s e c o n d p l a c e
C l o s e S h av e o f t h e T h i r d K i n d M o h d H a f i d z M a h p a r
As I sit here in the warm back room of a sundry shop just after 9 pm, getting an illegal haircut from an Indian national sporting Coke-bottle glasses while being surrounded by unopened boxes and crates of empty soda bottles, I keep reminding myself why I am doing this. At the tail end of the last COVID-19 wave, the government decided to shutter all barber shops and hair salons for good. A minister, whose daughter caught the coronavirus at a hair salon, made a knee-jerk suggestion to do that and the Cabinet agreed. Truth be told, by then the number of barber shops and hair salons had dwindled a lot anyway thanks to the foreign worker shortage. This, coupled with additional costs incurred by the barber industry to contain the virus spread such as by using disposable hair-cutting capes, led to a surge in fees. Many people resorted to getting haircuts from spouses and other family members. Then came the brilliant idea of using robots to cut hair. The Malaysia Automotive, Robotics and IoT Institute developed the
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