Cross Lingual Haircuts: A tale of sorrow and loss

Yesterday I spent the day trawling the thrift stores (known in Australia as op-shops) of Vancouver in search of a white suit. Sadly, there wasn't anything suitable to be found (pun completely intended. Oh my God. I think I need to lie down), and I settled for a cream jacket and a nice pair of pants. The lady at the checkout of the thrift store was pretty impressed by my selection and suggested that I must be headed somewhere nice in the outfit, at which I laughed nervously and did a poor job of concealing my terror.

Anyway, after the suit buying I went to get a real haircut from a haircutting professional. I have had several haircuts in Canada, but they've been from me, my housemate Robi, and at one stage I even got a trim from Maud's Hot Sister (who is, incidentally, a hairdresser). This combination of haircutting styles and levels of competence had resulted in a hairstyle which oscillated between completely amazing and pretty damn awful depending on how much time and hairgel I wanted to expend each day.

On a good day, it looked like this:

And the goal was to turn it into this:

Getting a haircut is a baffling and unpleasant process. I have to surrender control of my head to someone else, who will ask me questions in incomprehensible hairdresser lingo that I don't even remotely understand, and then charge me for the experience. Every answer I give to their questions is fraught with danger. Will this cost more? Is that a code for giving me a perm? One once asked me if I wanted layers. Layers of what? I said no, and that seemed to indicate to them that the haircut was over. That experience cost me $25.

Given that I don't expect to understand anything a hairdresser says, I don't feel compelled to go to hairdresser who speaks English. Pretty much the best haircut I've ever had was in Japan. Admittedly, he just cut my hair to a uniform 2.5cm in length, which was exactly what I wanted, but he also trimmed the bits around my ears, which was an added bonus.

And so it was that I went to a Chinese hairdresser in Vancouver. They spoke no English and I spoke no Chinese. Upon my arrival in their salon, it didn't seem to occur to them at all that I was actually a customer. After some confusion they swung into full-scale team haircut action. I tried to communicate that I wanted my hair trimmed on the sides, cut short at the back and then left long at the front. Things started out well, the sides were trimmed, and the back was cut short. Then, with little fanfare and a stern expression, my hairdresser cut a short strip into the front. Gone were my dreams of a Morrissey-like pouf at the front of my head. This was a serious hair salon, for serious people and serious haircuts.

I must admit that this had a strong deflationary effect on me. This whole romancing Maud's Hot Sister enterprise has been something of a grim duty that I must see through to the bitter end. Coming out with a cool haircut was the one part of this process that I was looking forward to. Well, such youthful fancies must be set aside, because now I look like this:

Which would be great if I was trying to get work as a defense contractor, but I'm trying to romance a lady. Oh, and so you don't get worked up, that's not my new suit. I'm saving the suit for my date tonight.