Digital ravings of an analog girl

Check out the studded wooden wedges I’m wearing today.  I bought these shoes because I like the hole in the middle of the heel.  It makes something quite solid and clunky look very elegant.  Unfortunately, I can’t say it makes my shoes any easier to walk in.  These shoes are made for standing in one place.

The design of these shoes reminds me of the Repulse Bay apartment building on Hong Kong Island’s south side – one of my favourite buildings.  Rumour has it that the Feng Shui Master hired for this project insisted that the hole be built to provide a window on the ocean view for the dragon that lives in the mountain behind it.  Feng Shui kind of loses me when they start talking about dragons… I don’t really care why the hole is there.  I just like it.

Holes represent the absence of something.  They give you a view that you would otherwise be unable to see.  They are visual silent pauses.  I think it’s a good design principle and perhaps a good life principle.  In my world, I struggle with the absence of anything at all – information, advice, answers, decisions.  Sometimes a silent pause, visual or otherwise, might make the view clearer.  What do you think?  A bit deep for shoes isn’t it?

Health and nourishment pumps

Today I’m wearing high-heeled snakeskin pumps. No snakes were harmed in the making of these shoes.

Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie. I suppose the snakes whose skins were used for my pumps might have been a little harmed. But as the shoes were made in China, I’m pretty sure the snakes didn’t die just to feed my footwear fetish.

Their venom and blood would have been drained to make winter restoratives for old folks, and the rest of their bodies were probably stir fried with some fresh asparagus and oyster sauce (tastes just like chicken!) to feed the shoemaker’s kids.

So in a way, my shoes have provided warmth, comfort and strength to some Grandpas and Grandmas (and according to Chinese old wives tales may even have enabled Grandpa to give Grandma a bit of a thrill), and nourishment to some hungry family.

Really, I feel kinda good about my shoes…

Never worn with a smile

Today I went back to the gym (see my gym shoes?)  I have not been to the gym for six weeks because of [insert excuse here].  Go ahead, insert one.  I guarantee I’ve already thought of it and used if on my gym instructor, my friends, myself.  The truth is, I hate exercise.  All exercise for the sake of exercise.  There.  I’ve said it!

You know that adrenalin high that you get after a strenuous workout?  Yeah well, I don’t.  I think it’s a myth like the G-spot or a cure for male pattern baldness.  There’s nothing I like about exercise.  I don’t like sweat.  I don’t like breathlessness.  I don’t like sore muscles.  The only high I get after exercise is from gratitude that it’s over.  Like if you hit me repeatedly on the head with a stick for 20 minutes, I’d feel quite good when you stopped.

So why do I belong to a gym? 

Well, I’m told that I have to exercise in order to remain healthy and live a long life.  I dislike my gym slightly less than playing sports or going for a run.  Plus my gym has the E Channel and Sky Movies on the cardio machines.  Big ups to you Exodus.  At least visiting allows me to keep up with the Kardashians.

Today, like all days when I return to the gym, I got a different gym instructor.  I assume it’s a different one as he had a different name, but frankly, they all seem the same to me.  They are all 20ish, ‘sporty’ and overly confident in their skills with people.  They are flustered when I insist that I will not get to like exercise eventually.  I’ve been working out, on and off for 25 years, with varying levels of success, and I still don’t like it.  Even when I was running marathons, I did not like it. I’m willing to accept that gym instructors may actually enjoy exercise.  Why can’t gym instructors accept that I may not?

The proposed solution (sort of)

So here’s what I propose.  I’m going to put together a business plan to open a gym for people who exercise because they have to, not because they like it.  People who wear their gym shoes and a frown to the gym. 

All the instructors will be middle-aged or older, and also exercise because they have to (Madonna-esque Amazonians need not apply).  No instructor will ever utter phrases like ‘Feel the burn!’ or ‘Doesn’t that feel great?’  If they do, you are allowed to hit them instead of the punching bag.

