My hair affair

I was looking like 'look what the cat dragged in' the other day I decided to get my yearly trim at my usual salon. I'm not too sure why I go to this salon at all given that I always have trouble communicating with the hairdressers there. No offense, but I felt like I was in ah-beng and ah-lian land. It's hard enough I was born with this head of hair but to get a simple haircut proved to be quite a task.

If only I spoke mandarin, perhaps they would understand that all I wanted was a trim and to thin my hair. You see this hair I seem to be blessed with is rather temperamental. It has its own agenda having two personalities; the frizzy, wiry unruly half and the soft and curly, dare I say, tresses half.

The moment I enter the salon, the girl at the counter takes one look at me and immediately calls the senior stylist. Quite unaccustomed to the violent moods of curly, frizzy hair, the younger hairdressers were not keen to tame the disaster. I sat in the chair and looked at myself in the mirror.

Oh dear, I don't look like what the cat dragged in. I look like an eletrocuted cat! My frizzy hair was standing on ends - no doubt the fault of the wind as I walked from my flat to Century Square and the mirror was the ugly sort of mirror that managed to show off all your bad features. You know?

With my crooked glasses and fresh pimples that had appeared during the flight back home (it must be something in the pressurised air in the flight cabin) and the clothes peg I had used to tie my hair, I felt I was thrown back into time to my awkward childhood days where I was this stick running around in a uniform that did not fit, with a big puffy head and huge spectacles that seemed to engulf my whole face <-insert shudder->. In the movies, this scene would invariably unfold to have a fairy-god mother appearing and transforming me into this drop-dead gorgeous princess with hair to die for but alas, my fairy god mother was this poor ah-beng who really wished to just shave off all my hair.

The stylist played with my hair, his face trying to mask his dismay at the state of it; his fingers stopped short halfway as it met tangled knots. I was beginning to feel a bit embarrassed when he asked, "Is this your natural hair?"

I nodded and explained that 5 years ago I had attempted to rebond my hair. While the results were fantastic, its fabulous days were short-lived. My hair stubbornly returned to its primitive state after a few glorious hair-flipping weeks. Of course my explanation was no where as profoundly dramatic but he got the gist of it as I inserted some lahs here and there to convey my desperate situation.

He continued to pull my hair at its ends trying to make sense of it and then offered to rebond it. "Straight hair easier to manage lah. Sure nice wan I do for you very cheap now. Now ah the chemical very strong wan."

I looked around me. Everyone had straight hair. Everyone. Sure there were different cuts, shapes, styles and colours but at the end of the day their hair was undeniably straight. Surely they can do something for me right? I rejected his proposal and insisted I wanted to keep my hair the way it is and all I wanted was a trim and for him to reduce its volume. I had to resort to gestures showing him that I wanted it to be less puffy.

If I was in a P.Ramlee movie I would be that bald guy who played director - "Cakap! Caaakaaaap! Aku suruh engkau cakap. Kenapa tak caakaaaap bodooh??!!!" - with all its due exasperation.

The stylist finally trimmed my hair and even thinned it as I instructed. With each snip I felt lighter and lighter. He then stuck my head under the huge steamer for treatment that he managed to browbeat me to get. I was becoming more annoyed as I glanced at all the magazines and that none of them were in English. My head was stuck in that monstrosity and I was becoming bored trying to see my reflection in the mirror (I had taken off my spectacles at his request).

His colleague then washed my hair. I stopped him halfway telling him that I prefered that my hair be dried naturally. Somehow that simple English didn't get through to him. He pulled out his blow dryer and began drying my hair and even added mousse.

I was no longer an electrocuted cat. I was a puffed-up cat. My hair was literally this big puffy thing. To my horror, I could not press it down due to his stupid mousse. I smiled weakly, paid and said my thanks and left asking myself why do I bother to go to these hairdressers who don't understand me at all.