My Hair Date with Bestie Cyn

More than a week ago, I had a hair date with my bestie Cyn.

I'm not sure if other gals have hair dates with their gal pals too or is it just us being bimbotic. The last time we had a hair date was 3 years ago when we were trying to normalize our lives after my god daughter Charmaine's passing.

This time, we decided to seize the opportunity to have almost a full day out without the kids before Cyn started an office-hours job. I took leave to meet the day after her birthday so that we could have a girls day out together on a week day.


Bimbos being bimbos, we had a before hair transformation shot by our favourite stylist, Leslie, from Private Hair Studio.




Ever since Cyn introduced me to Leslie, I've never found another stylist I like so much.

His charges may be higher than your average salon since he is located in Far East Plaza and he is after all, a director. Price aside, we like his professionalism and skills, and he uses really good products. Yes, we could tell the difference in products! He knows our natural hair texture, behaviour, scalp condition and would always tailor our hair according to these factors.

On a personal level, he is also more like a friend to us and we would always have endless topics to chat and laugh about. He is a great family man too. What Chinese call 二十四孝. He is 二十四孝 father, husband and son to his family.

Cyn had a super bleached "dirty blonde fringe" (she used that term herself) which looked totally fine in the photo up there but super dirty blonde with flash on as seen in the photo below. Moreover, her hair was dyed a reddish brown at some salon that offered really cheap hair colouring a while ago just before a job interview and it had faded to this brown-blonde look (above).




As for me, I wanted a much shorter hair length and a change in hair shape. I was getting tired of too long a hair that had become quite coarse and unruly with the hair ends going in all zig zag directions due to the change in pH of the water in my area recently. Surprisingly on the day we went to the salon, I was quite happy with how my hair looked from the front...




... but not so much from the back.
My layers just wouldn't curve inwards according to my face shape on bad hair days. It would sometimes go into an ugly S-shape at the sides and the back V is losing its shape even on smooth-hair days like that day.




The photo below was taken when my hair was at its longest ever last November before a 3-inch trim and overall shaping. The longest layer was at the waist and I cringed at the inconvenience of it being too long.




Even the pony tail was getting too heavy and losing its shape!

(Aside: On the day these photos were taken, my hair actually felt very smooth to the touch. However, I adjusted the brightness and contrast for clearer depiction and horrors of horrors, my hair looked super bad. Just perfect for depicting the state of my hair!)




This was the trim last November. I did not take any photo of my hair on the floor last week as it was too much and would probably be too gross to snap.




I felt really courageous that day and kept asking Leslie to cut shorter and shorter and shorter. When I asked for his views on whether I should cut my hair to slightly longer than chin length, he said he would do so if I was able to bear with my natural hair qiao-ing (curling outwards/sticking out) without any styling and products. He sure knows my character well!

At that moment, all the people I know with that length of hair flashed through my mind and it is true that all of them would have hair that qiao without styling. Hence, I decided not to chop off more. Perhaps when I'm not lazy enough to style my hair every morning before work, I would go chin length short.




Our new hairdo!
Cyn had violet brown to cover the dirty blonde fringe and had her hair curled. I hacked half my hair off, did away with the V-shape and sported a blunt cut to complement the shorter do. As for colouring, I did a softbre tone to save money on future hair colour. We love our new hair!




Our hair looks like this under the sun.
Top LR: Cyn's multi-colour hair is so chio and the violet parts are so obvious under the sun.
Bottom LR: I did a darker softbre which is not obvious in photos but under the sun looks a little like Cyn's hair.




Not sure if you could see the softbre tone. Slightly different from highlights, softbre is when little streaks of hair are bleached/dyed in a lighter tone and thereafter using a darker tone to cover the entire hair.

The effect would be a softer difference in regrowth colour as compared to one tone colour. I just hope that my hair stays dark as I do not want a lighter-coloured hair with stark black roots.




My hair is now at its shortest in 10 years. Yes! 10 years ago was when I last had hair this short. This hairstyle is the only time I come back from the salon with the dear hubby saying "Wow, you cut your hair so short!" Usually he couldn't even tell the difference even when I snipped inches off on a few occasions.




