Hair VS heat: The Final Showdown

I've never needed straighteners, because I've got pretty typical Asian poker-straight hair - very obedient, falls down like a ruler within 15 minutes of me getting out of bed. No comb, genetics only, Final Destination. Pretty low-maintenance. But I always found curly hair more interesting! Grass, greener...

I decided to break out my curling wand and curl the ends the last time I went out, for Japan Underground. As someone with low heat tolerance and a tendency to drop things, twirling a superheated stick millimeters from my face isn't really my idea of a great time.

Well, the obvious happened, and below you can see the full extent of my horrific burns.

The doctors say they can probably save my cheek, but the
eye is gone forever.

After some great leaps forward in medical science, this happened:

Curly! Or curli-er at least.

Ponytail, formulated for  less pulling by unruly and slightly drunk friends. ;w;

Having learned from the mistakes of twintails at the last Japan Underground (i.e., my friends start drinking and attempt to make me into a helicopter) I put it in a sort-of-side-ponytail, after Serah from FFXIII. It looked like this for roughly 15 minutes. Then my hair grumpily decided it had had enough of this 'curly' business and swiftly downgraded its status to 'wavy', shortly followed by 'barely kinked'. By the morning, it was 'straight, yet with a hint of crispiness from residual hairspray'. Very sexy.

I like how it looks, but it's a bit of effort, damages the hair, playing with cattle brands is scary, and at the end of it all, I seem to lose it very easily. Next time I will try it with more discipline (actually pinning it up once curled, etc) and armed with industrial-strength hairspray.

It seems that this is a distant dream.