Black-balled and black-handed

It’s a sad reflection of what blogging has become at the hands of Twitter, Facecrock and the like, that my blatant plea for sympathy and help at having to spend hours alone and bored in Canberra was met with silence and/or disinterest; gone are the days when such a post would have triggered a volley of replies from the blogosphere suggesting a visit to the National Museum, Questacon, some cute little bakery someone once visited on a school history trip, or at least a shopping expedition for porn in Fyshwick.  But these days, it’s nothin’, zilch, nada, bugger-all.  Absolutely no one is interested in appeasing cries for help … well, almost no one.

As it happens, someone was logging-in from Chile, and feisty volcano, Puyehue-Cordon Caulle has sent a massive, elemental vote of confidence in DonkeyBlogDroll’s hot air by matching with an appropriate-sized belch of stinking, sulphuric gas and ash, which has been sent Canberra-way such that the Nation’s capital will be shut down from noon, effectively cancelling Donkey’s roadshow schnore-fest.  Thanks Puyehue-Cordon, I’ll certainly be adding you to my Followers list.

So now I’m back to the office, trying to hide my filthy hands from my colleagues.  We all know what it is that causes teenage boys to develop hairy palms, but what of inky, black ones?

Years ago, my Tibetan staff took pity on a shivering Donkey when he arrived at the office on his first frigid, Tibetan winter morning, a pale, shuddering, snivelling mess.  My hands were pale, rigid claws, and after a good, guttural Tibetan chuckle, they took me to the market to buy some big, fluffy, black gloves.  Being a monumental tight-arse, I have hung onto those gloves for years, painstakingly patching-up the many holes which have formed in the seems such that I doubt any of the original stitching remains.

But despite my best efforts to keep these babies alive, even I must admit that it may be time to ditch ‘em in favour of preserving what remains of my relationship with my colleagues.  It is a fact of life in a Lhasa winter that your body goes through a good five months without producing a single drop of perspiration, and as such, my gloves were fantastic.  Not so in Melbourne, where five minutes on the bike has these fluffy mitts filling with fluid, causing the cheap, Chinese dye to leak an inky, black mess into my supple Donkey paws.  It is a complete mystery to me how such dye can so easily ooze from the garment for which it was meant, and yet be absolutely immovable from your skin, despite harsh, chemically-assisted scrubbing.

As if my hairy palms weren’t off-putting enough for the unsuspecting, new office colleague who might chance by to offer a friendly hello and an introduction, add to this sinister, black stains, and it’s no surprise my desk has been moved to the broom cupboard under the stairs.

Black-balled again.  Pic: http://magazines.multiplepage.com

Maintaining his [razor's] edge

Around here, you couldn't throw a brick without hitting either a hair dresser or a barista, so what is it that makes Namir so special?

I have been sitting here waiting for an hour and a quarter now, and I am about to take the chair for my monthly groom; the guy before me laughed as he sat down to the sound of Namir's scissors snip-snip-snipping the air, remarking that a two hour and fifteen minute wait is definitely a record for the barber.

And so it is, on a Saturday afternoon, that if you want to get a trim from this Iraqi powerhouse, you have to wait for it.

If you weren't prepared to, you could go across the street to the fat, scowling Lebanese wannabe, or even further along to the eye-fluttering Vietnamese girls ... they're all the same price, and probably just as good as each other, but they are not Namir.

What's so good about him?  Well it could be that he's a great hairdresser, but I am hardly a reliable judge, given my sparsely tufted pate, and considering most of the guys I see waiting in here seem similarly, follicularly challenged, I don't think professional prowess is really the deciding factor.

So if not the workmanship, one can only assume it's the entertainment that keeps people waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  Namir is a performer; one of those old-style barbers who keeps his scissors snipping at the same rate as his flapping tongue, and he'll maintain the active engagement of his audience in communal conversation beyond the capacity of even the most accomplished, high-earning, business conference facilitator.

And no topic is too great for this well-read Sergeant of the Scissors; news, current affairs, world events– he'll tackle them all it all.  Namir on Libya (after a half-hour of animated, insightful diatribe);

"Anyway, I'm only Namir; I can't change the world.  [Turning to his client] But I can change your world – how'd you like it?"

He's also been known to dish-out candid marital advice to the many beefy, tight-shirted, swarthy clients who are known to frequent Namir's waiting room, and he's not averse to telling them to piss-off if they say something denigrating about their women.

Sensitive, new aged barber-man?  I'm not sure his magazine collection would quite get him across that line, but his waiting room is definitely an entertaining way to while away a Saturday afternoon – there should be more of it.

There's worse places to get a haircut.  Pic: http://www.designswan.com