A Turkish shave
Since I didn't have my bag this morning - and I was getting a little shaggy on my face - I decided that I needed to go to a barber to get my face shaven.
This was an experience. The first thing the guy did was to lather up my face really thoroughly. Like for ten minutes. Then it was a shave, which was pretty standard. A few nicks, but nothing too bad. Then the weird stuff started happening.
The barber's apprentice, who I guess was probably all of ten years old, brought over a pot of boiling water. It really was boiling, too. The boy poured the steaming water on the towel, and then the barber took it and kind of whipped my face with it repeatedly. It hurt a little bit, but wasn't too unpleasant. Probably the biggest unpleasantness there was the initial dread... "what is he going to do with that?"
Then the really weird stuff happened. The barber got a large cotton ball out and wound it around a pair of scissor tongs. I was thinking, "Oh shit, is he going to stick that in my ear?" But he didn't - instead he soaked it in rubbing alcohol and then lit it on fire. He then brought it quickly to my ear and then away, there and away, several times in very quick succession - so as to singe away my ear hair problem. I mean the hair growing on the outside of my ear, not my inner ear, by the way. Now you know more about me than you really wanted.
The burning away of the hair wasn't a problem, really. It didn't hurt at all, but the smell of burning hair made me a little nauseous. Far worse was the young assistant cleaning up what the flaming tongs had missed. He yanked about ten or twenty remaining hairs our of each ear. Yow! That was painful.
It was an interesting experience, but I'm glad that my bag arrived so that I can shave my own face for the rest of the trip.
This was an experience. The first thing the guy did was to lather up my face really thoroughly. Like for ten minutes. Then it was a shave, which was pretty standard. A few nicks, but nothing too bad. Then the weird stuff started happening.
The barber's apprentice, who I guess was probably all of ten years old, brought over a pot of boiling water. It really was boiling, too. The boy poured the steaming water on the towel, and then the barber took it and kind of whipped my face with it repeatedly. It hurt a little bit, but wasn't too unpleasant. Probably the biggest unpleasantness there was the initial dread... "what is he going to do with that?"
Then the really weird stuff happened. The barber got a large cotton ball out and wound it around a pair of scissor tongs. I was thinking, "Oh shit, is he going to stick that in my ear?" But he didn't - instead he soaked it in rubbing alcohol and then lit it on fire. He then brought it quickly to my ear and then away, there and away, several times in very quick succession - so as to singe away my ear hair problem. I mean the hair growing on the outside of my ear, not my inner ear, by the way. Now you know more about me than you really wanted.
The burning away of the hair wasn't a problem, really. It didn't hurt at all, but the smell of burning hair made me a little nauseous. Far worse was the young assistant cleaning up what the flaming tongs had missed. He yanked about ten or twenty remaining hairs our of each ear. Yow! That was painful.
It was an interesting experience, but I'm glad that my bag arrived so that I can shave my own face for the rest of the trip.
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