Frosted flakes

It's about time to get my haircut. Although it's easy enough to hide the damage with a little effort on my part, I'm starting to do a Bengi impression if I don't explicitly try to avoid it. My hair is at that in between stage where it's too long to just leave it hanging, but not quite long enough to entirely pull it back. So once I solve the demagnetized ATM card problem solved, I'll be more than happy to hand a few hundred crowns over to the woman with the magic scissors.

While pouring through the pages of various women's fashion magazines to look for ideas for my new 'do, I was reminded of one of my sillier blunders in the Swedish language. I was stubbornly persistant in my efforts to speak Swedish my first few months here, despite the fact that I couldn't really make myself understood. Having fortified myself by having pre-prepared a speech describing how I wanted my hair cut, I marched into the salon, ready to come out a new woman.

As I sat down in the chair, I remembered that I had forgotten to mention that I wanted to have my hair highlighted in addition to getting a trim. So, quite self-satisfied, I asked the stylist, "Har du tid att göra flingor?"

Unfortunately, instead of asking her if she had time to do highlights, I asked her if she had time to make me some cereal. The Swedish word for cereal is flingor, while the word I really wanted, highlights, is slingor.

That would have been an interesting fashion statement, indeed.