Incongruous Hair Day

Yesterday I was finally called to the Bar as an Advocate and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore. I celebrated this momentous occasion by heading almost immediately to the hair salon, to get my hair cut and coloured such that any self-respecting judge would throw me out of his courtroom. (This is possible because I’m only starting work at my scholarship company in September, and it’s not a law firm.)

It was quite amusing when I left the hair salon, walking through Raffles Place in the evening with my ultra-conservative black and white court attire and my new hairdo, which is basically like the chick in Sinfest, plus bright purple streaks.

Mullet Musings

Warning: frivolous. A growing hazard of this blog, dear reader, as my days are increasingly spent studying for Masters exams and desperately longing for respite from deep academic thinking.

My preferred hairstyle for myself is an evocative mix of militant feminism, anime punk and, for those who don’t like it, mental institution inmate who somehow got hold of some shears. Given that I was unfortunately born with horribly frizzy hair (I blame my mother for tainting my Oriental birthright of silky straight hair with her Eurasianness), this was somewhat difficult to accomplish before I decided at 19 that I would be ugly no more, straightened the lot of it, and chopped most of it off.

Further hair-related developments were helped by being in London, where Medusa herself could walk down the street and no one would bat an eyelid. I knew I had succeeded in my hair goals when after one particular haircut, I got eyeballed disapprovingly by a nun, approached by a chap who randomly saw me in Virgin Megastore to appear in visual projections for a club in Brighton, and got chatted up by an equal number of males and females the next time I went clubbing.

Since then, however, vanity has had to take a backseat to other demands on my time, and as fretted about recently, I’ve spent the last few months as a total minger as my last haircut, which featured radical fringe action, grew out into an increasingly curly mullet. Yesterday I decided something had to be done, and got it all straightened. Unfortunately, not being able to get it cut at the same time (Toni & Guy Academy does straightening and cutting at two different academies) means I must now live with a ramrod-straight mullet until I can get another appointment with the other academy for a cut.

And strangely, once ramrod-straight, the mullet doesn’t look like a mullet anymore, I just look like a stereotypically sweet demure Chinese girl with a stereotypically boring haircut, and I realize all those envious teenage years coveting the long silky straight hair of my pretty sweet Chinese girl friends were a complete waste of bitterness. This time next week, I aim to be shorn and spiky once again.

Attempting Pollyanna

Well, Italy didn’t happen, due to snow. Bugger.

This was rather disappointing, given that we’d actually managed to do a fair bit of planning for this one, as opposed to our little jaunt to Spain, and actually most other holidays I’ve ever gone on. Add the fact that I’d been using the thought of the holiday to keep myself going over the past couple of weeks of essay hell, and am now hard pressed to find something similar to tide me over the next few months. Add the sharpening feeling that my time here is inexorably winding down and I haven’t done enough. Add the general malaise I’ve been feeling over the past month or two that I’m going through a “minging period” (my most recent haircut, which featured extreme fringe action, is now growing out, which means I no longer look like a quirky interesting person with a unique sense of style who cut my fringe that ridiculously short on purpose, I just look like someone who made a horrible mistake while running with scissors).

Add all this up and you have a rather depressed Michelle.

There are, however, Pollyanna moments in the gloom. Alec as SuperBoyfriend in aforementioned depression crisis. Loads of CDs arriving in the post, in bubble-wrapped packages. Schindler’s Ark (Thomas Keneally), which apart from being a great book in the pure literary sense, also unsurprisingly helps to put things in Michelle World back into perspective.

And, and, and, Justin Ruffles, as in way-funnier-than-me Justin Ruffles, thinks I rule! Or at least, he wrote it on his site, which I acknowledge can be a rather different thing. Apparently I have a “groovy urban boho life spent cruising bagel shops, watching films in Swahili and listening to music sung in ancient tribal click languages”.

This is, unfortunately, mostly wrong (well, maybe the bit about the cruising…) and should not be allowed to mislead people as to my coolness, or, as it were, ruleness. My closest contacts with Swahili have been watching The Gods Are Crazy about a million times when I was ten, and having an Irish boyfriend who mumbles. My most boho moments go no further than a preference for cider (oops, that’s “hobo”) and an occasional predilection for subtly incorporated tie-dye. While I’ll ‘fess up to a music collection I do think is fairly cool for the most part, I have just spent the last two hours watching the Michael Jackson interview on ITV, and writing an email about it to other members of the Michael Jackson mailing list I have been a member of since 1995.

Hair Dilemma

Okay, frivolous dilemma: I really want a haircut, because it’s grown out from the militant feminist devil worshipper cut I got back in April, and it’s gotten a little shaggy. The problem is that I have to judge the finals of the national debating competition next week, and do sort of want to look appropriately judgely.

I’m already the youngest member of the judging panel, and the only female. I have an annoying feeling that looking like a Japanese punk rocker in addition to all that might just make it a little difficult to exude sophistication and intellect to my fellow judges, most of whom will be considerably older.

Considering all things, I’ll probably get the haircut and rely on my judging competence to maintain my credibility. But I wanted to admit to those niggling doubts, all the same.