We can assume by the lack of content in recent days that not much is going on in my world. or that I’ve been napping my life away. not the case, however. I’ve been very busy, and actually very very happy. Or as I quipped to the like-dna “the least miserable I’ve been in a long time.” So it’s not a 100% positive admission, but it’s a shitload better than a lot of other eras of my life.
There are 3 nuggets that I feel are worth sharing. The first one being my haircut. Yup, it’s true. I got a haircut. In china. And not from Julie. My locks were pretty long and stringy. And I’m not the most high-maintenance when it comes to hair care. Despite the fact that I’d been cultivating this length for a few years now, I was still continually surprised and/or bummed out by the fact that I would wake up after having slept on wet hair and it wouldn’t look amazing. What up with that? And I don’t have the patience to actually fix my hair everyday. So there are these aspects of my hair care personality, combined with the chongqing humidity. I was left with no choice.
I printed off some super blurry photos and armed myself with absolutely no Chinese for this adventure. I arrived at the salon and they all looked very very nervous. I guess I’m the kind of foreigner who looks like she doesn’t know any Chinese. And I don’t really, particularly not any related to the “Chinese haircut” lexical set. Or I’m intimidating? I remember when the UPS guy in Austin told me that I looked mean. Innocuous? I think not, since I refer to that incident far far too often.
Anyhoo…a Chinese haircut is an elaborate process that consists of far more than just shears. I really enjoy that word. Reminds me of my former-next-door-neighbor’s-mom’s pinking shears. And that’s noteworthy.
There are salon “technicians” (for lack of a better word) who greet you and escort you to the hairwashing station. They then wash your hair and massage your head for damn near 30 minutes. And that part is very very nice. I think that sometimes they clean your ears, but homeboy just handed me some q-tips. Guess he didn’t want to get all up in my earholes. And who would, really.
So I’m escorted to the chair, awaiting the arrival of my hair expert. I had just enough time to show a pixilated picture of my ideal cut to dudeman before the power died. So we’re sitting there in the dark in silence and I wonder what his next move is. He seemed unphased and proceeded to grab a large clump of my hair and cut. Only after he cut off the hearty portion did he think to ask someone about what the hell was going on. So I sat there, running my hands through the space where longer hairs used to be, waiting for some word from the stylist man. But there was no apprehension or nervousness. He had seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing, ‘oh yeah, here at cloud beauty the power dies all the time.’ Fair enough.
The power never did come back on. I kept thinking it would be an “any second now” kind of thing. Nope. So he cut layers in the dark. No blow-dry, of course, because there was no power. So there was a lot of faith invested in this dude, who ultimately delivered me out of the darkness sporting some lovely shorn locks. Cool. I guess the thought of freaking out never crossed my mind as I have no one to impress here. Chinese people are judgmental, good hair or bad, with or without fashion sense. It’s actually quite liberating. If I were to leave the apartment in my pajamas, I’d garner as many stares as if I left in a slutty dress, or if I looked completely normal, which I’d like to think sums up my appearance. There are times (and believe me, this isn’t all the time) when that unfailing consistency is comforting.
Second thing of note would be a slight mold problem in my apartment. No literal or air quotes there. It really is only a slight problem. The mold itself is no story. Eh. The landlord coming to visit is a story.
School arranged for the landlord to come. I guess is should say landlords. I signed the contract with the wife half of this power couple. But the husband was coming to fix some shit (including my busted washing machine hose). So there’s a knock at the door, I open it and am greeted by a tiny person wielding a giant, plastic mouse filled with fruity gummy treats that doubled as a piggy (mouse?) bank. He shoves this in my face and says “good morning, teacher.” those were the only words he spoke for the next 45 minutes or so. He wasn’t the landlord, but that would also have been a cool story. The munchkin was ushered inside by his dad (yes, the landlord) who also had a gift for me, which was a box of generic fruit loops in an elaborate gift bag. Sweet! Mr. landlord also said repeatedly that I was beautiful (aw, shucks) and that I would have beautiful babies someday. Ok. Cool. Good start to my morning.
Dad proceeds to mangle my washing machine (though I didn’t know it at the time), while his son (4 years old) trails behind him every step of the way, trekking mud from all over my balcony throughout the apartment, which I didn’t really mind. I was overdue for a mopping session anyway.
After the washing machine future debacle it was time to assess the mold. So some other building maintenance dude came to my crib and they jabbered back and forth for a while. Then landlord says he needs to go buy a part. I’m not sure exactly what I thought that part could be—a magical mold-removing device. Seems like if something like that could be found somewhere in the world, it would certainly be chongqing, china. he asked if it was cool if he son stayed with me for the next 15 minutes or so. I said, sure what the hell. He’d been really chilled out for a 4-year-old up to that point, so I saw no harm.
So dad left and it was just me and this 4-year-old Chinese kid. Just hanging out. I think we both had this revelation at the same time. Shit, what do we do now? so I gave him some charcoal pieces and a piece of sketch paper and let him go to town. He produced an abstract work featuring multiple angry faces, a rabbit with a giant dress, the sun and an apparent human of indeterminate gender. it’s a very cool picture. Really captured the rage he must have been feeling having been left in the hands of a foreign stranger.
He had charcoal all over his hands so I escorted him to the bathroom to help him wash them. gotta say, there’s something really awesome about lifting a tiny person up to a sink and squirting soap into their hands. All in the very acute silence of my apartment. And he didn’t mind. Or speak. After that I gave him a whiteboard marker and let him draw on the glass door to my kitchen. That was a short-lived experiment—he just wasn’t feeling it. after that it was a fun game of ‘try to stab jamie’s drying underwear with the laundry hanging pole.” Also short-lived. My decision.
He actually spent most of the time climbing up my sit-up bench and then using it as a miniature slide. I just stood there and watched him do this over and over, at least 20 times. It was the perfect height for him, and just enough of a challenge for him to swing his legs over the top.
Then his dad came back with 2 cheap, floral rugs to put in my bay window where the mold had damaged the frame. So that was nice. And then they were gone. Still not sure what the long-term strategy for the mold problem is, but at least I’m 2 cheap rugs richer. What a contradictory sentence.
The last thing of note happened 2 days ago. I was walking home from school, broad daylight, busy sidewalk with shops and pharmacies and boutiques. This is the rich part of town, folks. I nearly stepped on 3 tiny tiny tiny puppy fetuses, just laying there on the sidewalk. it was kind of jarring. They were clean and pink. They looked like those weird toys you put in water in that expand to 100 times their size. Usually things like dinosaur toys or cars or something. Anything other than actual puppy fetuses. And why were they there? The appeared to have been discarded by someone or some thing, but this particular sidewalk doesn’t afford the discretion needed for something like that to go down. I’m just very curious. And what did the sidewalk cleaners do with them, just wash them away like all the other debris of daily life? Hmm…
