Nothing to fear but fear itself

I've lived in Moscow, Shanghai and Ahmedabad. I've flown Soviet-era Tupolevs. I've gone by car through the pitch black nights of Kyrgyzstan highways. I've had coffee with the Baku police force. I was even once followed by the Belorussian KGB, while sightseeing in Minsk. Despite these experiences, nothing has ever been able to compete with the level of fear I've had to encounter when engulfing in one particular activity, regardless of which foreign city it took place in: getting a hair cut.

At home I feel very comfortable at the hairdressers. I look forward to the visits, even though I tend to postpone them for as long as possible for Filofax-related reasons. I admit I enjoy the sensation of having somebody else stick their fingers in my hair. Above all, I usually prefer the way I look when I leave, as compared to when I came. This is where the hick-up shows up.

I know (or at least I used to know) all the moving and quite a few static parts of a tank in Russian. I can spot a leutenant-colonel of the motorised rifle infantry from a hundred meter. I can make the distinction between an active and a passive hydrophone on a Russian nuclear submarine, at least when it comes to terminology. In short, I'm very capable in some areas, many of them quite useless. What I don't know is how to say "short on the back and sides" to a Moscow coiffeur. And did you ever try to avoid having your hair dyed in Mandarine ("wo bu xiang ni ran wo de toufa", you all yell, and yes, that's very true, but you also have to get all the tones right; otherwise he'll just stare at you with the puzzled look I find so frequent among Shanghainese hairdressers/waiters/taxi drivers/most people.)?

I don't know how to communicate the way I want my hair to look in most languages. In India many people have an advanced command of English, but far from everybody. They usually know numbers, so they can charge you money (even if today the difference between 120 and 170 rupees wasn't all clear). Really, today's hairdresser didn't even speak to me about my hair. He just cut it, and that he did at warp 9 for all you Star Trek lovers out there. (For all you other people, it means he was really fast.) Happily enough, he was also not entirely unskilled, as can be seen in this newly taken photograph of pretty me.

NB: I've changed the security settings for this blog, so now everybody who so wishes will be able to post comments. I've been unaware of the problem until now, but they were pointed out to me by my very good friend Lars. He has promised that from now on he'll comment on every entry. It wasn't exactly put that way, but it was in between the lines.

(Here I'd like to pause for a moment and convey to you that I believe I just heard an elephant.)