Bologna: Day #2

Ah, yes, finally. Pictures from Bologna.The further through the Bologna thing we get, the more I have chosen photos in regards to picture quality and not relevance or representativeness.

 All I really got to see of Italy was seen through the window on the bus. It was very lovely. I'd like to go back.

Our little group of five girls went under the name of DIY Collection. German Charlotte and Hungarian Detty above.

 Stylist Jiv D and choreographer/producer/part of the Esa Live crew Anna

Cosmoprof 2011

Swedish Jacqueline in a very common pose: cigarette in hand.

 Mike Esa, choreographer for the show and creative director of Esa Live Event Managment

 Jiv and Tigi hairdresser Nick Irwin

Charlotte and Tigi hairdresser Akos Bodi

 Skinny bitches just arrived from Milano

Freaky chairs

 We're making funny faces. I tend to be good at that.

 Charlotte and Norwegian Jeanette

 Jeanette above

Make-up artist at Tigi, Amy Barrington

 Jackie's not happy

 Tigi hairdresser Marco Iafrate

Tigi hairdresser Maria Kovacs giving Marco a helping hand. It was Maria who styled my hair on stage in Bologna.

 Nick and Jiv and a willing mannequin

 The ghost of Detty

The dancers, from UK. Apparantly there was a Premier League match at the time and updates came in frequently.

 Rehearsaltime

 Rehearsals moved to venue. I have just woken up. And by the looks of it I have something in my eye.

 Mike Esa

This skinny bitch was no bitch, just skinny. She's Martine Lervik, a fellow Norwegian, working in Milano. Also, it turned out, she was the winner of the Norwegian version of Top Model in 2008. Small world. She has a cute little blog about life in Milan: lostnfound.blogg.no

Mike and CyberBob

 

Skinny bitches rehearsing. Difficult taking photos of our group rehearsing. Well, I could of course have asked someone else to take some pics with my camera, I just didn't think that far at the time. 

 Videos and little films on big screens accompanying the show

 Dancers doing their bit. I never got to see their routine with the session models with outfits and all. Had to stand ready for finale back stage at that time. Pity.

 

Looks like blonde German skinny-bitch is getting fed up. Very understandable.

Bologna: Day #1

Almost a month has past since I was in Bologna in Italy to participate in a hair show along with the four other girls I worked along with in London (see London tag, can't be bothered to make link) for Tigi. I took 1500 pictures during the 3-4 days I was there, and finally, finally, pics have been picked and will be posted. 

Day #1 was spent on aeroplanes and airports, especially fun was the five hours at Schiphol, arrived at the hotel around midnight that Friday.

 This is me, tired and fed up, waiting in a car at Bologna airport while the no-English-only-Italian-speaking driver is gone for an hour trying to find the other passanger he is supposed to pick up, but that passenger has already taken a taxi. Bastard.

 Out of the girls, I got the single room this time, and also, for some reason, the biggest room.

 I had a bidet! Never tried it while I was there though.

Stay tuned for more pictures later!

The odd outfit-post

Spoiler alert: First batch of Bologna photos will be posted tomorrow!

Hello little darlings, unfaithful readers and the plain unfaithful. I was so pleased with my outfit here the other day that I actually made the effort of taking a photo of it.

I don't quite get how fashion bloggers and people who think they are fashion bloggers can be bothered to take their own picture up to every day. To me it usually just feels like a nuisance, having to shove the kitchen table out of the way, position the camera in the right height and distance, get the focus right when only looking at a white wall and runnuing back and forth pressing the timer-button.

Then again, I don't understand computer programming either.

Well, enough text. I realise that your brain capacity is limited.

As you can see, I am uncapable of choosing just one photo... Also! I have now, for some time, been looking for the perfect black shoeboot for spring. I found them a week ago and now they are mine. Mine! Love them to bits.

O'Hare I hate you

Just text again. Sorry about that. Please read post anyway. It's almost funny.

Written while at the given airport. There was nothing else to do

I hate O’Hare airport. Two hours before take-off I’ve passed security and I realise that the Duty Free area is basically non-existent. I wasn’t planning on buying much to begin with but looking around is a  nice to pass some time. 

I always go to the gate first to check out what’s where and how long it takes to walk to the gate. On my way I pass a sad excuse of a shop selling magazines, sodas and a little to eat. On my way back from the gate to the sad little shop it turns out that the shitty fucking shop has closed! That means three things: 

1.    I’m not able to spend the last of my dollars. Fair enough, I only had about $12 left anyway.
2.        I’m not able to buy anything to eat or drink. There’s not even a vending machine here. It’s two hours to take-off and I know that I won’t be served that much too eat on the plane. Feck! Luckily I do have some fruit and a power bar in my bag. Here’s hoping it will last.  
3.        My plan was to buy a book at the airport since I finished the one I brought on my way over. I’m hoping I’ll be able to sleep much of the flight time, but considering my seating (see below) this might become difficult. I have my laptop but the battery won’t even last me half of the way over the Atlantic.

