Hard to find space and thoughts to blog these days.

Part of it is because I'm not very writer-ly. Writers are those disciplined bots who make time to blog at least one post a day, at most five blogs at one time. No wait -- writers are those who simply love seeing words printed on any surface. Or those fail at life when compared by their parents to their siblings in corporate law, medicine, or a Korean pastoral position. I've too much ebb and flow in my spirit to be properly bloggerly.

The other part is that change is in the air. It may still be many months and a thousand miles away (bugger, winter is still here), but think of me as a gopher standing very, very still in the prairie, feeling tiny ripples in the air as a baby sneezes softly in China. Trying to work on some personal writings, as well as a website for my church.

Easter came and went without much fanfare. No public holiday either, which made me pine for home. In Malaysia, we get nearly 15 holidays, depending whether you live in KL or not. Here in the States, there's a barren stretch between New Year's Day and Memorial Day (May 30). Nations could fall and Web 3.0 could be here before I see the end of May.

Another plus in a Malaysian holiday is that I could be gorging myself with muruku, kuih raya, or pineapple tarts. Here, I pick delicately at a slice of Easter Ham. Yay. Salted meat. But it was very gracious of Karen and Tom to spontaneously invite me to their family dinner in the first place; a last-minute guest could make things no worse if you already have three kids and a baby at (and under) the table.

Other than the remarkable nature of Easter Sunday itself, another thing I found equally remarkable are the hairdo's on every other black girl in church. 

I used to think Chinese girls back home were serious about their hair. Straighten lah, layer lah, color lah, shea butter lah, etc. O-oh no. Black girls blow them away.

Not only are they serious about the audacity and awe-factor of their hair styles, but also in the frequency at which they switch from one do to another.

For example, I came into youth group one day and saw that Gica had short hair in place of her usual ponytail.

"Nice cut," I said. She smiled at me and said nothing.

Next week, same time same place, and her hair had resurrected into a frumpy phoenix.

Crystal, a smart girl in her senior year, had her hair in a bun one day, a frizzy 'Starship trooper helmet' look the next, and -- hey, surprise -- the day after, she had sculptured it into something I can best describe as a volatile bird nest.

I've learned not to compliment them on their hair again, because I've lost all sense of what is real and what is not. There's some wicked styling (and maybe some wig action) going on around here, and they start young. African American women are proud of their hair, and go through ingenious ways of making art out them, instead of resorting to haircuts.

I think they look gorgeous. I've not done anything to my hair since the New Year. Should I exercise my ownership over it and go for a Son Goku look?