My First Haircut in Israel

I have been going to the same hairdresser in Singapore since 2001, and one of the main purposes of doing so was to ensure that my hairstyle will be maintained more or less the same throughout. (I am very particular about this because I don’t want my hair to follow the shape of my head too much, and since I don’t like to keep my hair long, there aren’t many hairstyles available for me. =P) When I confirmed that I would be coming to Israel for international exchange, the question of getting proper haircuts did come to my mind from time to time, and I knew that I would need to ‘sacrifice’ my Singapore hairstyle and to ‘embrace’ whatever the hairdresser in Israel would be doing to my hair! Haha.

It was interesting that when I first met the Director of RRIS Mr. Uri Goldflam on campus he said that it would be a culture shock when I had my first haircut here. Indeed, it was a real culture shock, or rather, an interesting “intercultural communication episode” (I picked up this term when I was taking the course “Intercultural Communication” in SMU during Term 3B.). I went to this hairdresser “SUPERKUT” this morning, which was located about 10-min walk away from my apartment. It was certainly not a barber shop, as the interior design of this hairdresser shop was quite elegant. The owner and his assistant spoke English (thankfully!) so I knew we could communicate! Haha.

The owner of the hairdresser had more than 17 years of hairdressing experience, and he really seemed like the type that he liked to unleash his creativity when cutting the hair of his customers. The funny thing was I TOLD him that he could do whatever he liked to do with my hair, as long as the hair wouldn’t be too long and I would look good. That’s what I called ‘risk-taking’! Haha! The result of giving him the green-light was a haircut which looks quite Israeli (or Middle-Eastern like what my mum has described thenafter when she saw some pictures of me), and I was so so so not used to it! When I was walking back to my apartment after the haircut, I was like hmmm… hmmm… hmmm… I kept thinking that the hairstyle was a disaster. In the end I decided: “Hey, I did give him the green-light, so accept it man! Haha!” And this was the end of my first haircut experience here in Israel, and would be known as a classic episode of me taking indeterminable risks… with my hair, just before I was going to Jerusalem for the first time in my life!!!