Just a short update, but today I went out into town and got two things. First off, I got my hair done. Not just cut, apparently, but done as in with washes and massages and everything. I don’t actually know how this happened, as I had asked to have it simply cut when I walked into the hair salon my cousin recommended (it was close, that’s about all, I don’t know if it was anything special in particular). What would you like, they said. Do you want coloring, they said. I said no to both and sat down to wait for one of the attendants. The place made me a little nervous (it looked like one of those fancy hair salons, too fancy for my blood) and so when it came to responding to what the people asked me (like whether the water was too hot or whether the shampoo made me itchy) I was slow or often unable to react. I just asked, rather dumbly, “What? What’s that?” I think they thought I was fooling around or maybe seriously deaf because I could tell they were getting annoyed after repeating everything two or three times. Fun times!
I had never had my hair washed for me before, but the guy who washed my hair must have been practicing or something because it felt quite good. I mean, it might sound a little homosexual or metrosexual at the very least, but I sort of liked the hair washing part of the deal. It had little to nothing to do with the fact that it was the girly guy who was washing my hair instead of the slightly manly girl. Okay, so I don’t think I’ll be developing a habit of getting my hair washed by other people, but apparently it’s standard procedure here in HK.
After my little ordeal at the hair salon, I hit up the streets again, skipping past Sneaker Street and heading straight for Ladies Market. There’s a lot of stuff (a lot of crap, but also a lot of considerable finds) for sale in Ladies Market. Most notably, I found a stall where a lady was selling lighters (similar to, but probably not really Zippos). I looked over the different designs and there were a lot of the usual dragons and patterned finishes, along with some lighters with “cool” (but mostly tasteless and boring) insignia painted/etched into the lighter sleeves (the outside shell/case of the lighter). None of these caught my attention, really, but I found one yellow one, painted with the design from the boxed lemon tea drink from VITA (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’re Chinese and/or from Hong Kong). I simply had to have it. I asked the lady to check it out and she was very friendly, letting me take the lighter out of its plastic cover and even cleaning a smudge off the thing after I asked if it would come off with cleaning. She told me the price ($50 HKD) after I asked; I thought about it for maybe half a second (to divide by seven, that’s a lighter for ~$7 CDN) and then forked over the cash. Word to the whoever is thinking of ever getting me something: THIS is the kind of stuff I adore. I will post pictures once I get a decent camera and spare time.