You will pay me $20 per week to belong to my gym.  When you attend, I will pocket $20 from you.  On weeks you don’t attend, I’ll still take $10 to cover overheads, but I will donate the remaining $10 to children with cancer.  That way, when you just can’t face the gym, you can feel good about it.  It’s a win-win.

So, what do you think?  Would you join my gym?  Would you stump up seed money? (call me, we’ll talk).   Would you be a gym-donor rather than a gym goer?

Silver sneakers just for show...

Today’s shoes are silver Minx sneakers (pictured).  I love these sneakers and I admit that I bought them because they are cool.  However, I still expected them to perform like… well…  sneakers.  They do not. 

The first time I wore these sneakers I wore a hole in the back of the left heel where my foot rubs when I push in the clutch of my car.  When I complained about this to my friend Anne, she casually pointed out that ‘designer shoes are not designed to be worn when driving’.  She removes her shoes whenever she is driving.  What?!!?  I did a quick survey of my (female) friends and discovered that many of them do this also.  Incidentally, they are the friends with expensive shoes.

So I’ve been thinking about other things that are much more trouble because they are more expensive.  I’m sure there’s an economics term for this type of product (Kondratieff Goods maybe?  Can’t remember – varsity was a long time ago)  For example, my cousin Trigs bought a fabulous rug for her hallway a few years back, and for the next year and a half insisted that all visitors to her flat walk around the edges of it.  It seems this expensive rug was very difficult to clean.

My family home when I was growing up had a ‘formal salon’ (it’s a Greek thing) which my mum wouldn’t let me go into except to dust.  Mum also had a ‘good’ dinner service that I believe she only used once. 

Mum died suddenly twenty years ago, and I have inherited a lot of the stuff she kept for ‘good’.  I am using that dinner service whenever I cook for friends and family, and what’s more I put it in the dishwasher after every use.  I admit it’s wearing out, but I feel good about using it.

Contrary to appearances, I am a function over form girl.  I like my stuff to be aesthetically pleasing, but I need it to be usable first and foremost.  So come on, what expensive things do you have that you’re reluctant to use because you might ruin them?  I challenge you to get whatever-it-is out and enjoy it.

P.S. A quick shoe blogsearch has revealed that Michelle Obama shares my love of fancy sneakers.  Check it out here.

My new Italian passion

I have just taken possession of an outrageous pair of boots from Ultra Shoes.  It took me six weeks to pay for these boots.  They were expensive.  I don’t mean obscenely expensive – as in equal to the GDP of a small third-world country, but the price I paid could have fed a child in said third-world country for a year. 

In addition, the boots are, well… not that practical for me.  They’re comfortable enough once I have them on, but in order to get them on, I need the assistance of two circus midgets, a tube of KY Jelly and a big bag of ice.  I do not have little people at home.

But… the boots are also tall, sleek and Italian (as are many things I can not resist) and they make me ridiculously happy.

If the shoe fits…

These boots are the 31^st pair of shoes in my wardrobe.  In honour of the boots, and because there are 31 days in May, I am declaring the month of May as Shoe Month.  Each day this month, I intend to update my facebook and twitter profile pics (@technebish) and twitpic with pictures of my shoes du jour.  It’s a social experiment.  I want to see if I get discovered by shoe lovers and foot fetishists alike.  Let’s just give it a whirl, and see where it goes. 

…Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – and cabbages and kings…

Back in 1994 (B.G.), I was ‘discovered’ by an art collector.  I made my first six art sales to a man I never met – they were charcoal and pastel sketches of feet that I had made in my life drawing class and I had put them forward for a group exhibition in a small gallery in Hong Kong.  I never got to show at that exhibition.  The gallery owner made one discreet call, and all six pieces were sold and spirited up The Peak before the exhibition opened.  So Mr Foot Art Collector of Hong Kong, if you catch on to this, contact me.  I am willing to churn out more feet-related sketches, paintings, stone sculptures, vegetable art, photography, whatever – I’m not too proud.

And any and all comments on my shoes, your shoes, foot fetishism and the meaning of life are welcome.  Let’s hear it!