The Barber and His Prostitutes

I made my annual pilgrimage to my barber today at EP.

It is one of those dilapidated shopping malls near where I used to go to university. You know the one - with a Carrefour and a Fajar to anchor it, and a few small businesses run by Malay and Chinese owners. One of the smaller malls.

I parked at the same spot near the lifts from memory, and pressed the button to the second floor. I walked past the same old back corridor with its rows of little known or neglected shops.

At the first corner, there was a lady with immaculate skin, dyed hair and a little too much makeup. She is wearing a black blouse and a denim miniskirt, and solicits me in Mandarin. I shake my head, and look down and keep walking.

I am approached by a second girl about ten metres in, almost a carbon copy of the earlier girl.

She is trying to entice me to buy something, but I did not possess enough Mandarin to understand her, and I kept walking with my head bowed and my hands in my bermuda pockets.

She is persistent and follows me for a little while, but I hear her voice slowly fade in her rapidfire Mandarin as I hurried away from her.

My Once A Year Barber

I arrive at the familiar barber shop and plop myself down on one of the waiting couches. I look at my barber, who is meticulously cutting the hair of the customer before me. He looks up for the briefest of moments with a slight nod of acknowledgement.

He belonged here - his hair dyed, short at the sides but long behind (I wondered who cut his hair for him), his wide-collared workshirt made him look more like he was going to a nightclub than to work, his fake Levi's jeans held up by an equally unauthentic Louis Vuitton belt, and his boots harked back to an era where it was still fashionable to wear Doc Martens. He looked youthful for his forty-something years, although his tanned, sagging cheeks were starting to tell a different story.

The corner shop is over a decade old, as evidenced by the yellowing cover of the hot water showers where he washes customer's hair, and the cushions looked unchanged. I peer over at a pile of Mandarin and English magazines for waiting customers, some of them dating back to when the shop first opened.

There was a printed sign detailing the prices - "Adult Cut - RM13, Teenager Cut RM 10- 13, Hair Dye..." and underneath there was a sign hastily scratched in red marker pen - " Untuk Tahun Baru Cina - Tambah RM 3." (" In Keeping with the Chinese New Year Celebrations - Add RM3.")

He was a little too meticulous if you asked me, because he took a whole half hour to complete the haircut of the gentleman before me, and I had to pee once while waiting, making my way past the Chinese women who were unrelenting in trying to get me to try whatever it was they were selling.

Just A Little Off The Top, Please

It was finally my turn, and I told him how I wanted it in Cantonese - short at the sides and back, and a little off the top. And leave the sideburns alone.

He reached for his comb and started raking my hair, while making his all-too-familiar customary greeting of how I had very sparse hair for someone so young. And as usual, I grunted my non- commital Hai lo (Yeah, lah).

He wraps a tea towel around my neck to protect it from the vengeful prickly stray hairs that would fall victim to his scissors today, and wraps a colourful protective plastic sheet over my body.

He reaches first for the clippers, and begins the uphill slopes that would form the new landscapes of my side and back profiles.

He starts the compulsory chatter, and asks me if I am going anywhere for the Chinese New Year.

Not wanting to let him know that I was going back to Melbourne, in case he decides to charge me more than the RM 16 that he was going to rip off me, I tell him No, not really.

I ask him where he's from, and he said that he was from around here, although his parents were from elsewhere. One corner of his mouth lifted into a smile as he reminisced how he would never stay in one place for too long. Even as a barber, he would not stay in any shop for more than a year because of his wanderlust.

That was before his daughter came along, of course. She was about five months old when he started work here in KL, and now, over a decade later, she was almost ready for secondary school. Her younger brother, who wasn't even born yet, is now in his first year of primary school. Sap yat lin le... (Eleven years already le...), in the same shop. I did a quick calculation to try and remember how long I have been coming back to him for.

The Women

We stray into a moment of silence as he reaches for the scissors and comb, and the sporadic but persistent shouts from the Chinese women, outside jolt him -

"An mo, lau pan! Ni yau mah?" (Massage, sir, for you?)

