Cadet's Space

Many women are obsessed with shoes and handbags. I’m not that into handbags but I have been trying very hard to find a pair of comfortable and good-looking shoes. It is simply mission impossible. Shoes that are comfortable are never good-looking, and vice versa.

Against the way God intends our feet to look like, all shoe designers try to make their toe boxes as narrow as their heels. Shoes do look nicer that way, especially with the 6-inch heels, but your feet will be twisted into deformity if you ever dare leaving the soft and fluffy carpeted floor in the shop and wearing them out on the street. In order to look pretty, women are willing to let their feet bleed (look for the tell-tale Band-Aid).

Flat shoes I have tried, but they come off my feet and transform into slippers the second I walk out of the shop. Besides, they are nowhere as comfortable as you might think. Over the years I have been craving for a perfect pair of shoes, but none came along.

Is it true that shoes can only be painfully beautiful, or plainly comfortable, there is no middle ground. Now which of the two devils do you prefer?

Having been utterly disappointed with unreasonable clothes and shoes, I discovered the virtues of earrings. There are gorgeous designs and endless combinations: studs, hoops, fancy stones, exotic feathers, long stringy earrings with tinted silver embedded in glass beads, bundles of colourful synthetic gems imitating grapes, you name it. The most important is they are all wearable as long as your ears are pierced, which is a tiny price to pay.

One day, a colleague took me to a place where they sold amazing materials and tools for jewelry-making and I was fascinated. Anyway, I started designing and making earrings and since then have given out more than 60 pairs to friends and family. Everybody is happy.

Earrings are so easy to store, and they are generally very affordable. It is genuinely a low-maintenance addiction. Thou shalt divert thy wife’s attention to earrings.

My mum loves watching fashion shows. She even signed up for a TV channel that broadcasts fashion shows and fashion shows only. She watches it day and night and at the same time munching on tea biscuits and sweets. I joined her for a while one day and watched many super thin supermodels with elongated legs clopping down the catwalk, their knees lifted high in the air every step they took. The clothes were extremely fabulous but at the same time equally unwearable.

Lately I find shops that used to sell clothes to ordinary people like me have taken a turn to stock up fashion items that would only fit supermodels (or stick insects). They are shapeless, baggy, and incredibly long. Many fashion designers have discovered the fun of patching up sheer silky fabrics with fluffy woolen material, making it difficult to decide under what weather their clothes are to be worn. Moreover, it is increasingly difficult to find a top with appropriate neck cutting. A large number of tops have a neck opening from shoulder to shoulder, others are low-cut enough to show your belly button. Many a time I see something nice on the rack, but only to realize, after flipping over to see the other side, that it has only one arm or bears two big holes at the back. I am sure they all look incredibly sexy on the knee-lifting models on the catwalk, but in real life how many of us can wear that outside of the house?

Wearable tops are difficult to find, but not as difficult as to land a pair of comfortable, fitting trousers. I’ve been waiting for the public’s (or rather, designers’) feverish obsession with low-rise trousers to pass, it has been popular for ten years now, and it shows no sign of slowing down. For an average person, the tummy tends to hang out in these ‘low-rises’ and it is a sore sight. Why force people to exhibit their folds of fat? After all, people are born in different body shapes. Even if everybody had anorexic twiggy legs and could fit into these bum-crack-displaying trousers, not all of us wanted to display our behinds!

 Desperate, I decided to have my own clothes made. My friends and I thus set off for an expedition to find nice fabrics and a tailor. We had some beginner’s luck and got a few wonderful items made. However, just when we thought we had found our fashion saviour, the tailor stopped answering her phone, and when we finally decided to ambush her at her shop, she was nowhere to be found and the place had been turned into a convenient store. We still haven’t figured out the reason of her sudden disappearance and how to track down the two pairs of trousers she still owes my colleague.

Have you ever stolen? I have, more than once.

As a child, I used to admire my mum’s clothes, shoes, jewelry, make-up and everything else she wore (of course I no longer think the same about her vast collection of matching shoes and handbags that are slowly rotting away in the wardrobe now). I used to get up at 5 in the morning, clicking and thudding away in my mum’s transparent 4-inch stilettos, giving everybody in the house a headache at dawn.

