proverbially hairdressers are a terrifying race that knows everybody's business, and in reality they are a terrifying race that thinks they know everybody's business. mine, yesterday, alternated between loudly gossiping with the other hairdressers about everybody's new job, boyfriend, family troubles, and lecturing me on a variety of subjects, including how terrible it was that i'd put on so much weight and what american food has done to me, and why i haven't been to see her earlier, and the perennial question: why i don't colour my hair, and all the time mercilessly snipping - the end result was somewhat shorter than i had expected - when i gathered what i still could into a pony tail i was put somewhat in mind of a bobtailed rabbit - but the total effect was not unpleasing, which is more or less why we put up with hairdressers, i suppose, even though we wouldn't normally put up with the kind of kaypohness from other people. the fate of your hair is in their hands and all you can do is to sit still and hope it all turns out alright. hairdressers, and dentists are the two kinds of people who never cease to talk, and in a manner that makes you feel you've been leading a morally squalid life for needing a filling or having split ends, when you can't very answer back or are too cowed to.

afterwards i stopped in at sunny for a plane book, but slowly i began to remember that sunny isn't a used book store. i don't know why i headed there remembering it as one - perhaps it was the only cheap place to get a book when we were in school - but really it is only useful if you rent books - to buy, it is still too expensive, and pampered by abe and alibris, i will never again allow myself to be inured to paying more than half the cover price of any book. i was rather tempted by rows of unread sayers and also the complete poirot stories and also the idea of starting a pratchett collection, though i resolved only to leave with one plane book. being at far east brings me back to rgs days though. we spent so much time there then, perhaps because there was nowhere else to go, except wisma perhaps, the outer reaches of orchard, but once out of rgs, we've shifted base down the road to taka and orchard mrt, and wheelock place when borders opened. i was surprised to find that metro was gone from far east plaza, and shops for younger people like phuture london and future state had moved in.

going to far east on 132 yesterday, a hideously long ride (combined with 5 o'clock traffic) that had cindy waiting for me for nearly an hour, and a bus that filled later with sweaty post-orientation cjc students (and remembering coming home the other night on a 165 from holland road the day of the uva party, having called home to say i'll be slightly late for dinner but really only getting home past 8 and all the dinner dishes cleared away) i was shocked how long the bus ride took and couldn't but wonder how i could possibly have done this 5 days a week, for 6 years of my life. sitting in 132, and slowly recalling a route not travelled for many years - a memory came to me suddenly, of cool morning air and darkness, and walking just before 6am to the bus stop outside serangoon jc (2 stops from naung court) with my dad, on the first day of school, it must have been exactly 10 years ago from today, and suddenly grateful to my dad for going as far as to see me on the bus though then i wasn't afraid, and thinking how first day at secondary school is the hardest one of your life. first day at jc is no big deal, you're too old to care and you know all about going to school, and chances are you're simply passing on to the next stage of school with just about everyone you've ever gone to school with anyway, and by then you're so mobile it doesn't seem like you're going too far away. first day of primary school you are undoubtedly scared, but of the idea of school in general, not knowing what to expect and being surrounded by swarms of other wailing or pushing 6 year olds, and of course being left behind by your parent can be rather frightening, though the fear is a vague one and your school isn't usually far from home. but going to secondary school is probably the first time you're going to school on the train or the bus, (not a school bus at any rate) and school at least an hour away from home, and you're at that age where you're conscious of other people and worried about making new friends or even whether you're wearing your hair or pinafore the way other girls did, what if you embarrass yourself being the only one wearing your white bata laced-up shoes, and thinking about starring sally j freedman as herself, the part when sally went to a new school in a different state and found that the other girls wore their hair loose and did not wear socks, and she was so upset and needing so badly to fit in she asked to go to the bathroom right away, so that she could unpin her braids and remove her socks and then, not knowing what to do with her socks, which didn't fit in her pocket, threw them away in a mixture of guilt and urgency. and being faced with 10 subjects instead of the comfortable four at primary and jc level. gosh i wouldn't want to be in secondary school again.