Don’t Leave Me Tongue-Tied

What do we do when we see some one unexpected… but the kind of some one that isn’t necessarily the type that we wanted to see unexpectedly? You know, the some one that we thought we’d actually never see again, ever? Most of the time, I’m so oblivious to the people around me, but it’s just my luck that I end up running into some guy at my gym that I dated ages ago. I am wearing my Nike Free Run 2 iD Running Shoes that I customized in navy blue and hot pink with my nick name “Sarah Face” on the left and right tongues of my iD sneakers. As I am running on the treadmill at the gym, I see a guy walk in that looks like “Andrew,” and guess what, it IS Andrew. What the hell is he doing here? He was interning in San Francisco when I met him, but wasn’t he supposed to be living in some other country, and not working out at MY gym? Crap, what do I do, what do I do? Damn, I have 1/4 of a 4 mile run left… “Be cool, finish the run, slow to a jog, pull your hat down, pretend like you didn’t see him, and then walk inconspicuously to the bathroom,” my sneakers advise. Good plan, but it’s too late, I saw him in my peripheral see me and and as I finish my run and try to walk to the women’s lounge, he walks over in my direction and I can no longer avoid him. This is the one time I regret putting my name on my shoes, and my sneakers immediately respond with “Yeah right, like he’ll be looking at your feet to validate your identity because he will remember you by your name before um, your face?” My shoe are such smart alecks, but they are right. Andrew and I had a great few dates and things were going well until the time I realized I wasn’t ready to be in a serious relationship, but wasn’t really mature enough to give it to him straight. So I did the only thing a really young, really immature, conflict avoider knew how to do at the time and while in his apartment, I went into his phone, changed my contact information, and then got the hell out of there while he was in the bathroom getting ready. “Who the hell does that? Women are evil. That, or you had some really bad shoes advising you back then,” my shoes comment. Geeze, give me break, I immediately regretted it, ok? I made an impulse move at a weird moment and I panicked, I obviously couldn’t go back and explain what I had done when I had already left the building. Honestly, I don’t remember what shoes I was wearing at the time, but yes, I blame it all on them and maybe the cocktail I might have had earlier that night. It was another case of one more person contributing to the bad rap of of people dealing in relationships (or not) in their early twenties. Still, that explanation doesn’t change the circumstances at hand. “Sarah, is that you?” Andrew asks. Ok sneakers, give me something good, hurry… Silence… Perfect, now you guys are tongue-tied.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Shoe

Is breaking up hard to do? Maybe the time right after a break-up is the harder part. I took my Isabel Marant Rea chain sandals out for some cheering up; they were pretty bummed because they recently called things off a with a really immature piece of, I mean, pair of shoes… some Bruno Magli loafers, go figure. Things started off as a friendship, then transitioned into an off-and-on several year (way too) long relationship, that is now finally off for good. We all know how it goes trying to cheer up friends after a major break-up… we can probably recall the hours of conversation supporting the position that the right decision was made to call things off, the pep talks encouraging them to get out of bed and stop being a mope, the attempts to orchestrate some sort of distraction to snap ’em out of the funk, and the hopes that while your out and about nothing by Adele or Kelly Clarkson plays on the radio to remind them of ‘somebody’ that they used to know.

After a while of sulking around, my Rea sandals finally understood that their exes were just too young, too dumb to realize that “they should have bought us flowers and held our hands, should have gave all their hours when they had the chance. Take us to every party cause all we wanted to do is dance…” And now my shoes are dancing. And they’re dancing with me! Bruno M., sorry cookie, but the shoe has sailed. No one said breaking up is easy, but after some time, it isn’t as hard to shoe as it seems.

