Hair raising issues

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining (as much as it is allowed to shine in this blessed land). Life in general appears to be under an illusion of smoothness. Then this trinket of information comes along.

Before I'm judged for being a snob who cannot be kind towards the men and women who beautify and keep the old top trim, I would like to say in my defense that I'm not that person. I don't blame mis-informed people for jumping to that conclusion simply because I said it's not worth paying 20,000 quid for a haircut.  I hold Velusamy in the highest of high esteem. I think he did a sterling job of keeping Mount Coconut trim. And he did it at 0.0003% of the cost of the £20,000 bloke. You don't need a barber to be able to sing and dance, you merely need one who can wield a pair of scissors to lop a lock of hair off, while steering clear of one's ears and other peripheral gadgets and attachments. If he can do said lopping with sufficient finesse to give an appearance of uniformity and style, that is a bonus. Like Velusamy.

I think this current crop of 'celebrity hairstylists' are a useless bunch of blokes. Not only do they charge you an arm and a leg, in addition to the Earth and the Sky, they don't actually chop any hair, simply make a floopy mess of it and send you on your way, while leaving you significantly out of pocket. 

Consider this. I googled for funny photos of people who have had electric shocks and a typical sample was this:

It is widely known and accepted that one of my virtues is that my research is thorough. So I followed that up with a consultation with Google on photos of stylish haircuts. I came up with this:

I cannot, for the life of me, differentiate one from the other.

When I was growing up, one of the things which traumatised me the most was that my parents would never, ever be happy with the length of my hair unless my scalp was visible and in the event I got into a fight with the friendly neighbor, I would not be weakened by hair that could be yanked by said friendly neighbor. I've tried, as all adolescents do, to rebel against this style unfriendly policy and have my hair cut 2mm longer than specification, only to be marched back to the barber for a top-up. I must say though, that this was never a problem with Velusamy. He had only one style and that was to lop off my locks to the exact length my parents wanted. No more, although less was appreciated. He would do a uniform job, and this was more desirable than the job my sisters would do when I was even younger. Yes, I am reliably informed that on more than one occasion, my sisters have practiced their hair cutting skills on me. I thankfully have no direct recollection of this dastardly act. 

Coming to the topic of this post, my interest in hair dressers/barbers/saloon artists/hair stylists (call them what you will) was piqued by an interview on rediff.com of AR Rahman's hair dresser. I am a fan of ARR and all that, but anyone who has seen him will immediately be able to tell 2 things:

• for all the money he has made and success he has seen, AR Rahman is yet to invest in a solid comb. Like all geniuses, his hair is unkempt and untidy. No complaints, just an observation.
• looking at the length of his hair, one would wonder if this hair stylist of his simply seats him on a saloon chair, nips out for a tea, comes back and gets his cheque for whatever obscene amount he charges AR Rahman for the 'haircut'.

If you click into the link, you would also find pictures of other celebrities whose hair this bloke's 'dressed'. Almost all of them have uncut, unkempt hair.

Thanks to the way I've been brought up, a hair cut is a monthly evil that must be dealt with as just that, a monthly evil. Hair once cut, should not bother you at all for 20 days, after which the odd comb may be introduced and 10 days from the day it needs a comb, the hair is put back where it belongs - the floor of a saloon. So, pardon me for not seeing style nor fashion in unkempt hair. The only benefit I see of spiky hair is in self defense, much the same way a porcupine uses its quills.

Follow up: I now save £20,000...every month!

It is common knowledge that I saved £9,970 (£10,000 depending on how you look at it) by buying an, ahem, 'not so original' Rolex watch. Some might argue that it's not a big deal and that by buying an air ticket as opposed to buying the plane itself one can save somewhere in the region of $19,999,000 (assuming the plane is a small second hand exec jet and the ticket is a long haul one. There is no real upper limit on the amount you could save. However, you can sell the jet after the journey and recover some money out of it and the same can be said about the Rolex.

This week, I discovered I've been saving around £20,000, on average, EVERY month, for the past 288 months, that's around £5.76 million. With that kind of money, I should be richer than my wildest dreams... to date. Sadly, I'm not. This is a matter that's worth some deep introspection. And introspect is exactly what I did. Why didn't I save that kind of money? Where did I go wrong?

Some really deep analysis later, I realised something profound. In order to save money, you should have not spent it on something and in turn, in order to have the choice of not spending money on something, you should have had the money in the first place - present or future, which, sadly, I do not. Having made peace with myself on my shortcoming, I decided to spin a tabloid isstyle tale to the world (kuppura vizhundalum, meesaila mannu ottalai and all that) on how I am saving the money.

On a related note, have you heard of the Russian billionaire* who gets into a limousine in Moscow, gets stuck in traffic going to the airport, jumps into a jet and flies 6-7 hours to London Heathrow airport, gets onto another limousine, gets stuck in traffic coming into central London for a couple of hours and 2 hours later does the same thing all over again to return to Moscow?

For just two blessed hours, this monumental idiot spends around a day in travel! What does he do in those two hours - he gets a haircut. That's right, he gets his mop cropped and to do that, he comes to London all the way from Russia. Makes you wonder:

• Is there a serious dearth of barbers in Russia? Have all of them gone digging oil wells to make said moron richer still?
• Does this guy have anything at all to do in life other than getting his hair cut?
• Is this barber better than Veluchamy who used to trim my mop in school?
• Don't even get me started on the 2 hour long hair cut. If there was a way to burn my hair in a controlled manner that would rid me of extra hair in 10 seconds, I'd willingly burn it, without a second thought. I can't sit on a barber's chair for more than 15 minutes (of which I nap for 10).

