Stories

Thirty K

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How much does it cost to transplant hair from the back of your head to your face? Today, I learned the answer, it’s a lot of money. Thirty thousand ringgit to be exact. Well, that’s if your face is as sparse as mine and you have dreams of rocking a full beard like you front an easycore band.

Beard Game Strong

How did I find out? If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you would know my obsession to look like a pirate. On a side note, it’s unfair to call it an obsession since I didn’t try every single thing — exercising and diet are a thing. But I did try Minoxidil and if that didn’t work, nothing else will. I don’t have any more hair follicles on my face.

A couple of weeks ago, I googled facial hair transplant and stumbled upon a website of DHI Malaysia. It was “the best hair transplant clinic” according to its listing on Google Maps. I dicked around the website, and there was no mention of pricing. Saw a form to fill up for a free consultation and I did.

Earlier this week, I received a text from the company asking me when I was available for a meeting with them. I had completely forgotten about the clinic by then so I thought it was spam. I had to go back to the website to remind myself why I gave up my phone number.

Curiosity got the better of me and I set a date for the meeting, which took place this morning. The consultation went well, with the doctor telling me that Chinese men usually weren’t there to get a beard (I laughed). It was straightforward and they explained the process thoroughly — if you’re curious you can read about it here.

They extract hair follicles from another part of your body (the back of my head) and implant them where you’d like the hair to be (my face). The whole process takes a couple of days because it is done by hand. Imagine planting thousands of hairs by hand, I can’t.

Then for a few weeks, you’ll need to take care of your scalp and face while you recover. If everything goes well, you’ll have a glorious beard for the rest of your life. They had a surgeon come in to draw lines on my face to estimate how many hair follicles were needed for the transplant.

According to them, my ideal beard would require me to move 6,000 follicles. At RM7 per hair, the process would cost RM42,000. But they were willing to give me a big fat discount if I did the operation in June — from RM7 to RM5 per hair. 30,000 bones to look like a rock star with none of the talent.

I thanked them for the free consultation and went on my merry way. Am I willing to spend the price of a car on my face? Not right now. Maybe one day I’ll hit the lottery I don’t play and secure enough dough for the procedure.

Either way, it was an interesting morning I don’t regret. It’s always cool to learn new things. Thanks for reading my blog.

You Have A Lucky Face

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“You have a lucky face,” said the stranger who approached me as I was walking out of Suria KLCC.

He was an Indian man, in his early thirties, dressed in a white shirt and jeans. I stared at him, puzzled.

“As if,” I thought to myself, adjusting my face mask while checking to make sure it was still on.

How would you know what my face looks like? You haven’t seen it before.

“Huh?” I said, pretending I didn’t understand him.

“Do you speak English?”

Fuck, I could have pretended not to speak English, I guess I’ll use that next time.

“Yeah”

“You have a lucky face.” As if saying it twice made a difference.

“It’s okay,” I waved him away before he could continue his next sentence. “I’m not interested.”

The man walked away, defeated.

I assumed it was a scam from the get-go and since learning my lesson, I’ve had no time for scammers. Nothing good ever comes from talking to strangers.

I shared the weird exchange with my friends and promptly forgot about it – until today. Seng Yip said the same thing happened to him in Publika this afernoon. No fucking way it wasn’t a scam.

I looked it up on the internet and found a bunch of results, including a blog post dating as far back as 2011, with a comment in 2017 about the same thing happening in KLCC. The biggest article I found was a news report from Australia about victims who fell for it.

This is how the con works: they approach you with that opening line to get your attention. They then talk to you, ask you questions, and deduce your answers by using mentalist tricks.

After using these theatrics to gain your trust, they pull out the big guns. They tell you that they need money for an orphanage back in India – preying on your sympathy. Or that you’ve got bad luck/health problems and if you give them money they’ll help you out (with their powers). If you refuse, you’ll die in a year. Sounds just as ridiculous as kickstarting a rap career, oh wait.

Seeing how it’s been going on for so long and is still around today, it must be a pretty successful tactic. It’s an elaborate scheme and requires a decent actor or conversationalist to pull off. Doubt it would work for uncharismatic people. While it takes a lot more effort than begging, it is actually scummy.

In this post-pandemic world where everyone has a face mask on, they’ll need to come up with better opening lines if they want to thrive. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Your hands are too big.”

“Too big for what?” you’ll ask.

“To hold deez nuts!” then they drop their trousers to show off their massive balls. While you stand there stunned, they grab your shit and run off. Not before pulling their pants up because they might trip otherwise.

Sea of Bodies

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When I was younger, my family and I went to a New Year’s Eve party in the city. I can’t remember what year it was but it was long enough ago that I didn’t have a cellphone of my own (remember those days?).

Anyway, for some reason I let go of my mom’s hand in the sea of people at the countdown. Within a matter of seconds, I was lost in the crowd. A tiny young boy, all alone but surrounded by people. I wasn’t tall enough to see past the hundreds of heads around me to find her. There was nowhere to climb for a better view.

I cried my eyes out. Eventually I borrowed a concerned stranger’s phone to call my mom. Couldn’t get through to her phone (there were that many people in the area, the networks were overloaded) so that was futile. I had no idea what else to do. We didn’t agree on a meeting point in case any of us got lost. I didn’t even know the way back to the car to wait for them. I thought I was separated from my family forever. I can vaguely remember what that felt like.

I returned the phone, thanked the stranger, and started wandering around, looking for a familiar face. At this point, fireworks were going off, welcoming the new year. While everyone around me cheered and celebrated, I didn’t revel in their joy. I was just a teary-eyed boy stumbling through the crowd, lost and miserable.

I didn’t know how long it took, but by some stroke of luck, I found my aunt in the crowd. She didn’t even know I was missing! I held on to her until the end of the night when she brought me back to my family. I had never been so happy to see them again.

Because it all ended well, my family didn’t think much of it. To them, I had only disappeared for a brief moment. To me, at that time, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I was just a kid.

I’m not sure why I decided to recount the tale, but it came to mind today as I was making my way through a crowd of people at a night market. Was that incident so many years ago the first manifestation of my disdain for crowds? Possibly. At least it’s not so bad these days. I’m now tall enough to look over other people’s shoulders and I usually have a cellphone with me. I still stand at the back of the hall during gigs – not because I’m too cool to hang with other kids – I prefer the space a lot more.