Little Miss Goodie Two-Shoes

Have you ever met a person who is too nice, too proper, too optimistic, and a little too “perfect?” I am wearing my nude Jimmy Choo Cosmic pumps today and while sitting with some co-workers at the office, the lunchtime gossip begins about “Leanor,” the girl who they say just “bugs.” It appears that being the goody-goody, self-righteous type is not the most popular quality when making friends at work or just being generally well-liked in the company. Since my pumps are a little naïve when it comes to work environments, they asked why a “do-gooder,” with “good” in her moniker, has such a “bad” rap or a negative connotation. The only explanation I had for them was that we all have flaws, and while we strive to achieve some level of “perfection” or would like to be known as polite and well-mannered, Leonor was excessive about sharing her moral fabric with others to a fault. In this very cynical world, coming off as excessively virtuous comes with a lot of suspicion and perhaps a little envy. As I was attempting to come up with an explanation as to why Leonor may benefit from loosening up a little to be able to relate more to her peers, I hear a polite rebuttal to my statements from my shoes saying, “We actually like Leonor, she sounds a lot like us. We can be high (they are high heels) and mighty (yes, built to last)… We were basically made to perfection by our creator (Jimmy Choo, of course). We always do what is right (yes, even the left), and it does not matter what is said about her, we have to be honest…” Well, if I’m not mistaken my pumps are both Little Miss Goodie Two-Shoes!

Shoelingual

How hard can it be to learn another language? Well, for me, it’s sure not easy… My cream lace crochet Toms and I scurried into Mandarin class at Berlitz. I attended one semester of Mandarin at Pasadena City College, a class that gave me major anxiety. During this class, I learned some basic level one vocabulary and how to write those characters; however, the class didn’t get me very far in my hopes to actually converse in Mandarin. So, I returned to Berlitz, the language school where I learned how to speak Spanish, not fantastically, but well enough to get by. I figured an immersion class would be my best option at learning another language. My father speaks several dialects of Chinese, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia and English, and my mother speaks two Filipino dialects, conversational Spanish and English. Although English wasn’t my first language and out of the ten or so different languages spoken by my parents combined, English is all I grew up speaking and understanding as the only common language my parents speak is English. This is quite sad, in my opinion. While my father could have probably spoken to me in Mandarin in order to learn the language as a child, I now have to pay for semi private classes at a language center to learn what many other parents teach their children growing up. There was not even an ounce of understanding when Chinese friends or classmates in high school would come over and speak to my Dad in Chinese. Don’t ask which dialect of Chinese, sadly, I was as clueless then of different dialects as I was with what was being said. In college I took American Sign Language, so that didn’t really promote anything I could use in a foreign country. Basically, up until a few years ago, the only non-English conversations I had were those with my shoes, which always began with “Ok, I’ll buy you guys.” I don’t think being Shoelingual counts for very much.

Language really only became fascinating to me, not when I visited China, after high school, but after college when I went to Singapore and Malaysia with my family when we celebrated my Dad’s 50th birthday in his hometown of Raub. During the trip, I went with my dad who visited friends from high school, friends he hadn’t seen in over 30 years. It was interesting that while sitting at a table with 4 gentlemen, 4 different languages were being spoken and every one understood each other except for me. One friend, who was of Malaysian ethnicity spoke Malay, and one was from another part of town and of Chinese ethnicity spoke Hakka, and the other also of Chinese ethnicity spoke Hokkien, my dad basically spoke in English so that I could understand what the hell was going. While every one could also speak all of these languages, and obviously understood all of these languages, I guess it was just easier for each of them to talk in the language most comfortable or fluent to the speaker. It was the most bizarre conversation I ever witnessed, but it was also extremely fascinating and I became motivated to start learning. My dad’s native language was not Mandarin or Cantonese, both which he can speak now, so I figured there might be hope for me after all. He explained that he started learning more languages when he worked for an airline in Penang and later learned how to read and write Chinese by watching soap operas in Mandarin (which he still watches today) and looking at the subtitles at the bottom of the television to make out the characters associated with the words being spoken. He then thought that might be a little difficult for me, so he gave me some CDs with lyrics in Chinese characters so I could try to follow along to the words and characters of the songs. Um, was he serious? I still have the CD’s, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how my dad learned a language this way.

