Cutting down

Up early this morning, to shamble to Causeway Bay and buy a jolly big knife. For about 18 months we've had a blunt knife I bought from the supermarket for 50 HKD, and a breadknife that's good at slicing my fingers open but not for much else.

Truly, it was a revelation. I know sharp knives are meant to be safer than blunt ones, but I hadn't appreciated the difference. The new knife just cuts through things (yes, I suppose that is what knives are meant to do) whereas the old one relied on you leaning on the top of the blade and pushing it through the target.

Of course, now I'm looking around the apartment for other things to slice up. The novelty is too much to resist. It's like when you have your first camera and start taking photos of *everything*, or that unfortunate incident with my first rubber mallet, "Thor". I don't think anyone who witnessed it ever forgave that day of rubber-mallet-related depravity.*

Happy to report that I haven't chopped up any trees/books/animals/furniture in the apartment yet.

Yet.

Concentrate, concentrate.

I'm less enthusiastic about our other significant purchase, a Braun electric nose hair trimmer. The men of my family are blessed with highly hirsute nostrils, which has never been much of a consideration for me, but is less pleasant for people like my girlfriend, who are shorter than me and thus presented with an unattractive sight on a daily basis.

While I had a beard and moustache it was easier to overlook in the general hairiness of things, but now I'm cleanshaven it's something of an issue.

I tried grabbing hairs and pulling them out one by one, but everyone was disturbed by the constant shrieking and the sight of a grown man in tears. And if you think I'm not being stoic and manly enough, wait until you pull something an inch long with a fair amount of brain tissue attached out of your right nostril.

So the nose clippers it had to be, and I must say, I'm as yet unimpressed. I spent a good five minutes with this bizarre battery powered implement jammed up my nose, and there's still as many protruding hairs as before, just now the interior of my nose is sore. I don't know if my hairs are too tough, or if the motor in the clippers isn't powerful enough, or if it's just that nobody bothered to sharpen the blades at the factory.

Then again, if it's just because the blades aren't sharp enough, I could always use the knife we bought this morning...

* possibly not based on a true occurrence.