Magic Balls: The smell of sausage and cigarettes
I have a new haircut! Yep... Every one and a half or two months I go to the hair dresser. For more than a year now I'm going to one located near by, in our small town. It is very cheap (6€ only). Yeah, my hair style is very simple, usually a crew cut. Well, maybe not as short as in the army, but quite so. It is very simple to cut my hair, so I don't need a fancy hair dresser (like the one in Malaysia). Simple and cheap is just fine for me. And that's what I'm looking for, when I go to: Magic Balls. Yes. The saloons name is Magic Balls. I don't know why they named it that way, but yesterday I was thinking about the name for the first time. "I'm going to Magic Balls. How they cut your hair at Magic Balls? How's the athmosphere in the Magic Balls?" It's magic and you gotta have balls. This is not a joke. You really need balls to go there. It's a very small place. Two mid age women work there, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. One is thin, a bit reserved and cuts very carefully, the other one is fat, loud and cuts in very rough. I always pray not to get the fat one. But my prayers never get answered (Maybe that's god's payback for being a nonbeliever). Anyway, I needed my hair cut, it was very urgent. So I sold my soul to the devil and let the big girl get rough on me. Here hair saloons are centers for gossip and chatter. Small talks are the norm. I hate to have a small talk with my hair dresser. Before I went to Magic Balls, I used to go to Maribor, which is considered a big town here, and many times the woman, who cuts your hair, doesn't chat with you. I enjoyed that silence, until one day she surprisingly started with the small talk: Where are you from? Are you a student? I made a mistake at that time, because I told her I was looking for a job. Well, guess what, the next two times I came again, she always asked me: Have you found a job yet? The first time I was surprised, but still remained polite and said: No, I haven't found a job yet and gave her some reasons why. The second time she asked me right at the moment I stepped in the hair saloon. You can imagine that I was shocked and already annoyed. I thought: Mind your own business, you busy body woman. But I remained calm, replied that I have something in perspective and didn't even answer all her follow-up questions. The silence was very unpleasant. I never returned to that place again. That's when I had to start looking for a new hair dresser. And so I found Magic Balls. Now let's get back to the fat girl and see what happened next. She was rough like always, she kept talking about the weather and how many customers she just had. I played along and chatted with her. But then something happened that almost made me throw up. While she was cutting my hair, she burped few times. I could smell a mix of sausage (I guess she had a sandwich for lunch) and cigarette. Eeew. Gross. She did that about 4 times. It was the surpressed burp, the inside burp, the noise was very small, but the impact was huge: When she breathed out, I could smell that nasty mix of sausage and cigarette and I thought she can't be serious. Well, she was. Because she released herself 4 times. Because for her that's normal. Because that's what you get, if you go to Magic Balls. So, during her chain of deadly burps, she just kept cutting and chatting like nothing happened. And I did the same. But I knew immediately - this is good blog material. My hair is shorter now, that's most important. It's not a perfect cut, but I will use some hair gel and fix it. And I won't look for another saloon. It only costs 6 bucks and 4 burps - you won't get such a bargain elsewgere. Therefore I'll return to Magic Balls again. But the next time I'll go before her lunch. [Photo by MKL, 2009]