"Tiu le ah seng ah... Hai yau kiu, mm hai yau kiu..." (Fuck you, man... these women, ah, calling all day long you know...) he complains.

He starts to work on my hair, and his eyes are intent as he manicures my head. He has perfected the art of talking while cutting hair, though, and he starts talking about the Chinese women whose voice continue to call out to every man unfortunate enough to pass within sight of the corridors.

A Foot Job

This was a very well known phenomenon in Malaysia - immigrant Chinese women from China masquerading as foot masseuse who offered "extra" (read: sexual) services for an additional fee.

Jimmy, my barber, talks about how these centres have started to sprout in the past few years. He talks about how desperate these women were for customers - usually men in their forties or fifties, who may be able to resist their siren calls maybe for the first six months, but who usually give in to their persistence in the end.

(An mo, lau pan!)

He reminisces about a father and son who ran a shop upstairs from him, and who were his regular customers. The father was in all sense a straight man - he didn't smoke or drink, and had no vices as far as the son knew. Then one day, out of the blue, the father elopes with one of the women downstairs to China, leaving his wife and children high and dry.

The last time Jimmy cut the hair of the son, apparently the father had returned several years later to KL, devoid of money, too embarrassed to reconnect with the wife or children, who refused to acknowledge him.

Love Potion Chiu Hau (No.9)

Ngo mm zhi lei sun mm sun la, pat ko ngo sun hei tei yau lok took ke... It tit lo yan yum do ke si ah... met yeh te pei sai hei tei ke... (I don't know if you believe it or not, but I believe that these women have probably put some charm into their drink or food, and once the old man consumes it, he is finished. He will give everything to them, and there's nothing the family can do about it.)

Moh, moh...

Kam lei ke sang yi tim ah? (So how's your business?) I ask him.

Ngo ke pang yau tong ngo kong, wah, Jimmy, lei yau ho le... yat yat te yau kam to leng lui pooi jhu lei... tiu lei ah seng ah... (My friends keep telling me about how lucky I am to be surrounded by pretty girls, but fuck them, what do they know...)

He tells me about how these women have been harassing his customers, even teenage boys, until his business has suffered. Their favorite targets were the polite old men, who usually succumbed after repeated requests. The women were almost a law unto themselves, unafraid to gang up, three, even four, at a time, and harass a male customer until he said yes.

(An mo, lau pan! Yau mah?)

Jimmy almost spat as he recounted how they would even wait outside the toilet near his barber shop to wait until a man had finished his business, and then harass him again. His recollection is peppered with expletives as he recounts how his earnings have gone down from two to three thousand ringgit a month to just a paltry thousand over now, as long-time customers were reluctant to return due to these female vultures.

Hair-raising

(AN MO, LAU PAN!)

Suddenly Jimmy erupts, and he looks outside of his shop and yells to no one in particular "FREE FARK KING!!" "FREE FARK KING!!" He does a little ridiculous sarcastic dance with his comb and scissors, and returns to my head, scowling.

Moh, moh, moh... Moh lei ke hai lah, moh! (Massage, massage, massage, massage your [rhymes with vagina] lah, massage!) he mutters under his breath.

I listened in silence, the rhythmic snipsnipsnip of the scissors playing near my ears, and watched my reflection in the mirror. I could see one or two Chinese women walking past my mirror, their dyed curls curtaining their dolled up faces, throwing disinterested glances towards Jimmy, who was having a great time cursing them.

Jimmy then calmed down as he continued his foray into my half-sculpted head, and then recounts how he knew of customers who were regular visitors to these massage parlors, who would get a handjob while waiting for their turn to have their hair cut in his shop.

He laughs as he tells of the men who wouldn't last five minutes, and who would have to part with RM30 for the pleasure. Some were longer lasting, though, and he recollects one person who went for hours, with both the customer and the prostitute bathed in sweat by the time they were done.

