So, 1 year and 3 months after a pair of scissors last touched my hair, my pure virginal black-but-shines-brown-in-the-sun hair of 22 years and 3 weeks was dyed.

My sister asked, “hey do you wanna share hair dye?”

I had the money and the intent, but never got round to dyeing my hair at a salon, but since she wanted to Do-It-Yourself, I decided that this would be the turning point. We bought bleach, hydrogen peroxide and semi-permanent hair dye.

My first attempt didn’t show much.

I think God didn’t want me to dye! Why won’t you let me dye?

It was cursed enough that walking about in the sun would never give me a tan; I could not change the color of my hair. Dammit.

I got more bleach and peroxide, and decided to go all out, walloping dollops to bleach the hair thoroughly. I never knew how tricky it was to aim at your hair in the mirror.

Various responses include “DUDE! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR HAIR?”

It wasn’t till I was at a party that I met this hot chick with nice long hair and nice engaging eyes that I received my first compliment.

“I like your hair. It’s funky!”
“Wow thanks! That’s the first compliment I’ve had for this. What color is it?”
“It’s blue.”

Before this, I’ve had colleagues say, “eee why did you color it green? You should’ve colored it blue.”

Anyway, back to the hot chick. Turns out she was a friend of a famous lesbian.

“So, uh… by association, are you, y’know…”

She was the second femme I’d ever met in Malaysia. (First one here.) Well thank goodness there aren’t that many femmes in Malaysia. Potong stim, as we say. Makes me wish I was lesbian, though.

(On a side note, I wished that homosexual males will get the liberation to be dressed as they like, pink if they may, while straight guys would not, so that there is a distinction, and heterosexual girls would not harp on hot homosexual guys who they just assume are metrosexual heterosexuals. Makes it easier for people with lousy gaydar. Of course, this can only happen when we’re a lot less homophobic, to avoid discrimination.)

I once wrote an article saying how gawdy dyed hair was. This time, I took poetic license, as blue wasn’t a natural hair color, and I wasn’t trying to look blonde.

Now, enough of the pretense and drama. Show me pictures!

Unfortunately, the color turns out very differently in different lighting conditions, and sometimes doesn’t show, so it’s still best seen in real life. And so, with great deliberation, here’s a mugshot, which shows the color almost accurately, or as I’d like it:

Thanks to smashpOp for the 12x optical zoom macro shot using his Panasonic FZ5.

Thanks also to Leech (for technical support, and you are my purple-haired heroine), Davina (who has gotten a failed-blue-green and a bright metallic blue) as well as Jenifur (for the under-color, hidden style that I tried to copy).

So is it green or blue? Those who’ve tried to dye their hair blue but only bleached it till yellow or brown will find that it turns green. Still, the green, I found, was quite cool.

In various places, it goes from yellow-green, to blue-green, to blue-violet. I call it the Nokia 7110 chameleon color. (Remember that phone? It went from purple to green with dark copper in between.) It could also be called a fighting fish color. Yeah.

How do I get this, oh wise funky-color-haired Albert?

Bleach your hair by yourself, with a mirror. Do not seek help from anybody. Apply as sloppily as possible until hair has 1cm thick coating of bleach. Wash off after an hour, in case you’re as un-dye-able as me. Put loads of blue-violet dye until it slightly stings your scalp. (I did that the second round to avoid getting green again.)

Good luck, and show me how it goes.