Shoerprise!

Since the weather was nice and sunny, I decided to venture off to Tung Chung to meet my friend and give her a long overdue pasalubong. The atmosphere around that area is so nice and relaxed, quite the opposite of TST where I live. Whenever i'm there, it feels like i'm in some park in Berlin or a street somewhere in Den Haag, and that "European feeling" is always a good reason to go there.

After lunch, it was off to Tsing Yi to meet a colleague of mine and get some DVDs. Got to check out Maritime Squre - Tsing Yi's biggest mall - and it was ok, but nothing out of the ordinary. Whereas Citygate Mall in Tung Chung has recently been transformed into an outlet mall, with Nike, Adidas, Bauhaus and Esprit having impressive outlet stores there.

It was still early in the afternoon and Tung Chung is just a station away, so I called up another friend of mine and we decided to meet up at Citygate to check out the stores.

The Nike Factory Outlet looks like the ones in the US and the Netherlands. The Bauhaus outlet has a lot of nice GStar jeans, but they don't have sizes. The Esprit outlet looks like its Middle Road and Mongkok brothers. And the Aji Ichiban outlet has Haw Flakes!

I wandered into the Adidas outlet with my friend and we started checking out shoes. It wasn't as impressive since the outlet in North Point has more choices and cheaper prices. But there was a pair of shoes that caught my eye - a special edition Carlo Gruber pair of sneakers. It was green and white, and had built in socks! Just by visual impact alone, this pair gets a perfect score of 100.

Add to that, it was cheap, and they had my size! So there I was, with the ideal pair of shoes in my hands. What did I do? I walked away.

I told myself to stop buying shoes, jeans and shirts since there are more than enough in my closet here in HK. In fact, I can afford not to wear the same thing for 3 months because of the amount of clothes I have. So as much as the pair of shoes were so tempting, my resolve won over me and my decision NOT to buy the shoes was made.

But like a child trying deciding whether to buy the toy of his dreams, I kept on coming back to the shelf, looking at the pair of shoes, trying them on, and putting it back. I must have done that 3 times.

This prompted my friend to approach me and ask: "If you like those shoes so much, why don't you buy them? They're cheap, and they fit your personality." After telling her my "reason" she quickly nodded and said: "Well, it's your decision. Sayang naman yung shoes."

A few minutes later, we left the Adidas store, and I was empty handed.

While I was buying groceries at Taste, my friend had to excuse herself for a few minutes. During that time, my grocerymania kicked in and filled my basket with fruits and Doritos. After 10 minutes, my friend came back carrying a silver plastic bag. She walked towards me with a huge smile on her face, extended her arm and gave the plastic bag to me saying:

"Here. I got this for you."

When I looked inside, it was the green-uber-cool-Carlo-Gruber-pair-of-shoes-from-Adidas! My jaw dropped and my eyes popped. It was a state of utter shock and surprise! So I asked:

"Why?"

She said that she noticed how much I wanted it - which was evident from how I went back and forth and forth and back for it, she decided to buy it for me. It was such a sweet, sweet thing to do.

As we were walking towards the train station, she said that seeing the excitement in my eyes was well worth the price of the pair. Tonight, I arrived home with a big smile on my face, and a brand new green-uber-cool-Carlo-Gruber-pair-of-shoes-from-Adidas!

Here he is:


Here's the funky built in sock:


And here's another shot of him!


I'm going to wear these tomorrow!