Day 290, Hong Kong, China
Like most of my post titles, these two items are two totally unrelated experiences, which is funny. Let’s start with the symphony of colors. When we lived in Florida, twice, yes TWICE (once on Christmas eve), hair stylists colored my hair blonde, when I am a dark haired person of Asian decent. Now I’ve since learned that my one stylist was struggling with a drug addiction, so I’m willing to call that a excuse of sorts. The other woman, doing hair for 35 years, after touching up my dark brown hair with bleaching my roots blonde, did not have a proper reason and should not asked me “What drugs are you taking??” in order to try to cover for her mistake. But hey, it’s Florida and every other person she is dealing with is blonde, so at least that’s something.
But when I came to the part of the world where country after country after country, people have dark hair, I was confident getting my roots done would be a cinch. But no. In Costa Rica the stylist remarked that I had, “a party of color” in my hair. In Bali the stylist referred to my head as more of a “rainbow of browns.”
Today when I went to get my hair done, the woman showed me the color swatches. I’ve come to believe that most of the time this is just a step we go through to perpetuate the illusion that I have a choice or can influence what happens next. I play along. I do not like red tones in my hair, I like a warm basic brown. She showed me a sample which seemed more red with a bit of brown, I told her no, and pointed to the pure brown one. Now we are in Hong Kong, I’m pretty sure she should have a basic brown in her color cupboard. She indicates she understands, and proceeds to to exactly what I said not to. She seemed to understand what I was saying, but it’s not what happened.
A logical explanation may be that she was paying much more attention to the soap opera playing on TV, than what was happening to my head. Did you know you can apply an entire head with color without eyes ever leaving the screen. She was on auto pilot. It was something I’ve never seen before. She didn’t look down. Probably didn’t realize what color was going on.
I don’t blame her in a way. I couldn’t look away from the screen either, and I didn’t understand a word. One minute there was this couple sleeping. Then a ninja flipping in from the window and had a huge kung-fu battle with the man in his pjs. After he stabbed the couple, he set the room on fire, but there was a young woman under the bed who witnessed the killer’s identifying sixth finger growing out of his thumb (not in the usual six-fingered location next to the pinky). Somehow the witness, or someone who looked a lot like her, survived and was drugged, kidnapped, and exchanged for a shiny pair of black shoes. By the end of the program someone had a new pair of shoes and I had interesting red roots. Maybe I`ll have better luck in India…
Here’s a picture of the TV we were watching soaps on. I’m pretty sure that’s a picture of the six-fingered ninja killer/arsonist/kidnapper/happy new shoe owner.
In the evening we all went to the symphony of lights in Victoria Harbour. It was still raining and cold, so we wore all our warmest layers. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it`s the World`s Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show. There are over 45 buildings participating in the thirteen minute show, enjoyable to watch. There are five themes to the show starting with Awakening, Energy, Heritage, Partnership, and the finale Celebration. We couldn’t hear much from where we were standing, but we did enjoy the lights. 
On the way to the subway we walked past the kareoke sidewalk stands, buskers, musicians, and this display. Great vibe down there at the Harbour, glad we experienced it.