Tonight, I struggled to pronounce the correct intonations of words that the instructor from Berlitz, Joshua, had me repeat as I took notes in pinyin (system of English letters that would translate Chinese characters for correct pronunciation without knowing how to read). Joshua reminded me that although pinyin is “great for Westerners”), it is still important to learn how to read and write in Chinese. Even though there are several different Chinese dialects, if two people who speak different dialects could read and write in Chinese, there would still be a mode of communicate through writing when there could be essentially no verbal understanding whatsoever. This brought me back to the non-verbal communication of Sign Language and then to other non-verbal language that I often speak with my shoes. As I was trying to figure out how to tell the difference between a word that means “home” and “to add” when they sound exactly the same, I looked under the table at my Toms and I understood them perfectly as they were telling each other a joke about a girl who is Shoelingual. Great, another joke on me.

Conquishoedores

Who would I be quoting if I said, “we came, we saw, we conquered?” While Face, Marshall, my bf and I hiked Koko Head in Honolulu, I wore my teal and pink Puma H streets; they informed me that the quote was the translation of Julius Caesar’s latin quote, “Venimus, Vidimus, Vicimus.” We completed the Koko Head hike by climbing up (and going down) the old military railroad tracks consisting of 1048 “steps” (which I didn’t attempt to count), straight up the hillside to the top of the peak, which overlooks a spectacular view of Hanauma Bay. The hike; however, was not a walk in the park. From the parking lot, we heard shots firing (from the nearby gun range), but we pressed on in the mid-day Hawaiian sun and started up nature’s stairclimber to began our exploration. The first half of the hike to the top was a moderate incline; the second half, a steeper ascent. As I climbed the “stairs”, my shoes kept telling me, “one step at a time, we’ll get there.” When we finally reached the top, the view was unbelievable. It was a sight to savor, which we did while we caught our breathe (from the hike and view, both of which can take one’s breathe away). The descent, in my opinion, was even harder than the ascent. While my Pumas are super light and easy to pack, they don’t have very much traction on the sole and I slipped once doing down, so I had to take caution. My shoes; however, brought up the Conquistatores (Conquerors), who were soldiers, explorers, and adventurers for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. While my H streets were brought on the trip for running on the hotel treadmill (done earlier that day) and light walking, they accomplished the task of conquering the regular Hawaiian tradition of Koko Head and were truly Conquishoedores.

Perfect Sitshoeation

What could be better than spending time with some of my favorite people in the whole world in one of my favorite places to visit in the whole world? Not much. I wore my Chanel espadrilles in our travels to Honolulu Hawaii, where my bf and I will be spending the next 5 days with my dearest friends: Dreams, Face and their guys celebrating my, my bestie’s and my boyfriend’s birthdays and celebrating life.

