But I wanted A Katie!

I know guys don't have this problem but it is a serious problem with women no matter what age. I mean, look at my mom, the simplest of all old ladies. Yet if she got a bad haircut, she'd stay home because "Ng hoe ye se, gom chou". Haven't you wanted to cry after a bad haircut?

When I look at photos of myself at 8 or 9, I cringe. My mom, being from Hong Kong, was considered fashionable in her days. And in those days, fashion and trends travel very slowly to Borneo. Even movies came more than a year after they were released. Anyway, although she didn't watch western movies, mom seemed to know Shirley Temple was The New Black and my sister and I were often dragged to the hair saloon for perms. Going to school the next day was truly terrifying. I will never forget being called a "gollywog" by Dorothy T. (yoo hoo, Dottie, where are you?), one of those girls who considered themselves more western than eastern and so spoke English only. Deep inside I was more hurt because I knew I looked like a gollywog (a word Enid Blyton used to refer to blacks) with my afro and my dark skin. It didn't help when my front teeth went through its baby-to-adult change at a later age than others. Or that I was stick-thin too. The one thing those hair perms did was made me avoid hair salons. I don't go to hair saloons until my hair makes me unrecognisible, so that means 2 times a year. I used to cut my bangs myself, until W asked me who chewed on it.

So imagine how it was for me last month when I went to KK's most popular hair salon in Centre Point and asked for a "Katie", as in Holmes. An hour later I came out with a Paris, and it was CNY and I paid CNY price for a haircut that made me want to hibernate. A Paris is not too bad because it is about shoulder length. After a month, my hair has grown and yesterday, I decided it's time to get that Katie cut, but at a different salon.

Why is it that they never know what you want even when you are emphatic and assertive about your preferred hairstyle? This cut isn't so bad from the front but to my horrors, from the side and back, my hair looked like a ball (I went back to trim down the ball effect this morning; Julie was very nice about it). You know the cut that's in now, the one with short back and long sides, the stupid look that I hate? I'm wearing it now. And I just want to cry because instead of looking like Katie, I look more like that sour-face Posh. Now I just have to go get some silicon boobs and somehow make Hub look more David.

p.s. Lesson is: bring a picture of what you want. People think Katie and Posh and Paris are the same person.