What a $6 haircut looks like

 The barbershops on the Tsinghua University campus offer haircuts for 10 yuan, about $1.75.

Last year I had a couple of bad experiences at $1.75 each and decided to splurge by going off campus to one of the fancy hair-styling salons.

For 55 yuan, about $9, a young woman did an excellent job of giving a light trim that made the bushy mess neat and manageable.

So I decided to go back. When I arrived, the 20 or so workers were doing calisthenics led by an energetic supervisor. She called and they responded, apparently with inspiring slogans. "Treat customers well," I suppose they were saying. Or maybe, "Work fast."

Never read emails during haircut

Ever impulsive and impatient, I went to the place next door, whose hair cutters evidently had finished their daily exercise and group cheers.

They showed me a price list I didn't understand, except that the cheapest option was 38 yuan, about $6. I chose that one. I showed the young man I wanted about half an inch off all the way around. He held thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart to show he understood.

So I began reading emails on my iPhone, and when I looked up, the hair on the top was gone. Then he went after the sides and skinned me. He gave me the haircut that all his friends have.

What we had here was a failure to communicate. At the outset I had told him, wo bu shuo zhongwen. I don't speak Chinese. And he said, bu shuo yingyu. I don't speak English. So we were even.

My Dad used to say that the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is a couple of days. In this case, it could be a couple of weeks before it grows back. My hair hasn't been this short since I was 17.

Hair stylists do group exercises, with call and response, led by the supervisor, center.

Some services and products are very cheap here. After I was done getting clipped, I found that my bicycle had a flat tire. I took it to our favorite bike guy near the south gate of the campus. The tire was cracked, the tube had a hole in it. In the 10 minutes while I waited he replaced both as well as the basket on the front, which had developed two big holes.

Total price, 55 yuan, about $9. Pretty good deal.

Borscht and other Belarus delicacies

The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) was also a butterfly expert. I thought of him when I saw this beautiful specimen along the road between Luninets and Brest, Belarus.

Cold borscht soup is a summer favorite.  It has beets as a base with a mix of greens, a bit of cheese, a bit of pork and some spices. Another local restaurant served Fantasia, a kind of potato casserole topped with a tender slice of roast pork, tomato sauce and cheese. Great, for about $3.

You can have a nice dinner here for about $4. A pint of good local beer is about 75 cents. Ten hours of high-speed internet access costs about $1.75. A three-room hotel suite goes for $84 a night.

The Belarus ruble has been falling against the dollar and the euro, which causes problems for businesses. Newsprint and printing services, for example, are priced in dollars but paid in rubles. So although the nominal price in dollars is the same, the newspaper has to come up with more rubles to pay suppliers.

Inside the local Orthodox Church, where I was told after snapping this that pictures were not permitted.  Older women with headscarves are referred to generally as "babushkas," which means grandmothers. As a kid I remember hearing the head scarf itself referred to as a babushka.

Houses here all have fences around them. When I showed a picture of my old street in Lakewood to a Belarusian guy, he asked, Where are the fences?

Sunflowers are a favorite for the yard. In neighboring Ukraine, they are a huge agricultural crop.

The countryside of Belarus is as flat as the Great Plains. It reminded me of Manitoba, with its forests interspersed with fields of wheat, corn and flax. Lovely.

Never lost, never out of control

I spent a total of seven hours on the road yesterday with Feodor, a charter member of the World Association of Over-Confident Cabdrivers (rearrange the initials to spell Wacco). Like all members of this club that I have met, he tailgates at 70 mph, passes on the unpaved shoulder, demonstrates his maneuvering skill by swerving in front of gasoline trucks and passes on curves in dense fog.

The Wacco card says on the front, "The bearer is one of the best drivers in the world"; on the back it says, "No, really I am the best" in 12 languages. Feodor assured me that his 15 years’ of driving experience guaranteed my safety, and to prove it, he showed me that he never wears a seatbelt.

Feodor inspects the insects that have plastered themselves on his grille. He does not smoke in his car and would not let us bring any food inside.

Feodor´s global positioning system led us down a dirt road to this path in Luninets. It was trying to lead us to the bridge overhead. He had to ask directions from a woman on a bicycle. Such humiliation for a Wacco member! A stroll in Brest Women bow before entering the church precinct.  An orthodox church in Brest. A woman begs outside the church.