After an emergency meeting with my hairstylist last weekend, he taught me how to style my hair so it would look like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Kate Beckinsale altogether. He took the critisism from those biggest cosmetics company people really seriously, so he makes sure I would show up with my immaculate hair and would not become the joke of the day.

So last Friday, self esteem boosted, I went to the project. While standing on the reception area, the meeting room door was open and the President Director of the company got out from it. He smiled to me, and offered a handshaking.

"Congratulations!" he said. His grin got bigger.

Obviously confused, I asked, "For what, Sir?"

He pointed at my head and said, "Your hair color!"

Then he laughed, out loud, and left me alone, too stunned to say anything. The receptionist, who was sitting not even 2 meters away from us, pretended not to hear anything.

The GM, who was supposedly already stationed in India, came in. After exchanging some words, he pointed at my hair.

"I think your curl is quite lucu," he said. This guy has been living in Indonesia for 5 years so he could speak Indonesian quite fluently, with a thick British accent.

"Right, dear?" he poked one of his staffs who was busy filling in a form for her boss. "What do you think of Anita’s hair? It’s lucu, ya."

The girl nodded quitely, didn’t even bother to lift her head up.

Before I said something witty back, he already fired off questions about the major modification for his office.

I don’t know what else to say…..

Of course, these people are the best in their industry. They have seen the worst and the best. They deal with beauty everyday. They have like 50 major brands, which names we are so familiar with. Hell, their products are used on every most beautiful people in the planet. Their advertisement are full of gorgeous girls like Beyonce, Eva Longoria, Laetitia Casta, and so on. You turn over all magazines in the world and you would see the advertisement like every 5 pages.

How can I reach their highest standard? I work in a construction industry! None of my workers care about whether my hair is curly or straight or red, or chopped, or frizzy or oily. My bosses would not pay attention to my hair, as long as I turn up in my office attire and don’t have a shocking pink hair color or bald haircut.

And actually this thing is not really important to me. What important is when I got an email from the President Director, saying thank you for the hardwork I and my team have shown until they could move to their new office in time and meet their quality standard (I was lucky he didn’t mention my hair in his email!). What important is that these people believe in me and my team, that we could and would deliver the project to them as per their requirement. With or without bad hair!

So here is the picture of Ingrid and me, with my lucu hair, last Saturday night, in Singapore. Since I didn’t know which hairstylist to go to, I had it natural.

Lucu ya…..

Melly just has had a wonderful curly hair and talked me into it. Last weekend, for the first time in my life, I permed my hair. I went to my hairstylist, and 15 minutes later, my hair is curly.

I thought it is cute. I thought I look cute.

Until the real trouble comes the next days. I don’t realize it takes a lot to touch up curly hair. If I let my hair dry naturally, it will look, well, dry.

On second day of curly hair experience, I woke up earlier in the morning, split my hair into 4 sections, and rolled it. When I went to work, I thought I looked fabulous. Until at night when I had dinner with Rocky, Max, and Dina. Dina had seen my hair earlier, but Rocky and Max hadn’t. After walking around Plaza Indonesia, searching a birthday pressie for Mercy, I couldn’t stand any longer.

"Why did neither of you make any comment about my hair? Didn’t you notice I have a new look?"

Sheepishly, Rocky admitted, that he THOUGHT I was having a bad hair day, and he didn’t dare to say anything!

Strike one.

Last Friday, I woke up even earlier, then split my hair into many sections, then curl them with a curling iron with the help of fixing gel. When it’s done, I thought I looked sexy and radiant!

Then I went to my project. It’s the biggest cosmetics company in the world, which has so many brands under their wings, and they were moving to their new office. Boxes were scattered everywhere. About 20 professional mover guys were busy doing their job. About 10 fit-out workers were standing by, ready to do anything if needed. People looked tense because the show must go on, and how could you identify your exact item in a thousands of boxes?

I was busy moving from one spot to another, checking out and making sure everything run well. Then I saw the President Director of the company looking around. The french guy looked in high spirit, even though he had to leave his office earlier because we were moving him to a temporary office.

I said hi to him, then politely saying, "Sorry for the mess, Sir."

He studied my face carefully, and happily said, "What, your hair? Your hair looks fine."

I was stunned. "I mean, THIS mess, Sir." I pointed at those scattered boxes in the new office.

"Oh," he grinned. "You look tired."

I didn’t know what to say. Strike two.

In the new office I bumped into the Technical Manager. This guy is in the hair business: he’s in charge in academy (a school to get a certificate for their hair expertise, I guess). This guy looked at me, stopped, and said,

"Your hair is curly."

I nodded, proudly. "Yes."

"You didn’t have that hair before."

Confuse, I nodded again. "I just had it permed last weekend."

"Where?"

I mentioned my salon. Obviously he didn’t recognize it.

He walked away, but after a second he turned around and called me, "If you want to get it fixed, you could go to academy and they would do it for you for free. It’s either the perm or the color of the hair."

Then he left.

My jaw hung open. Strike three.

After a couple of minutes, I went out and met this Technical Manager again on the lift lobby. This time he was accompanied by his boss, a british guy. The british guy asked him if he knows me.

"Of course I know her. I met her," the Technical Manager replied.

"What do you think about her?"

"What? What do I think about her hair?"

"No! Her!"

"Oh…"

Then both of them looked at me, who was still silent, and the Tehnical Manager reached up and touched my curly hair.