The day started off with me putting on my perfect for traveling and walking shoes and running out the door to the car service waiting to take us to the airport and a driver who informed that we would most likely be missing our 8am flight. We sat in the car as it poured ran in traffic from Pasadena to LAX. My BF called Travelocity, the site where we booked our flights, and an agent informed that to get confirmed seats on the next flight, it would cost us four times what we paid originally for the fare difference plus change fee, which was ridulous and therefore not an option. I then called the airline, to check if there was a flight delay, which there was none, so I proceeded to ask about our options after missing our flight. There is a $75 change fee to get on another flight after missing one; however, there were no seats available that day in order to even get confirmed seats. So we headed to the American Airline counter after arriving at LAX to seek advice about what do to do next. We were put on the stand-by list on the 1030 flight, which was oversold by 6 and already had 5 people in front of us already on stand-by, which could also be pushed back further for priority AA members, etc. The next flight was in the afternoon (also oversold), and after that, our next best option was to try the next day. We waited at Gate 47, where AA agents were offering vouchers to people on our flight since they oversold the plane and people with confirmed seats didn’t even have one. It wasn’t looking good, and my shoes did not want to walk me back home sulking. Fifteen minutes before departure, and to our relief, the ticketing counter called both our names and we traded our stand-by tickets to boarding passes. It took a perfect storm of people missing their flight, people on stand-by leaving because they didn’t think they would make it, and people getting moved to first class, which were the only open seats, to be able to get the last two seats on the plane. We didn’t pay a dime extra in fees and they even took one of our bags that we carried on and checked it in without charging the normal bag fee. We were given the last middle seats, piggy-backed in rows 31 and 32, but we really couldn’t complain, we were just happy to have made it on the flight. Luckily, there was a family of 8 sitting in those two rows, who were nice enough to make accommodations so we could sit together by the window. Things were falling nicely into place, I kicked of my espadrilles and I thanked the powers that be. On the plane, I read Heads in Bed, by Jacob Tomsky, which is a very entertaining memoir of an author (who freely dropped f-bombs throughout the book like you wouldn’t believe) and his experience in the hotel and hospitality industry. I learned a trick or two about the life of working in a hotel, and when we arrived at the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki Beach, we used what I had learned and took care of our front desk agent, who happily upgraded our basic room with garden view (which was supposedly the only room type available in its class while making reservations over the phone and constantly checking in to see if anything opened up prior to our arrival) to a junior suite with ocean view and who sent a birthday cake to our room for my boyfriend and I to enjoy (Thank you Jacob Tomsky for the heads up and thank you hotel agent for saving us over a thousand dollars in upgrades and phenomenal customer service). We finally settled into our spacious room, and while looking down at my shoes, they told me that we were pretty damn luckily that everything worked out in the most perfect way imaginable considering how the day started. Instead of sitting at home during a rainy weekend, we are in a perfect sitshoeation on an island in the sun.

MMA Edshoecation

Have you ever watched a Mixed Martial Arts fight live up close and personal? I wore my Jeffrey Campbell Tripoli cutout boots to the Bellator MMA Championship Tournament at the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine, CA, which was also televised on Spike TV. My boyfriend and I went to support by bf’s trainer, Savant Young from the Fight Academy in Pasadena, who fought and beat Mike “The Joker” Guymon in spectacular fashion with a 2nd round knock out. This was the first time my boots went to a live MMA event. I wore them thinking they were perfect for the occasion since most of the fighters look tough and cut, and these boots look pretty tough and cut (out at the heel). Looks; however, can be deceiving, as the Tripoli’s weren’t as tough as they appeared. At first, they were a little squeamish while watching the punches fly and the countless submission attempts in the 4th row from the floor, so I had to explain that there is more to this sport than meets the eye. Although MMA and various Martial Arts in general have been around for a long time, MMA has only been in the main stream relatively recently. To those who aren’t knowledgable or who don’t appreciate the arts behind the fights, it can appear to be a violent blood sport. After being a little educated; however, my boots started to understand that there’s actually a method behind all this MMA madness. The training that is involved in this sport is so intense and the discipline, skill level, and conditioning that these fighters have to have in order to perform well in the three (or five, is it’s a championship fight) five-minute rounds (or less if there’s a stoppage by ref: KO, TKO, submission, tap-out, DQ, or by doctor’s recommendation) is no small feat. The countless hours of training, figuring out an opponent’s weaknesses, and the weight maintenance or cutting, are all in preparation to win the fight, with hopes of entertaining the fans. The entertainment to me is that the mental toughness and strategy involved and how being a ‘smart’ fighter is just as important as being strong or skilled, like a physical chess game in which a fighter must anticipate or be prepared for his opponent’s next move. It may not seem expected, but the best champions are as humble in defeat as they are victory and are always striving to be better at their craft. I also almost always see, at the end of the fight, a show of respect when two fighters (win, lose, or draw) touch gloves or hug each other after going after each other in a war of physical domination, demonstrating that the violence isn’t personal. By the end of the night, after several great and entertaining fights, my boots were yelling, “Improve your positioning, pass his guard! Get his back, put the hooks in, and sink in the rear naked choke!” That’s what I call MMA Edshoecation.