The Barber and His Prostitute

He was no angel himself, reminisced Jimmy, as he put the finishing touches to my head. He remembers visiting a prostitute himself in the early days of his marriage. He had just had an argument with his young wife and was looking for someplace to blow off steam.

He ended up hiring a hooker, and they went to a nearby hotel, but in his own words - fuck knows why it took him so long to come that night. He might have been feeling uneasy he says, but laughs as he recollects how after 'playing' for an hour, he still didn't ejaculate, which was the standard ending transaction here in Malaysia.

The Chinese prostitute, exasperated, told him that if he wanted to continue, he would have to pay extra, which he refused. And according to him, she dressed so fast it made his head spin, and was walking the streets again before you could say "blow job".

(An mo!)

The protective plastic cover came off first, followed by the tea towel, which Jimmy lashed a few times against my neck to rid me of any stray remaining hairs. I reach into my wallet and pull out two ten ringgit notes and hand them to him.

Mm sai chaw lah... (Keep the change) I tell him, thinking about his two children.

Ho, Gong Hei Fatt Choi ah... (Okay, Happy Chinese New Year ah...) Jimmy said, smiling, as he turned to clean his barber's chair of my loose hair, and reaches for the broom to sweep up an hour's worth of severed foliage.

I walk away from the shop in a different direction, and the mamasan, sitting in a corner, who has probably observed my alliance with the barber, watches me out of the corner of her eye, and does not call out to me.

Other People's Love Stories: Stalker

With thanks to my friends who share their stories with much enthusiasm and laughter.



Stalker, MD.

She worked at one of the hospitals in KL, and she had just passed one of her major exams. Medicine had always been a daily battle for her so she was relieved and a little ecstatic at overcoming this hurdle; she no longer had to balance work and studies for the time being.

Out of the blue, she receives an sms. Congratulations! it read. I always knew you could done it! Can I please lend your note for my exam?:)

She looked at the name, and let out a little laugh. His English was quite telling, certain trends had set in since his days in Chinese school. She could picture the junior medical officer now - glasses, untidy hair, pleasant enough but mostly unremarkable. Someone who knew his medical stuff well, but who did not necessarily win the aunties over with his demeanour.

Sure, she smsed back, you can have my notes. Good luck for your exams!

That was the start of all her troubles.

He came over to collect the notes from her one day, and they exchanged some pleasantries. She may have smiled, she can't remember now.

Somehow he took the act of her handing him her study notes as a sign of interest.

He started acting as if they were a couple - he would come up to her during ward rounds and find out what she was up to, or try and sit with her during lunch. It was every other day at first, then every day.

Her senior medical officer friends initially teased her as soon as he left the table, but then the joke started wearing thin as it ran into weeks, and they could see the signs of worry clouding her face. They stopped their teasing and took to protecting her instead.

They would be on the look out for him, and warned her every time he approached. There were times when the very sight of him would drive her to choose another corridor to walk through quickly, or to duck into toilets just to avoid him.

And then there were the smses. And the incessant phone calls. One time, she couldn't take it anymore, and switched off her phone for several hours just to avoid speaking to him. When she turned on her phone again, she gasped, partially in disbelief, and partially out of fear.

27 missed calls. His name and number.

She had confronted him, and told the guy already in no uncertain terms that she wasn't interested and that there was no way in hell that there was ever going to be a relationship. But she seemed to be talking to a wall, as he just stared blankly ahead, as if his whole being just deflected her arguments by sheer will of denial.

The Duel

This went on for several months, and she was losing sleep and dreading the thought of going to work. She knew that she had to resort to some drastic measures to get the message through to him.

She had a friend, whose brother was a bit of a gangster. Tough looking guy - tanned, muscles, tattoos - the air of someone possibly involved in the triads.

She told him her problem. He nodded as if he had heard this before; as if he had to protect women like herself from situations like this all the time.

No problem, he stated boldly. Leave it to me.

He got straight onto the job, and confronted this guy one day. Right in the hospital cafeteria, as people were milling around trying to get some lunch.

He walked up to this doctor, and asked him for his name.

