Black Dot Philosophy: Barbers and chiropractic services

I don't know if the two should be mixed together, let alone being performed by the same person. But that's what I experienced today. My first haircut in Indonesia that was not by my mom's hands. Not being able to articulate the necessary commands to convey that I wanted a haircut mimicking David Tennant as Dr. Who, I went with my cousin's recommendation; “pendek”. Short.

So what I got was a buzz cut with a trimmer, with 3 different lengths. He paid pretty close attention to the strays that are quite common with a buzz. The buzz procedure took less than 10 minutes, then commences the finishing move. And yes, with a straight razor. The edges were trimmed and shaved with a disconcertingly sharp but not quite hair splitting sharp razor.

No big deal so far.

Then came the all too familiar wafting smell of baby oil. No worries, I told myself. It's probably normal here instead of a hair gel or hair wax. There was a refreshing complete lack of expensive, of dubious use hair products here. I was correct, my head was rubbed with baby oil. And his hands came down to massage my neck, and my shoulders.

OK, that was quite pleasant.

When he put his hands on opposite sides of my head and cracked it sharply, I was quite surprised. There is quite a fine line between a trained killer performing a neck snap, a trained and experienced chiropractor adjusting one's cervical vertebrae, and someone untrained, but experienced adjusting one's cervical vertebrae.

One would hope that at the very least the untrained would have enough experience and learned from his failed experiments that by the time he's adjusting yours, he knows how to do it. At best, he was trained by his predecessor and he has enough experience WITHOUT any failed experiments.

In the end, I survived a quite pleasant, expedient and inexpensive haircut in Indonesia. Without being turned into a quadriplegic. Would I go again? For the equivalent of $1.25, you bet. But I probably won't go as often as my cousin. Currently, I look like an Asian Telly Savalas.