Unfaithful but back on track

Guilt is not a good accessory to a spiffy haircut

As you have guessed by now.

I have been unfaithful.

I promised to maintain my long distance relationship with my hairdresser but the temptation to be heat-free and locks-free was too hard to resist. But I repent!!! Will crawl back to my hairdresser in Singapore if I ever want to dye my hair. I'll only get haircuts here, it's only a small transgression, err...right?

...

Went to one of the larger chains in Shanghai 'Tiffany' for a haircut. Trust me, the trip was definitely less than breakfast at Tiffany's. My colleague and I got the 'eye' - fast swoosh from top to bottom to top again and asked by a tiny impertinent shampoo/ massage girl if we were here to get our hair cut. I acquiesed, in desperation to get some respite from the Shanghai summer. The usual happened, the washing hair part was fairly pleasant (if they screw this up, they deserve to be eaten up by ants). Then chatterbox-sales talk hell began. It started innocently enough, asking about what I'm doing here blah blah blah...then she started to say I should get my hair permed or dyed or both! No way! It was such a blatant sales pitch I was determined not to get anything else done other than a good-ole haircut. After she realised I was not budging, she came out with the big-guns, hairdresser from hoityville. While sharing with her my concern towards having too many colours in my hair she replied gratingly "I don't care how many colours you have in your hair!! I just want to tell you there's only a certain limit which I can make it look poofy since you want short hair!!" Apparently, poofy is the way to go if you want to have really short hair in China. Pissed off, but still desperate for cool hair on my neck, I bit my tongue, tucked my tail in between my legs and followed her to the 'hot seat'. At least events turned for the better, she suddenly decided to be rather pleasant and confessed I was totally intimidated by the whole consultation-cum-sales talk earlier. She mentioned that most customers that come here for a haircut want everything to be super-duper efficient. Secretly, my alterego was appalled. Although I didn't like my hairdressers talking to me, but at least I like to not feel so much like a customer or someone who at the end will be digging out cash from her wallet. Anyway, we had a rather entertaining and pleasant conversation after all and she urged me to look for her again. As she turned to serve her next customer, she said she was No. 15 and I cringed inwardly again. Immediately, I asked for her name, surprised registered briefly on her face (or so I hope it did so that she wasn't so jaded that she became No. 15), and gave me her nick name "xiao"-something (I'm bad at remembering names ok!!!!!! So give me a bloody break!!!) At least, she's not a number to me.

Thus ends my tale about my virgin haircut.

...


Focus on the background