This is not what I expect from a large international airport that was once the busiest airport in the world. As if that wasn’t enough, upon logging in it turned out that there were only two available seats left to choose from on the entire plane and they were in the middle of a four-seater. That means that this is going to be a loooong, tight flight. Fuck times four.  

Post-flight note: The flight was excellent. I ended up having three seats to myself due to the priest who initially sat next to me found himself a window seat instead. I slept for most of the flight and played tetris on the flight computer the rest of the time.

Chicago: Day #5

This took place on a monday, a month ago.

Departure day. My flight doesn’t leave until late in the evening. Detty, Jeanette and I spent the first half of the day walking around Chicago’s town centre. We saw a big sculpture called The Bean which was very fun to take pictures of (you’ll see when I post the pics…). I didn’t buy anything. Can’t say Chicago wowed me in any way. It’s a big city, they have a lot of sky scrapers and some cute buildings, bad food and big roads. I guess it’s America. But the weather was nice.

Spent the rest of the day doing nothing in the hotel lobby until a very pretty car picked me up to go to O’Hare airport. The wait at O’Hare is a story in itself and will be posted tomorrow. Aaaand pictures will come in a long time. I haven’t  actually sorted the Chicago-pics as yet even though it’s more than a month since I was there.  

So in the mean time:

by Hugh McLeod from gapingvoid

Chicago: Day #4

 No pictures or images here either. Only text, only text. It's cruel I know.

 Showtime! In x hours anyway… 

I am human, I learn from my mistakes and the lesson was: Bring laptop. Result: Chicago Day #2 and #3. Turned out that the McCormick Place (that’s where everything went down, you know, like, yeah, that’s it, like, cool) had free Wi-Fi. This post is written while I’m on the plane to Bologna via Amsterdam btw. 

The prepping part of this day is best told by looking at pictures which, I promise, will come later. Anyway, skinny bitches (i.e. anyone who is taller and thinner than me, also called models) everywhere, getting their hair done, make-up done, outfits fitted, lips pouted and nails painted while I’m getting my make-up done, hair coloured, outfit thrown in my lap (no fitting needed, wore one of the same outfits I wore at the shoot in London), blogging, eating enormous blueberry muffins, drinking tea, looking impressive while taking bad pictures with a good camera and trying not to feel like the pear among the celery. 

Everybody into the lifts, go backstage, wait while other groups do their thing, DIY collection (that’s us): go, go! We were given a light trim on stage while the TIGI hairdressers talk about our ‘dos. Wait for the other groups to finish, everybody on stage for finale, and were done. 

I was very surprised to discover that I was not nervous at all. We screwed up the routine slightly on stage, and I felt no rush when on stage. Disappointing. (Note: I was told later that the Chicago show was sort of just a rehearsal compared to the Bologna show that was to come. Bologna was the real important one, and I felt it. In Bologna the nerves were there, we did not screw up the routine and it was such a rush! Chicago: boring. Bologna: great fun!)

Sunday afternoon was spent in the hotel room and in the hotel bar.

Chicago: Day #3

Warning! This post contains only text. Read it feckers, it's good for you.

I wrote this post while in Chicago, it's has just been resting in the mean time.  

Basically the same as day #2 with a few adjustments. Went to the gym instead of the pool, spent the day waiting, waiting, waiting, walking, waiting, waiting, only this time the walking was done on stage with lights, film and music filling the surroundings. One of the film pieces they showed on big, big screens was the one we made in London. It’s a strange feeling seeing your own face, blown up to become five metres high, flash across your eyes for a split second. Not too happy about my work though, I look pissed off in a bad way, in the film and in the book (yes, there’s a book as well!) because I tensed my jaw and mouth area too much. Damn, I know I can do better than this. And no better luck next time, there is no next time.  

Mike Esa, the choreographer/producer/man-in-charge was brilliant. Shut up, pay attention, listen, do what I just said – kind of style, which was very effective and easy to comprehend. Hence we finished on time.

Well, sort of. The rehearsal bit finished according to plan, but the TIGI team ordered the girls to go get their hair colouring done, or at least started. Luckily for me they decided to do me the next day. I went back to the hotel and did nothing, which wasn’t really that different from what I’d been doing most of the day already, but now I was in charge of deciding when to start doing something. 

My doing nothing was however interrupted by Hunger. (Damn those basal needs, telling me when I need to do what…) On my way down I ran into Jeanette and Charlotte in the lift, both with their hair full of hair dye and capes around their shoulders. Apparently they shut off everything, including the water, during evenings and nights at the McCormick place centre. Unfortunately no one had told the TIGI team this. What do you do? You send your models running back to the hotel to wash their own hair.

 The girls, including me, ate at the bar in the evening, I ate chicken tendrils, no vegetables were included (I don’t count fries to be vegetables, they’re just potatoes metamorphosed into pure junk food). I do believe I am in America, the land of the fat.