally came from these sites so I wanted to thank them today, instead of sharing what I like about other student blog post, because when I think about my true blogspiration, I would not have anything without these sites!    

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My Wakanda Foever

In third grade, my dad took my mom, sister, and I to Hawaii for my mom's birthday. Before that trip, my dad and mom would dump me and my sister off at our grandparents' house so they could go and explore the world for my mom's birthday. Mexico, Tobago, Jamaica, the Caribbeans, their trips seemed magical to little girls greeted with unfamiliar warm smiles and intimate gazes shared between my parents. Coin purses and cheap t-shirts were offered to wash away our disappointment of their exclusiveness. My parents were living their best life, and it was disheartening that we could not live it with them until that trip.

When we got off the plane, my dad drove us to a timeshare he rented for our trip. Beautiful flowers expanding the rainbow eyed our high cheeked faces as we ran...well rapidly walked into the kitchen where a screen door lead us to a white sand beach. As a kid, my family traveled a lot since my parents both had family on the east coast, but as far as family vacations went, this was one of few.

My parents got to 'honeymoon' on this trip as me and my sister were left with a babysitter who took us fishing, swimming, and to the beach to collect seashells and find coconuts to paint. We enjoyed family dinners together which was HUGE at that time since my dad was a consultant and was not as home often to enjoy these type of activities with us.

No one really understood how much I enjoyed this trip, until I gave birth to my son in 2013 and gave him a Hawaiian name because since third grade, Hawaii has been my happiness.