In Continuum.

Catching me in the middle of Orchard Road in my full set of pajamas is unlikely, but that is not to say that I pay a lot of attention to dolling myself up either. Dressing up in the morning takes a grand total of ten minutes. Everything from picking the wardrobe, to washing up in the bathroom and then applying the necessary gel on my hair to turn me into a different person takes that amount of time, and I thank the army life for that swift efficiency in the mornings. My hair is the least of my concerns most of the time, letting it grow wild on my head like a grass by the side of the highway, sticking this way and that without a specific pattern whatsoever. Still, with the new set of hair done on my head and the positive feedbacks, I started to think back on all those years when I gave too little attention on my hair, and how it changed over the years to become what it is today. Let's just say that in retrospect, some of those hairstyles wasn't too impressive to begin with, but it is still rather amusing to look back on the old days, no?

It began with a pinch of hair on top of my head when I emerged from my mother's womb, very much like a normal baby I suppose. It's interesting how the head of a man at the age of sixty looks almost exactly like that of a baby sometimes, with sparse hair and the scalp revealed to the public in full glory. I've had those days in the past, very well documented by my excited parents with their old school cameras, all neatly compiled into the photo albums sitting on the shelves in the living room. That pinch of hair was allowed to grow out of control, and my the responsibility of trimming that patch of grass on top of my head was given to my chief in barber: my mother. I suppose I had a mortal fear of barbers in the past, which was why my mother did most of the cutting when I was much younger, which also led to a lot of puzzling looks in the eyes of other barbers every once in a while as they look upon the horribly trimmed head of mine. But I couldn't care less, because I was never the boy in school who cared about his appearance too much.

In primary school, I had a bowl head, and by bowl head I mean that it looked like a black bowl cupped over my head. But it was alright, since none of the boys were particularly interested in any of the girls. We were in an age whereby the boys hated the girls, so appearance didn't matter too much to anybody. My hair looked horrid in retrospect, and I am constantly being reminded of it by the old class photograph we took in the grand hall that is now sitting in my bedroom. So that was hairstyle number one, the same one that I carried on my head for the most part of the six years in primary school, not something that I am particularly proud of. 

In high school, imagine the bowl head growing a little longer on either side of the head. It is made worse by the incredible bulge at the back of my head, and there was this time when I was made fun of while I was in the school toilet. It was this little gangster-wannabe guy from school that looked like a walking piece of pork, only paler and with a face that looked like dried dog poop. Imagine yourself drawing the facial features of a human on a piece of burst balloon. Stretch that piece of rubber out and then pinch the middle of the rubber so that the features of the face are sort of sinking in towards one point. That is how he looked like back then, and I remember him brushing my hair and taunting me in the bathroom. I remember his bullying got overboard one day in the after school assembly that I just shouted at him from where I was, which caused us both to be detained after school to copy the school motto for five hundred times. From then on, I wanted to change my hairstyle to something different, something that won't cause some walking pork from school to make fun of. 

That, however, didn't change much throughout my time in Junior College. In a time when your appearance should have been taken more care of, I neglected it. So my hair resembled that of a giant cushion with worms sprouting from within. OK, maybe not half as bad as the image of that, but I still looked somewhat like the main character of a serial killer movie. That ended when I returned to Taiwan just before my prom to get myself done up, so to speak. The stylist was a wizard with his pair of scissors, and he managed to give me a whole new look that I haven't seen before. I call it the Pineapple Head, because it sort of resembles it - in a good way. It was a breath of fresh air on my part, a departure from the Bowl Head at least. That, however, didn't last very long. That hairstyle was utterly ruined by another stylist in Singapore, which single-handedly turned the Pineapple Head into the Bird Nest. It looked like a bird's nest being ran over by a car and then placed on top of my head. So that hair followed me to the prom, which didn't turn out to be very good anyway. OK, that was me being nice, it was horrible. Not just because of the hair, but a million other reasons as well which I may blog about soon enough. I remember running into the bathroom at the hotel and then just doing a little fixing on my own, all the while cursing that stylist for destroying everything. 

After the prom, army came swiftly. In the army, it is a rule to shave your head for the first three months of training, since they want to instill a sense of discipline by killing your self-esteem. Starting with the hair is the best way to go about doing it, which is why it was the first thing we did on the first day of the army. We even had to pay for the shave, and the Malay barber family was more than happy to give the new recruits a close shave on the head. It felt awfully cold after the cut, and awfully ugly and naked too. But then everybody had a bald head on the island, so it wasn't half as bad for me anyway. Shampoo rolled off my head in the shower, and it was weird feeling the pillowcase with my scalp for the first time in my life. Nonetheless, that hairstyle, or the lack of a style, kept me away from any reflective surface for a grand total of a week. It turned out, however, to be pretty acceptable in my books in the end. It was easy to manage, combs were not needed, and minimal shampoo used as well. Seriously, it was less trouble and a whole lot more efficiency.

After the first three months, my hair evolved from the bald head to the Broom Head. My hair just sort of grew upwards for some reason, and remained there for the most part of the days in the army. Of course, on my days out of the camp, I'd try to spike them up with minimal amount of gel to make it look presentable outside. After all, when you know that you are going to be in an all-boys environment for the most part of the two years, you'd want to attract members of the opposite sex as often as possible while you are not with the boys. So that was the hair that I had for the most part, the Broomstick. It was a little messy, and it sometimes leaned towards one side of my head or the other, depending on the wind direction and the position of my head on the pillow the previous night. A new hairstyle every morning, very interesting days indeed.

After the army, something happened one morning when I decided to clap my hands together with a bit of hair in between, and The Spike was born. I'm not sure where that originated actually, I wasn't even a fan of David Beckham. Still, that hairstyle looked decent on my head for a while, and it was carefully perfected over the months by pulling the hair on either side of the head back as well. That hairstyle took a whole lot of gel to maintain, and my hair would feel somewhat like a mass of needles from time to time. But it was a new look, a decent one at that. And that hairstyle sort of followed me all the way till the last Friday when I thought that my hair was going out of control. All thanks to the lady in the saloon downstairs, now I can look at myself in the mirror and not recognize the person staring back at me. OK, I'm still the same guy with the thick eyebrows and the big nose. But hey, it's a guy with a different shrub on his head. For a man that cares so little about his appearance, that is all that matters now.