Once, when I was 3, I successfully stole my mum’s gorgeous gold earrings and wore them to kindergarten. When I returned home with only one of them hanging loosely on my right ear, my mum swore that she never wanted to have children (or so I was told).

On another occasion, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom and secretly tried on one of the rings in my mum’s jewelry box.

‘A ring like that’ll look good with the red lipstick and the stilettos’, I thought to myself.

And so I decided to take possession of it, but the darn thing kept slipping off my tiny finger. The red stone on the ring gleamed proudly in the dim light and seemed to be whispering to me,

‘Take me, take me. Hide me somewhere until your hand is big enough for me!’

A couple of days later my mum went into a frantic search for the ring after she discovered that it had disappeared. Turning the house inside-out and upside-down but still seeing no sign of it, my mum turned to me, and I calmly led her to the coffee table and showed her the little nook where I buried my treasure.

The one thing I did not steal from my mum was clothes. She treated me like her life-size doll and made me loads of toy clothes with my grandma’s antique sewing machine (the kind that looks like a desk, with a paddle at the bottom). It used to sit humbly in a corner in my grandfather’s house. I used to tug at the tassel of the covering cloth and in the end it was almost bare.

Anyway, I am grateful I was young enough to be ignorant of the smirks on people’s faces when they sent me to kindergarten in white tutus and giraffe outfits.

四月去了日本, 以下是記得的片段和相片簡介。

大阪的超級市場間間都有數十個賣便當的專櫃, 食物種類多得不得了, 誰還要煮飯呢? 但是如果不會日文就慘了, 就算遊客集中地的服務員也是跟你說日文。我們去水族館, 門口的小姐跟我們說今天是Ladies’Day, 指著我老公說NO, 又連連擺手, 好像說當天男人不可以入場。我們想為甚麼有這樣奇怪的規矩呢? 後來小姐又叫了她全部同事來, 有禮貌地用日文重複解說, 攪了半天, 原來是我可以少給$4, 男人要付正價。人都癲。

相片中有一隻企鵝全身都是灰色絨毛,傻頭傻腦, 站在其他黑白企鵝中間, 我以為它是另類, 後來才在電視上知道原來是企鵝BB。為甚麼會那麼大隻呢?

大阪和京都到處是Papa & Mama café, 中年夫婦一個負責廚房, 一個負責招呼客人, 非常溫馨。我們去的第一間店那個媽媽聽見我說要食綠茶刨冰, 拼命用日文及身體語言說太凍, 游說我不要吃。我不聽老人言, 堅持要吃, 還點了個大的, 就是相片中那個, 結果全程冷得嘴唇發紫, 不停發抖, 媽媽及爸爸看了直發笑。

原來大阪的金髮青年, 上班族, 中年叔叔, 阿婆全部抽煙, 早上店舖開門之前, 一群打扮潮爆的美少女會聚集在後巷, 趕在夠鐘上班前盡情扯煙, 酒店大堂和餐廳也煙霧瀰漫, 想不到日本這樣先進又潔癖的國家有這麼多人抽煙, 好多還只有十多歲。大家並沒有戒煙的意思, 賣煙的機比汽水機還要多。

京都的櫻花很美麗, 鋪天蓋地, 尤其是風吹過的時候, 花瓣飄下來像雪花紛飛, 美得呼吸也停頓了, 不過遊人不比櫻花少, 大家只好拼命把相機鏡頭往上抬, 為的是避開別人的頭。 你看我的照片好像周圍很清靜古雅, 但其實拍的時候可是被千千萬萬的人包圍著, 要不斷鞠躬道歉, 請別人讓一讓。 清水寺門外有很多舖頭賣小吃, 黑芝麻雪糕軟滑無比, 吃完齒頰留香, 一試難忘。 如果你遇到了,一定要吃!

旅遊小冊子介紹奈良有青草地和小鹿班比, 可愛到暈。 導遊說它們甚麼都吃, 有的人連護照也被吃掉。 坐了好久好久的車, 終於到了奈良公園, 小鹿確是有很多, 又很友善, 但其實它們好臭, 皮毛又一忽一忽, 還不斷哄過來, 真是盛情難卻, 即使我不斷跳來跳去企圖避開, 最後還是被襲。