Handkerchiefs

The other day when I was on the MTR, I asked my little sister Louie to lend me a piece of tissue paper so I can blow my nose. She gave me just half a piece. She said she watched the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and from now on she would not be wasting paper anymore. If half is enough, one should only use half. True indeed, maybe I should go back to using handkerchiefs.

I have a very bad case of hay fever. When I was still in Holland, when the flowers started blossoming in spring, I would be continuously blowing my nose. I remember one day it was so bad that I could not even finish a sentence without blowing my nose once. My nose just kept dripping. You did not really want a social life when your nose was being so excited. The bad thing about constantly blowing one’s nose is that it is very bad for one’s skin. After a very short while, I would look like Hitler with a pink mustache. My solution in the beginning was to bring a handkerchief, which was softer. When this proved to be insufficient, I swapped to carrying a small towel around. One time, I was having a meeting with my former supervisor. In between exchanges of linguistic ideas, I took my yellow towel out, grabbed a corner of it and started blowing my nose in it. He mildly commented on the size of my ‘handkerchief’. When I think of it now, it must have looked really weird. Practical things are often not visually pleasing.

I was also quite doubtful about the maintenance of one’s handkerchief. I did not know how often one should wash it. I only had two handkerchiefs then and so washing it every day might render me handkerchief-less for some days. I sought advice from a male colleague about the issue during a drink. He was a handkerchief type of man. I asked him how often he washed his handkerchief. He was maybe slightly taken aback by such a personal question. But he kindly told me one did not need to wash it every day, maybe once every few days. But of course it also depended on how dirty it was. I guess I lack common sense.

Joanno