We had really late lunch of salted egg yolk dishes. I ordered the chicken which I loved to bits.




Cyn ordered the pork ribs. While salted egg yolk pork ribs is usually the signature dish, we found the chicken more tender.




Thank you Cyn for introducing me to such a great dish. I love salted egg yolk anything!

There are 2-3 places in Far East Plaza (FEP) that serve salted egg yolk pork ribs. This one we went to has orange signboard and is called "Susan" something. It is supposedly the pioneer one in salted egg yolk dishes though the others became more popular. Cyn and the people at Private Hair Studio all felt that this is the better one!




We shared the hot and spicy soup which was yummy too! Now I know of another eatery to go to when at FEP.




Oh btw, I really love this My Little Pony hair of one of the stylists/assistants there. Super pretty!




And I seldom see violet hair that lasts as long as on this pretty mummy, who is another stylist at the salon.




So far, I really love my much shorter hair as well as the blunt cut look. I feel lighter and fresher and the ends feel really smooth. The only thing I would MISS about my long V-shape hair style would be the lovely curls that I could achieve with it. Say bye bye to them.




My hair shape then and now.




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A little rant here. You could skip it if you dislike MBJ aka Mean Bitch Jo.

While crafting this post, I wanted to get something out of my chest. Over the past 2 years, there were always the same few people PLUS my mum (my greatest critic) who would never fail to tell me that my hair was very looooooong. The way these people uttered it sure sounded negative to me and it got me very puzzled if my hair was really too long and ugly.

The constant comments made me insecure for a while that me being bimbotic, asked my dear hubby and my different groups of good friends if my hair was too long and ugly.

In general, all of them replied honest yet lovely words like how my hair was quite long but it was healthy, shiny, smooth, nice shape and _________. (Fill in other positive adjectives used to describe hair.)

Two of my gal pals felt that my style of long hair was synonymous to me and had since been my trademark.

One asked if my hair was dyed black because long black hair could look scary/ugly.

Another asked if my hair had become really bad since she last saw me for people to keep commenting.

A gal pal with longer hair than me also identified with me as somebody she disliked often told her how long her hair was and she simply could not understand how this fact could be harped on time and again. Like what was she supposed to reply after the 374034th time?

Another gal pal bluntly said that my long hair totally doesn't irritate her one bit and started a whole reminder about her ex classmate whose long hair should be the one being harped on. She had butt-length hair the last time she told me about her and now she has leg-length hair. Not only is her long, thin, straggly black hair leg-length hair sweeping everything in the way, she seemed to love it a lot and insisted that's her trademark whenever people tell her it is very long. My gal pal also suspected that most nutrients go to her hair instead of her brains coz she says the dumbest thing ever and often irritates the group. She ended off assuring me that I was nothing like that.

How reassuring!

And then of course guys all like my long hair. Don't 90% of guys love long hair?

As I heard these words from my good friends, I felt comforted. I've always had long hair since I stopped wearing school uniforms and nobody except my mum would comment that my hair was too long.

I had people around me with much longer hair than me with worse hair shape, one-length fanning outwards hair, straggly layers, coarser texture, dry edges, unhealthy coloured hair, one tone black hair etc and nobody ever told them that their hair was too looooooong too.

Personally, I would only say that somebody's hair is too long if their hair embodies any of those aforementioned qualities.

Don't get me wrong. I'm focusing on the action of constantly commenting and not the people. These people are lovely people and we have great friendship. It's just that constantly hearing comments about my hair being very long had gotten on my nerves and I had never ranted out before until today.

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You could read more about my bimbotic hair transformation over the years post if you're interested. Don't laugh at my younger Ah Lian days with blonde hair, thin eyebrows and think-I'm-so-cool dress sense.

What was the most drastic thing you have ever done to your hair?

Or have you always wanted a hair transformation that you didn't have the courage for?

Have you ever experienced people commenting about your hair way too much?

Do share with me some of your hair stories!