I live next door to the nail studio and still arrived a bit late. No one minded. I was given a tour, everything was explained and a chair with wheels underneath was produced so I could peer over people's shoulders and ask questions.
I learned a lot today. I've got the order of taking care of nails firmly stuck in my head now, start to finish. I know that nail gel reeks. And it's sticky. I mean really sticky. You could put up wallpaper with it if you wanted to, but it'd never dry. And I learned about filing. God, there's a lot of filing involved. And there's not much pointers that you can get about it. 'Don't file into people's skin' seems to be the main part of it, but that one seemed sort of obvious to me.
So I sat through several full sessions of 'clean-file-gel-gel-file-color-gel-file some more'. Most were mainly filing, as I said before. One was mostly filing because someone wanted a different shape of nail, another because the client's nails had taken a turn for the worse. I didn't realise medical semi-emergencies were part of the job, but they are. Nails that start peeling back from skin need something to stick them together and strengthen them. I didn't ever think about that, but it turns out a few layers of clear gel do the trick. No fancy-pants painting on it, just a stern warning to keep an eye on that and inform the GP.
Because of the filing, there's a lot of dust in the shop. And I mean a lot of dust. There's the rule that free time means dusting, but you could dust day and night and still not be done. I gave it my best, knocked a few items to the ground and then stuck with dusting easy to reach surfaces before I bankrupted J. by breaking half the merchandise.
But Boyfriend's sister works there, too. She did as much filing as anyone else, but she also worked with pretty colors, which was fun to watch. Want to try pink? Want to try glitter? Want to try rhinestones? Whoa.
She also has nail stamps. She went nail-stamp crazy with one particular customer. Normally, it's forty minutes of filing and twenty, max, of colorwork. Sis nearly went one hour, colorwise, on this particular customer. She stated many times that she had no plan. She started out with 'okay, just a white slanted bit', which went from 'a little black perhaps' over 'a contrast color would be cool' to about three different colors in four patterns with several layers of gel inbetween. If she'd planned it out beforehand, it would have taken perhaps half an hour. But she experimented with colors, angles, stamp patterns and so on. The customer was a good sport about it, too. I was even allowed to put my two cents in when she got stuck, and she tried it out, even if it didn't work. I paid back her humoring me with putting away the oodles and oodles of different shades of green-blue she'd gotten in an attempt to match her stamping polish to the gel.
I got my hands covered in a shade called 'minty', because the pot was, well, dirty. A combination of congealed gel and dust make for an excellent glue. Luckily, it comes off with water and soap when you don't stick it under a UV-light.
I got asked a lot of questions by employees and customers alike. Did I have siblings? Did I have tattoos? Was I going to get fancy nails, too? I answered the last with a non-comittal 'not today'. I might someday at least give it a go, especially if I end up working in the studio, but so far, my nails are too short and long nails annoy the pee out of me.
Generally, everyone was very nice. I tried not to annoy anyone and not talk too much and look very closely, but I'm only human. Inbetween 'Is that nail abrasion agent or gel?' and 'The sealing agent is shiny, but are there people who want a matte finish?' there came a few less to the point questions like 'Can you cut yourself on gel tips?' and 'Sis, where did you get those awesome lobe spirals?'. I had brought the binder with the theory in case I got a quiet moment, but there wasn't really a moment where I couldn't learn more.
And the kitchen, the only place where I could study, was being monopolised by the smokers. Apparently, it's not like in Belgium where there is no smoking whatsoever allowed at the place of employment. At least they were nice enough to do it in the best ventilated and easily avoided area of the studio, rather than where everyone was working. Compromise, it's a wonderful thing sometimes.
By half past three, I said my goodbyes, went home and collapsed into bed. Lots of learning and talking a language I haven't yet fully mastered yet does that to me.
Eventually Boyfriend came home. He laughed when he saw I'd put a way-too-large ring in my septum piercing (just because) and kissed me. We're talking more German together now. It's not yet 100% English free, but dammit, we're trying. Neither of us knows how you say 'panty liner' in German and it's not always practical to go look it up. No matter what the rest of the world says, we get points for doing our best, at least in my book.
Oh, and the geocaching has sprouted a second head in the W.-and-Boyfriend Adventure Team. They both have cell phones with cameras and scanning software for something called Munzees. It's a simpler, quicker way of looking for things. It works with a point system or something, and the 'codes' are these matrix pictures you can also have links in on some advertisements... I don't understand all of it yet, but the guys are having fun, so I leave them to run around like happy toddlers going 'I've got seven more points than you, wha-hey!'. If they're happy, I'm happy.
At the moment, Boyfriend is downstairs, printing his very own Munzee for the casino. I think it's still a test run, but they're already talking about linking it to the casino. "You can scan it once every day, scan it X times and you get a coupon for Y euros at the casino" was the plan before I stopped eavesdropping on the conversation. I think they're going to test if people actually find it before setting up that system, but I wish them the best of luck.
Tomorrow, I'm
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