Professional Grooming

Try typing "professional grooming" into yahoo's search box and you'd probably get links to Professional dog grooming or Pet grooming.

Quoting from the article 'Professional Grooming - Not Just for Puffy Pooches' By Janice Biniok on CentralPets.com, Jan. 2003, "If you think professional dog grooming applies only to certain breeds, here's good news for you: any dog can benefit from a professional grooming, even dogs with low-maintenance coats! And there are plenty of advantages for their owners as well." Well, I presume she was referring to owners being more obedient after watching their pets go through a grooming session.

Well, why the sudden interest with grooming? My colleague got a pet and has been talking about it for days, I've just attended a professional grooming course and after a long bout of diarrhoea, I'm feeling a bit distorted from the amount of chores I've been having lately.

Ok, back to the topic. I was at this professional grooming course conducted by an image consultant. Well, the lady wasn't half bad, as most people came out laughing and saying that the course was better then expected. I went in a little late, and as I sat down, they started with the major turn offs for men and women. For men, there were things like greasy hair (thank god I just cut mine before the course), unironed shirt (mine is very tidy... my grandma and aunt transferred the art of ironing level 8 to me at the age of 16), and non-matching socks (my dark blue socks looked black, so the lady mistook that I had good color sense). For ladies, messy hair (is that really a problem?), too much make up (yes, totally), armpit hair??? etc etc.. I guess the ladies have far worse problems than we men do...hehehe...

Then we went on to color combination, and what colors suit you.. we learnt about warm and cool colors and how that matched our dressing. Mine is definitely cool as mint... I only have black, white, grey and blue clothes...no other color. In another time and era, I would've thought that I was boring, but here, it seemed like color was on my side.

Then there was the face shape. Someone queried on the difference of a trangular face and a heart shape face. The lady drew some faces on the board. And finally, I understand that a person with a heart shape face is a person that has a triangular face plus a receding hairline!

We moved on to etiquette and manners. Seemed like everyone had difficulty to answer a phone call. We have variations like:
a) Hello, I am X, what you want?
b) Good Morning, who r u?
c) Good Morning, I am X, from company Y. How can I help you?
All 3 variations were wrong. Stopping at company Y in variation 3 would be sufficient. Adding the 'How can I help you' statement is deemed to be superficial.

Then it came to introduction of friends and colleagues. Wow...it baffled me watching some colleagues going. "This Tarzan, This Jane"...well except of course their names were not Tarzan and Jane. Very primitive way of introducing people to others. The lady preferred a description say "This Tarzan, Jungle Boy, This Jane, White Babe" which gave better clarity of what each of them were. I do agree though that many times, when we meet friends, we don't introduce our other halfs creating an awkward situation for our partners. Guys out there, remember to intro your gfs when you meet friends!

We moved on further to handshakes, sitting postures and many other things. While I actually dread courses sometimes, especially ones that aren't technical in nature, I guess this one course wasn't all that bad. At the least, it gave me some humor, some peace of mind and a break from problems in everyday life.