Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Bad Hair Days and Halloween

I called up the hair styling salon where I go to get my haircut and asked if my hair stylist barber was present. She wasn't. She is on leave and won't be back for a week. Aagh.

Yes, I have a favourite hair stylist. It's someone I have found who will cut my hair just the way I want it. Good barbers are like good mechanics, reliable, cheap and hard to find.

It was different when I was a student on a budget. Then it was straight to the $5 Chinese hair cutting place where a bunch of fellow desis used to line up outside on Friday.

No wonder no one returned my calls.

You see my hair has this weird habit. It will co-operate with me until suddenly, one day, it decides you know what, from now on every day will be a bad hair day unless you get a haircut. So my options are limited to either going for a shower and then slapping a lot of gel, backbrushing and then looking like something out of Grease, or go out wearing a crow's nest on my head, or wearing a cap.

This is where this Indian lady steps in. I found her when I was looking to get a quick haircut at our local mall. And voila - she has never disappointed since. Yes, she does talk about her son and her new born grandson and the latest cute thing the little bugger did but at the end of 15 minutes you walk out looking ready to hit the party. She's great. And now she's AWOL.

It's not that no one else knows to cut hair. I am a guy after all. However, I don't want to entrust this particular aspect of my social life to someone and then having to hide from the world for the 2 weeks if it's a bad cut.

I never understood the concept of going to a particular barber / hair stylist before. In my final year of university I was TAing an intro computer course and the students were asked to draw a flowchart of the sequence of operations for booking a hair appointment. All the students in that class of mine were girls.

So the girls wrote:

1. Call hair salon.
2. See if favourite stylist is present.
3. If not, book appointment on another day ->Call (Appointment).
4. If yes ....

And there was I, looking at the answers with a puzzled frown. Then I turned to the girls.

"Now why would you care if this particular stylist was present or not? Just get someone in the store to do your hair for you."

And 20 girls looked at me as if I had grown a horn.
* * *

I am a Halloween Grinch. I do not like this time of the year.

The nice part of Fall is over. It's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home. A long six month winter lies ahead. And on the top of that, it's Halloween.

Halloween sucks. I never liked the holiday much, nor cared for it a lot. You don't get a holiday off work, you get no gifts and it's not even a religious thing.

What turns me off about Halloween is the carving up of a perfectly good fruit. Why can't they use plastic pumpkins each year? No, while thousands of kids in Africa can't get one meal a day, thousands and thousands of pumpkins will be spoilt (just literally destroyed) all in the name of fun.

Maybe I should just leave my crow's nest as it is as part of a Halloween costume of Crazy blogger and try to scar(e) the kids for life when they ring the doorbell.

Current mood: *foul*

Tags:

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, you do sound in foul mood today! :-(

Hopefully your hairdstylist-cum-barber should return soon to cheer you up!

I'm interested in how Chinese cut here ;-)

Anonymous said...

Awwww! YOu sound miserable! However, you're right about the Halloween being not a perfect holiday. We should get the day off!!

How about we start a petition?

I'm going to be goign to a haunted house this Halloween with my friends. Don't worry, I won't be making any jack-o-lanterns. I never do.

Anonymous said...

My God if anyone has a talent of joining two different topics its you.

I hate halloween too. it was different when we were kids and dressed uo and had candy. Now it just sucls.
- Sohail.

PS. when is my "deep" conversation of bd girls going to make this blog?

'liya said...

I agree with the pumpkin thing - a big waste. However Halloween is still cool because you get to dress up and be CREATIVE! And hey, if you didn't get your hair cut, I bet you could have come up with an interesting costume involving your hair hehe!

Anonymous said...

God!!! you!!!!

have you ever considered getting a clipper and doing it all by yourself, sometimes have someone help you?
I actually have not met too many guys who would get a hair cut from a barbar. Even the rich ones that are not students anymore just get a clipper and trim their hair as often as necessary. The skin-head guys, who I think are VERY stylish , (for lack of a better word, but I really mean to say something more risque than "stylish",) use their clipper and whoa... magic!
I guess you are more like "amar napit chai".
;)

have fun!

Em said...

salaam.

Having a random man going through my hair is bad enough, but a woman? *shiver* that's where we part ways :) Of course I know guys that would flip just the other way :D

Hmm, this would be interesting to analyze as part of a term paper: what is the differential contribution of a female hairstylist to a salon... conditional on her background, training, some objective measure of looks and all, of course... If nonzero, I wonder if salons are really optimizing? Can they do better by hiring all female/male hairstylists? Could one offer a different pricing schedule with varying composition of the hairstylists? I'd like to know the results, if anyone knows of such a paper!

mezba said...

Suroor: I am a little better now, but thanks. Ya was in a foul mood today, weather wise, hair wise and so on...

Bfob: Did you go to the house on Beeches? I thought that was great.

Sohail: Thanks bro.

PS. the post is coming, hold on.

Liya: nah, still hating on Halloween. I did dress as a badam wallah (man selling nuts) at a fancy dress party a long time ago though.

Sabrina: Self cutting *horror* no never! I have never NOT gone to a barber! Amar napit chai.

Em: I don't know bro, all she does is cut hair for the moment ;-) But ya, if someone did do a study I would be interested to know if female hair dressers are essential for the business, especially as all the hair dressers on tv shows tend to be men (and gay).

Anonymous said...

Salamaat,
my hubby has those bad hair days but he insists on denying it.

And yes being a true loyal fob he still waits in line outside the chinese barber-store :)

anywho, it's nice to see a guy actually in tune with things like hair and importance of hair stylists (and no, this is not a diss Mezba :) )