Edward Barberhands

"Please," she says. "Try it! You won't know unless you try it!"

"Heh," I smile a Maybe but my heart actually says Nah.

My fiancee is trying to convince me to get my hair cut at a proper hairdressers.

There is a ten dollar barber shop near the city which I have always frequented since I was a student. Which I still visit, much to Karen's dismay. Prices have crept up as high as $13.95 at one stage, but fierce competition has kept the haircuts at a very reasonable ten dollars for the past two years.

Walking in to the barber shop is always a roulette. In my case, I may either walk out looking like a frumpy twelve year old schoolboy about to be beaten up, or some semblance of a dashing thirty one year old adult. Usually it's the former.


There is no luxury of choosing your favourite barber in a ten dollar shop.

It is a roll of the dice - do I get the Cypriate barber today who knows only one hairstyle for all his male clients (who also somehow eerily has the same hairstyle - which makes you wonder, who the heck cut his hair?) or do I get that Vietnamese lady who somehow understands my oddly-shaped head? Maybe it will be the Iranian woman who oozes of teenage angst, chewing her gum apathetically while chopping away with disinterest at my hair?

I remember my final year of medical school, and how I needed to look decent for two reasons - I was hosting a wedding for a couple who were good friends of mine and I had my final graduation. Important times. The girl who the shop deemed equal to this monumental task looked like she was sixteen; the way she used her scissors had undercurrents of criminal intent.

Needless to say, her untrained fingers took too much off one side, which she then had to correct on the other side and by the end of it, I looked like I was signing up to join the army. "Well," she says, rubbing as much gel as she humanly could to disguise her error, "at least you look interesting," she said, her face betraying the slightest of cringes.

It was only after two blocks and a whole lot of curious stares when I noticed the clump of hair she had neglected to brush off my left cheek, making me look like I was growing something cancerous (or groovy).

Today's result? Somewhere in the middle.

Maybe I should take Karen's advice and go to a proper hairdressers to get myself a 35 dollar Korean-teenage-heartthrob-look-alike haircut.

Nah.

Random Memories: Haircuts Through The Years Part 1

"This Heng Khuen ah, hairstyle everyday different one," my friend once commented.

My earliest recollection of a barber is at the age of five, when my brother and I would be brought to the same father-and-son Chinese barbershop near where we lived. This place was old school, man, complete with the fluorescent lit candy-stripe sign outside the shop.

While awaiting my turn, I would always watch in awe at the uncles before me, who willingly surrendered their lathered necks to the reusable razorblades of the barber (sharpened on a leather strap hanging by the mirrors); or how they grimaced in pain as their stray nostril hairs were ripped out at the roots with gleaming tweezers.

Almost a true depiction of barbers

I would always pray that I would not get the father - a bald (never trust a bald barber?), toothless man with his mischievous slitty eyes hidden behind thick black frames. I hated him because his haircuts always came with the unwelcome added service of a tweak of your nose before and after your haircut.

I swear, if I had mastered the Jason Bourne-ian art of killing someone with whatever was ready at hand, this man would have been bleeding from a thousand razorblade cuts before his wandering hand even reached my nose.

Instead, my five year old self sat there helplessly, having my nose tweaked purple.