The haircut itself doesn't seem too over the top to begin with (pun intended!). The reporter of one of the newspapers that came out with this story took it and in his before and after photographs, I can't really make out any difference, it looks like the hair wasn't cut at all, and it had additionally been tumble dried for good measure.

For the money you pay, according to the barber himself, you get his services for the whole day. I immediately have problems with that:

• not to be offensive, if I wanted to hang out with barbers, I can do it for free with any of the barbers I've had so far right from Veluchamy to Imran, thank you.
  
• if a Russian oligarch wants to hang out with his barber rather than his I'm-a-bigger-snob-than-you golfing partner, there is a slight problem with society at that level.
• Not only is the guy (the barber) being lazy by only servicing one client the whole day, he's actually minting money out of this!
  

Apparently, one of the highlights of the 'experience' is that you get to eat the meal of your choice WHILE your hair is being cut. Who does that? Tell that to my parents! They don't let me eat anything AFTER my hair is cut before I shower, let alone while! Imagine this conversation:
Barber: "what would like to eat, saar?"
Me: "I'll have a caviar salad, thank you"
Barber: "Will that be with or without dressing, saar?"
Me: "Without, please"
Barber: "Wokay saar, but you do realise that we cannot avoid garnishing it with hair?"
Me: trying not to be sick.

* while I could find the link to the £20,000 haircut story online, I couldn't find the link to the particular story I've referred to here. Please bear with that

P.S.: We very often tend to dismiss the work done by hairstylists as petty and demeaning, it is not. Having said that, a barber by any other name is just a barber, just like a bean counter by any other name is just as boring. What offends me is the obscene money that is spent on the act of keeping said mop clean.

P.P.S: I admire this bloke for he is making more money doing over the top work than any of ever will! Who knows, for one day, he just might engage my employer to audit his company's books with me being the audit manager, so might as well suck up to him :)!

How I saved £9,970

My morning routine is just what it is, routine, getting up with a great deal of difficulty and around 7 ‘snoozes’ of the alarm, followed by daily duties part 1, a hot cuppa coffee with the newspaper, daily duties part 2, breakfast and running out of the house, late as usual.

The first 1.5 hours of this morning were no different and I found bursting into the train, huffing and puffing in a way that would shame Mr. Wolf, for I had done a manic 200 metre, 2 storey (3 storeys to them Americans) dash to catch the train, carrying my considerable bulk and around 15 kg of equipment and book (more on the book in the next post), breaking several land speed records in between.

I found a place to sit and tried to calm my breath, which incidentally, had no intentions of doing as I begged it to do. Textbook stuff so far. Then things changed. The man sitting opposite my seat was an elderly person of the English variety i.e., suit, tie, polished black shoes, newspaper in hand with the obligatory spectacles. Little did I realise, that barely 10 minutes later, this man would make my day…

With breath finally under control, heartbeat slowing down from humming bird speed to human-like speed, I was able to take in the finer details of other occupants of the train. I feel obligated to explain matters a bit here. Sizing up occupants of the tube is a national pastime here. You can’t find it in culture books; you won’t hear anyone talk about it. All it involves is a surreptitious peak through the corner of one’s eye while appearing to read a newspaper. Everyone does that and no eye contact is made whatsoever.

So here I am, sitting down, ‘reading’ (wink, wink) my book and looking around when I notice this person’s wrist. A shiny, golden object catches my attention and immediately looks familiar. Deeper analyses confirm my suspicions and I’m getting jubilant by the minute. Yes, his watch is the same as mine. I can see most people reaching this part of the post and wondering what is wrong with me and why am I getting so excited about finding another person wearing the same watch as me. Can skeptics please allow me to explain?

The watch was visually identical to mine, same cut bezel, golden dial, magnified date, silver metal strap with a golden strip in between. The only difference is that his was a Rolex and mine is a Paolo Gucci (in Mr. P. Gucci’s defence I don’t think he is in anyway related to the fashion designer Gucci. They just share a surname much like you would get a zillion people with surnames like Kumar, Rao, Reddy etc.). That discovery had me thinking – did the cheapskates at Rolex copy Mr. Gucci or was it vice versa or was it merely a case of great minds thinking alike? It’s probably vice versa, but whatever!

The fact that actually made my day was this. This poor loser had probably shelled out £10,000 for that watch while the good Mr Gucci decided to supply mine for £30. So is my watch a cheap knock-off or is his an overpriced rip-off? Let me know in the comments. Before you jump at the opportunity of knock-off bashing and beat me black and blue, consider this. If PG can sell a watch for £30 while still making a profit, what is the justification for Rolex selling it at £10,000? Quality wise, on a scale of 1 to 10, if we blindly give Rolex a 10, my PG would surely come in at 5 (reliability and looks), so is the fit, finish and goodwill of the Rolex for the remaining 5 points worth £9,970?

If the Rolex loses 1 second in a 1000 years (that’s 1 minute in 60,000 years), how are you going to find out of that claim is true? Not in your life, or your children’s or theirs or theirs…with the PG, it probably loses a minute every 2 years and all that’s required then is to pluck the crown out, increase the time by a minute and push the crown back in. Process done in 10 seconds. No sir, I am not paying £9,970 to save 10 seconds for the 601st generation of my family. I’m sure humans wouldn’t even exist then, let alone that watch.

Finally, I urge you not to dismiss me as a bloke who supports the piracy industry; I assure you I am not. I am merely a person close to the heart of well meaning people who gifted me the Paolo Gucci watch. So then, should the title of this post be “How I saved £10,000” because I haven’t paid for the watch in the first place?