Race Against Time

Three weeks left and the clock is ticking ... I am running out of deoderant. Lili left me a tube when she went back to the States. It is the brand which claims to be "So effective you could skip a day." I do not quite know how to take this. Are they telling me not to shower? I asked one of my teachers where I could buy deoderant and she said the grocery across the street would have it. She told me the brand name but it was long and I only remembered part of it. Still, I managed to find an object that had several of the characters she'd mentioned and bought it. I took it home and, after removing the foil seal, found an object more like a bright yellow flan than anything else. How to apply it? On my finger? Also, it smelled incredibly strong - it smelled up the whole room.

It was air-freshener.

So I tried again. I swallowed my pride and asked one of the women who work in the cosmetics department where I could find "the thing you put under your arms so you don't stink." She laughed and led me to the product I was after, assuring me that I would not stink at all, and it would be great. I bought it and brought it home. On the outside was a picture of a baby, and although babies don't use deoderant, this is China, where packaging does not necessarily relate to content. In this case, however, it did - it was baby powder. "Snake Gall" baby powder, no less - what does that mean? Is it made of snake gall or is that just the brand name? I do not know, but I worry.

It goes without saying that baby powder is not deoderant, but my options are slim. I use the baby powder, which, combined with my lavendar-scented moisturizer, makes me smell like an old lady. Moreover, everything I own and everything my roommate owns are now covered in baby powder forever, in much the same way that a well-timed glitter bomb could eliminate civilization as we know it.

So there is, as we say in Chinese, no banfa. I will simply have to make do with what I have. And anyway, I still have the air freshener.