Very Shoeperstitious

Have you watched those Budweiser commercials that have people doing the silliest things for their sports teams with the notion that those things are the reason for their team’s win? I went to root for the 49ers at home against the Packers, wearing my Ash Bowie sneakers, and on the way to our amazing seats (center of the field, near the 50 yard line) I thought, how many people are wearing their “lucky” hat or underwear? I’m not normally superstitious, but I was guilty of wearing the same bracelet that I wore on the last playoff game I went to when the 49ers beat the Saints, and my BFF wore the same lucky socks. My Bowies were very skeptical about the notion of some “magical” trinket, article of clothing, or ritual that must be worn or done at each game to ensure a victory. The 49ers won and every fan, including my shoes, celebrated. The shoes were jumping up and down for joy, with me in them of course. They didn’t want to admit it to me, but I overheard them speaking to each other saying they aren’t changing their laces until the Niners win the Superbowl and achieve the Quest For Six. When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer, Shoeperstition ain’t the way.

Fringe Benefits

What is a fringe benefit? Well, if you ask my booties, they are the feature that make me want to wear them. For date night at the movies (we watched Django, the acting was second to none), I wore my Betsey Johnson Ziah Booties. These booties have proved to be pretty reliable and comfortable to walk in. They have already mentioned to me that I should show some appreciation to them by wearing them more often since they are so cool and trendy, listing other qualities like being perfect to wear with jeans or dresses. It was kind of funny that I was sitting there with my shoes trying to barter a deal on how often to wear them. It was like a job interview or promotion review about what fringe benefits or perks to expect from a company. It does seem like there is a negotiation on what you can bring to the table to warrant extra pay, health and dental insurance, vacation time, 401k package, extra flexibility at work, or car and gas allowance. It’s always an awkward situation trying to sell one’s self or one’s abilities. So, I made a deal with these booties to have them in a more frequent rotation. It’s always a great feeling to be recognized for your qualities, and if that equates to fringe benefits from your employer, its more money to boot. In my case, it’s more money for boots…

New Year’s Reshoelution

Why do people always ask about New year’s resolutions? Whenever some one asks me, I’m not really sure how to respond. I feel like if I need to make a resolution not to do something, I should never have been doing whatever that is in the first place. Despite resolutions being so cliche, there are always cool things that I would like to do, new experiences and foods I’d like to try, shoes and clothes I’d like to buy, or things about myself I would like to improve on… After the my mini holiday vacation, I’m back at work, wearing a pair of simple black Manolo Blahnik ‘Kilda” leather pumps. As my thoughts were swirling around about everything I should resolve to do this year, like losing those impossible 5 pounds, drinking more water, waking up earlier, limiting my shoe buying compulsion, I received an email about a sad story from my mother. After reading it, I thought, like the shoes that I’m wearing today, I need to keep this simple. Instead of the hundreds of things on a list to check off like I usually do, I figured I should really dedicate my thoughts this year to three simple things: being myself, thinking positively, and appreciating and loving the people in my life.

This is the sad story, which I’ll share…

While a man was polishing his new car, his 4 yrs. old son picked up a stone and scratched lines on the side of the car. In anger, the man took the child’s hand and hit it many times; not realizing he was using a wrench. At the hospital, the child lost all his fingers due to multiple fractures. When the child saw his father……with painful eyes he asked, “Dad when will my fingers grow back?”

The man was so hurt and speechless; he went back to his car and kicked it a lot of times. Devastated by his own actions…sitting in front of that car he looked at the scratches; the child had written “LOVE YOU DAD”…

Anger and Love have no limits; choose the latter to have a beautiful, lovely life. Things are to be used and people are to be loved. But the problem in today’s world is that, People are used and things are loved. During this year, let’s be careful to keep this thought in mind: Things are to be used, but People are to be loved … Be yourself … This is the only day we HAVE.

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits they become character; Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.