"Buhok!"

Last week, I went to a mall south of Manila to buy a few stuff for my laptop. Since I got there just as most people would be trooping to the canteens for their lunch, I decided to go straight to the computer shop and let the others have their lunch, avoiding “rush hour” inside the restaurants. Working in the medical profession, I know exactly how the people in the fast food counters feel when people troop to them. It gets really “toxic.” And sometimes, people lose their temper. So, I figured I’d have my lunch a good full hour after the others had theirs. When I got in the shop, I found myself lost in all the gadgets that greeted me. I felt like a kid left alone in a candy shop. A self-confessed pseudo-techie, it goes without saying that a planned 15-minute (tops!) stay in the computer shop turned into a two-hour field trip where I touched practically all the new gadgets I hadn’t seen the last time I was there. I really worked up an appetite, so by the time I was ready to have my lunch, I was primed to gobble up anything on my tray. I’d usually go to a Jap resto every time I get to have lunch out, but my fave Jap place was a good 20-minute drive to where I was and my tummy was already growling, demanding immediate attention. My next choice was a Mexican place. But I just had lunch in Taco Bell earlier that week, and one more trip to that place in a span of a few days would’ve made me suspect for stalking a certain server named Lisa. Hehe! Instead, I went to another place, a few feet away from my usual watering hole. I normally wouldn’t go for an “all-beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”, but I was so famished it seemed like a logical choice at that time, since most of the other restos had “hepatitis” written all over them. Logical? I was wrong. Midway through my sandwich, I felt something inedible and strangely icky caught between my braces. When I pulled it out, I was aghast when I saw a dark strand of hair, about an inch-and-a-half. And it was curly. Sonofa*bleep*! I was ready to complain to the staff, but one step towards the counter, I realized the “kids” manning the counter looked all super tired, prolly from the really hectic lunch hour. So I just wrapped what was left of my sandwich, put it back on the tray, walked out of the resto and charged everything to experience. Last time I checked, you couldn’t get hepatitis from a strand of hair cooked with a beef patty on a grill, so it’s all good. I just had to make a quick trip to the men’s room and brushed my teeth silly. It pays to always carry a toothbrush and Sensodyne with you anywhere you go.

-=@@@=-

I went back to the mall yesterday to pay my overdue Globe bill. While I was there, I passed by my usual “hair cutting” place, so I figured, what the heck! Since I was there already, I might as well get that haircut people have been pushing me to have. Last time I was there six weeks ago, my usual “hair guy” was on his day-off, so someone else snipped my mane off. He was so limp-wristed by the time he was done with me, he transformed me from a dignified professor/medicine man, to a callboy, complete with the pseudo-mohawk top. Buti na lang I was gonna go back to Cebu where I stayed for two weeks so that the people I know back home wouldn’t get a glimpse of that horrible, horrible haircut. Yesterday was another bad day as far as the history of my hair goes. Usual hair guy wasn’t there again, and same limp-wristed hair guy did my hair. But I made it a point to tell him before his pair of scissors touched me to take it easy on the top and stay out of mohawk territory. It wasn’t really bad. At least I don’t look like a callboy now. School boy perhaps, coz it’s ridiculously short and it kinda reminds me of the haircuts our neighborhood barber gave me back when I was in grade school. It seems like limp-wristed stylist only knows two looks: callboy look and school boy look. I saw the other guys whose hair he cut that day. They all looked like they belonged in Ermita, right in front of the PWU campus, along Taft Avenue, which gets transformed into a meat market every night. Anyway, okay na sana, He didn’t go to mo’ territory, but just as he was finishing off my cut, he noticed my eyebrows. And our conversation went like this:

Limp-wristed hair guy: “Swir, ang kapwal ng kilay mwo.”
Me: “Oo, nga eh.”
Limp-wristed hair guy: “Gwusto mwo, linisin kwo?”
Me: “Paano?”
Limp-wristed hair guy: “I-pluck kwo lang, o threading(?).”
Me: “Di bale na lang…”

Oh wait, I think I said…

Me: “HELL, NO!”

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This afternoon, I had the best laugh I’ve had in a long while. I didn’t have anything to do today so I stayed in the house, taking care of a few paper works and organizing my lecture materials in preparation for my midterm set of lectures. While I was having lunch in front of the TV with Manang Nora, our super-galing housekeeper, the Alpo ad ran. You know, the one with the golden retriever and the beagle and a mutt, I think. Manang Nora went to the bank earlier that day, and while we were watching the ad (I love dogs! I hate cats! Cats are evil! Haha!), she told me about this dog she saw in the bank:

Manang: “’Ni, kanina sa bangko, may aso dun, dala nung babae.”
Me: "Talaga? Pwede pala magpasok ng aso sa bangko?”
Manang: “Ewan ko, pero ang ganda nung aso, parang laruan!”
Me: “Anong klase? Di katulad ni Sam (our golden retriever)?”
Manang: “Hindi, maliit siya, ang ganda!”
Me: “Chihuahua?”
Manang: “Hindi ata, kasi mataba… at PURO BULBOL!”
Me: (Choking on my pearl cooler) “Ano po?! Pakiulit?”
Manang: “Puro BULBOL!
Me: (Beet red, pearl cooler squirting out of my nose, laughing my ass off)!