"I offered her to get her hair fixed in the academy."

"Oh yeah," the brits studied me thoroughly. "You think the curl is not good?"

And they went to a deep discussion about my hair condition, in front of elevator. I silently sneaked into a different section of the project, obviously feeling devastated. I mean, what worse can I get, having the president director, the general manager, and the technical manager of the greatest, biggest, cosmetic company which has a strong reputation in hair industry, altogether given negatives comment about my hair??

Talking about a bad hair day!

A supervisor from data-voice contractor looked at me with concern eyes, "Are you okay ibu? You look tired."

Strike five!

I sat down in the lobby. Sending text to Mercy. Telling her about my hair situation. A free offer of hair fix, a tired-looking notice by everybody.

"Is my hair really that bad?"

Mercy politely refused to answer and suggested me to grab the chance, it’s free anyway.

It’s 8.00 PM on Friday night. I was sweaty and my hair went crazy. I felt those professional hair people looked at me with pity looks.

I sent text to my hairstylist. I told him about the situation as well.

He went panicked.

It was 9.00 PM.

I have scheduled to meet my hairstylist for emergency remedy.

We’ll see how it goes……………

I know that our nation is unbelievably clueless about time concept. The term ‘jam karet’ (or rubber time) is very famous, and this particular thing has been the best jokes among expatriates who happen to encounter this annoying culture (or habit?) with their Indonesians counterpart. Hell, even WE make jokes about it. Somehow I think deep down we are proud (!?) of having this uniqueness.

Being an Indonesian, I try hard not to fit into this label. I’m not saying I’m perfectly punctual all the time, but at least I try. When I first came back from Australia, I brought the habit of being punctual all the time. But after 4 years living in Jakarta, I got relaxed, one reason is because everybody else’s doing it, and the other one is because I don’t want ot die young of heart attack of being mad all the time of having somebody turned up late! But I’ve got annoyed when my boyfriend has made a joke of me being late for my personal appointments. Although I’m not that terrible, I don’t like that label, so I determine change this bad habit. And I think,especially starting this 2006, I got better.

The thing is, although most of my friends, I believe, can be punctual and turn up on time for their business meeting, some ‘forget’ to do so when having personal appointments.

I mean, being late for 10 minutes is ok, 30 minutes is "where are you"-sms time, 45 minutes would be "are you coming, everyone is waiting"-calling time, and one hour is well, you can guess from the colour of my face. But some of my friends can turn up almost 2 hours late and just say "sorry" with (or without) additional explanation and with no guilty feeling at all. Time is an absurd concept for these people.

This is so different, for example, if my boyfriend and I have a Sunday brunch with his friends. When they agree to meet up at 12.30, most of people will turn up exactly at the precise moment. Few would be late, but it would be only like 10-15 minutes late. If somebody turns up later than 15 minutes, they would get nasty comments from the others.

Being late is one thing. Keeping a promise is another thing that I see my friends can easily ‘forget’. No wonder my boyfriend always wonders why I always have ‘no-plans’ plan for the weekend, because nothing, nothing is certain. One day we promise to meet up for a coffee and the next day everyone starts canceling or having time changed.

One occassion happened a few weeks ago. A guy was throwing a party on his house. Everyone knows him, but actually he’s a friend of my friend. After being busy fitting our schedule in on that particular Saturday, we finally agreed to go to his place for the party. My friend informed us that open bar starts from 6 to 10 PM, no dinner served, and after 10PM there would be a possibility everyone would go somewhere else. I told everyone that I would’nt be able to have a a late night anyway, since my flight was scheduled at 8.00 AM the next day.

On Friday my friend told me that she couldn’t go because she actually promised her another friend to stay over on her place for that night (I have no idea that she had us double booked with another appointment. See, this is a perfect example of promising something then simply change it). Although she’s the closest one to this guy, she ensured that it’s perfectly ok for the rest of three of us to go there. So I arranged with these other two to go together, and since they agreed to pick us up, I suggested to pick me up at 8.00PM.

I was ready before 8 and sent text to one girl, and to my horror, the other girl hadn’t turned up yet. After 8.30 I canceled the event, simply because it means they would have turned up at 9.00, and we would have arrived at the party few minutes before 10, which would had been the time everybody had to leave somewhere else anyway.

Mind you, I wasn’t mad at all. I knew this was coming before it happened. I’ve learned to get a balance between being punctual (for myself) and being understanding (for the people who do not respect my time). So as long as I turn up on time, it doesn’t matter if others are late. It’s their problem, not mine. They’re the excuse maker.

These two things, being punctual, and keeping promise, are called "commitment." It doesn’t matter whether you have an appointment with a CEO from a Fortune 500 company or to your hairstylist in the beauty salon, you must respect the time that the other person provides to you. Because that’s exactly what other do, they respect your time, therefore they show up on time.

Luckily, most of my work colleagues - who are my friends as well - can be on time. An extreme example would be Tamara, who would time her time by the minutes (you know how rare Indonesians are like that!). One night she called me and promised to turned up 9.30 PM, and then called me again, apologizing for turning up 6 minutes earlier!

I read these quotes somewhere: Successful people keep commitments. They show up on time, they don’t break dates and promises. Their word is their word, and they stand by it.

I want to be recognised as a commited person. At least, there would be another ONE Indonesian who is not labeled as a "jam karet" person. So this is my word and I stand by it.

I hope.