The stalker looked a little confused, and smiled an uneasy smile as he told him his name. The pretend boyfriend immediately went to work.

I heard you've been harassing my girlfriend ah!! Well, you know what, buddy, you'd better leave ____ alone, because she's my girlfriend okay? the friend's brother snarled threateningly, his voice raising to a shout, his index finger within inches of the doctor's face. Otherwise you're going to get into a hell lot of trouble, you hear me!?!!

A few of the curious midday crowd had turned their heads to watch this drama enfold. There was a tense pocket of silence around them, as the crowd tried their worst to mind their own business.

The stalker doctor looked up at the guy unflinchingly, and raised his hand slowly.

It seemed like an eternity before his next move, which completely threw Mr. Gangster Pretend-Boyfriend off - the doctor patted him patronisingly on his shoulder and said with a confident smile, "May the best man win."

(At this point of her description, I burst out laughing and just screamed an incredulous "What?")

The stalker doctor got transferred out of the hospital eventually but he continued to haunt her from afar - he would make the long trip from his hospital to her's just to keep up his pursuit of her.

This was really starting to get ridiculous, and so she finally confided to her boss one day about what was going on.

The boss got in touch with the Department head at the other hospital, and the Department Head threatened the stalker doctor that if he continued to harass her, he would lose his job.

That finally did it, as the real threat of losing his job finally snapped the guy out of his trance and he left her alone after that.

Her ordeal for the past few months had ended as abruptly as it had begun, and she could finally break out of this nightmare state, and regain some semblance of normalcy again.

I love this story, as told by one of my friends, regarding her sister.

I will never understand the real fear of being obssessed over by someone to the point of fearing for your own safety.

As much as I want to feel disgust for the antiprotagonist in this story, I felt more pity at how maladjusted and awkward some of us truly are (I will admit that I am too, to some extent) when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex sometimes.

A Tiny Bit Of This, A Little Dash of That

She sat across from me, her impish grin broadening and gleaming eyes reminiscent of the little girl.

Masak-masak

So I was maybe like five years old, right? And my mum wouldn't let me into the kitchen, but I would watch her from afar, my eyes reflecting the fire of the stove as I watched in wide-eyed wonder at how Mummy was so good at cooking.

I decided to try it myself one day - Mum and Dad were both out at work, and the nanny wouldn't come until about ten a.m.

And so I spotted my chance - I knew exactly what I wanted to cook, and so my tiny little feet hurried to the aquarium.

I thought Dad wouldn't notice one missing goldfish.

I made a mistake of choosing the most obvious goldfish - the big one that Dad affectionately calls Goldie. What do you mean, why Goldie? He was the easiest to catch, what!

And so I turned on the fire on the stove, and carried the heavy frying pan with both my tiny hands and plopped it onto the fire. Just like how I saw mum do.

But you know what? I forgot to add oil, so Goldie started sticking to the pan.

(hK's note: At this point, I don't think a lack of oil was her greatest problem. You know.)

Suddenly my nanny walked in and her eyes bulged in horror as she flailed her pointing finger at me and screamed "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!".

She was very good, my nanny, and she cleaned up all the evidence of Goldie's Death-By-Frying-Pan.

Dad actually noticed Goldie was missing and he was really upset but he never really found out what happened to her.

Then there was this other time the same year when I was trying to fry fruits, right...

Choose The Flowers. Definitely Choose The Flowers.

So I caught fifteen minutes of this Boys Over Flowers thing that has been reported in the comments section two entries ago.

And I have come to this conclusion -

Recipe To Making Success Korean Drama

1. Make no worry about produtions value. People no worry about productions varlue if all actors beautiful pretty handsome.

2. Take impossibrly cute actress. Only one. Or two. Make few boy fight over her. Make not so pretty girl bad. Villain. Make biewer hate ugly person.

3. Few boy must be unnaturaly handsrome as well. No pimples. In Korean, no boys have pimples when puberty. We killll all those pimples boy.

4. Pretty girl must make wear short short school skirt. In case, some old Japanese biewer watching. Appeal big big market.

5. Take impossibrly cute actress. Make her remember sad sad time with unaturaly handsrome old boyfriend. Cry a lot. On shoulder of unaturaly handsrome old boyfriends new girlfriend. Who seem to be understanding. But actually thinking of way to kill impossibrly cute actress. Take shot of new girlfriend evil sideway look eyes.

6. Make new no-pimple boy with dye hair come into picture. Make him almost bad boy by pinning earring on left ear.

IMPORTANT NOTES: Make sure earring left ear. No right ear. Unless you want make new no-pimple boy love unnaturraly handsrome boy. Appeal big big market.

7. Put in some badevil ex-girlfriend (not so pretty cute). Make her turn up at unnaturaly handsrome boy birthday and make him lose face.

8. Mix in pop Korean song. Not so popular in Korea. But outside people no know that. They buy soundtrack lots lots. Especially old Japanese biewer.

9. New no-pimple boy is a bit bad boy. But good heart. And smile that can melt frozen Eskimo Polar Bear's Ice Cream. Finally save impossibrly cute actress from badevil ex-girlfriend or unnaturaly handsrome new boyfriend's new girlfriend with evil sideways look and fall in love. Live happrily ever after. Or until high school ends.

10. If very success. Make sequel. Follow same recipe as above. But use new beautiful pretty handsrome persons. But use same ugly persons. They no so expensive to salary.

With apologies to my friends who have stayed up past their bed times watching the boy with the Most Kissable Lips. Hahahaha!

I Wish I Could Go Back To College/High School

One of my little projects this time returning home is the wholesale cleaning of the house. Our house is a humble little terrace house in which a modest little family has been accumulating rubbish for the past thirty years.

If you think I am joking, let me just point out that two of the rooms in my house have been unofficially converted into storage rooms (or store rooms as we affectionately know them).

My mum has said that I have "choong sau" (which literally means a heavy hand) meaning that I have been totally unsentimental and remorseless with getting rid of junk. That's me, the Nazi Against Sentimentality. The Anti Pack-Rat. The Scourge of Hoarders.

That was until I got to my room and started cleaning out my stuff, and dug up things from my high school, college and University days. A pile of cards, some of them beautifully handmade, some old school magazines and many pictures of me, eternally young in the various snapshots and photographs.

Wave after wave of nostalgia hit me, and reminded me that once upon several times, I had large groups of friends, penpals and secret admirers who remembered your birthday, agonised over which words to materialise their feelings and bravely inhaled the potential poisons of glittery stars and magic marker pens in order to tell you that someone was thinking about you.

Why is it that the passage of time makes friends that you swore once you would keep forever uncomfortable strangers once both of you went back on your promise to Keep In Touch, or the passage into adulthood necessitate that we drift further apart from these big groups into our little islands of isolation and self-sufficiency?

I remember watching Avenue Q with K in London, and there is a song there called I Wish I Could Go Back to College, a wistful look back to simpler and happier times, and well, isn't that the truth.

I put the cards and photographs away, knowing that they will sit there for another thirty years.

Happy New Year 2010

Wow! After what has been a prolonged absence from the blog, I can finally say that I am back! And it feels good to be writing again!

First things first, a very Happy New Year to all of you readers. 2010 always seems like a year of completion, there's a certain definitiveness to the number, and may it be one where we tie off loose ends in order to start anew.

For many of my friends around my age, this would be the year that we alter drop our first digit and replace it with a slightly larger one. I am beginning to like the thought of thirty, though, and I don't think that it will be an absent decade for me (I certainly hope not!). There are many things to look forward to, new experiences to be shared, and heaps of growing up to be done!

So to all my readers, families and friends, have a safe 2010. May it be a year filled with stories, and one where you have lived life to its fullest with all its associated joy and tears, like how He intended.

P.S. Karen and I are trying to compile all our trip experiences into a separate blog, and we will let you know the address once everything's up and running! It was an amazing trip, and we hope you can share it with us!