So, I have arrived in Hong Kong. The day/trip started out really well, everything went smoothly and well scheduled other than a 30 minute delay in the take off, but no biggie.

Little would I expect myself to encounter a Mentos moment the moment I touch down in Hong Kong. Remember the old school Mentos ads? Where the gal breaks the heel of her shoe, and in a second, whips up an impromptu solution to make the shoe work ? That’s a Mentos moment.

The moment I got off the train to the city, my fuckin’ beloved shoe broke into half. Well, not the entire shoe, but the strap that held the shoe together. It literally left the shoe unwearable, because it was too loose and also I had the flaps, well.. flapping about when I walked. It was horrendous. I panicked for a split second. Because I was nowhere near a place that sold decent shoes.

Fortunately, I thought of whatever I had on me at the time to fix the problem, and I remembered I had this mini stapler in my pencil box (yes I still carry a pencil box to carry my stationary, and it is the same one from secondary school). I quickly looked for a quiet corner to retreat to, and performed the embarrassing deed of stapling my shoe, voila!

Franken’shoe. As much as I had hoped it would work out till the end, it didn’t. The whole bloody thing fell apart after less than 5 minutes of walking. Unconvinced, I stapled it together again, and this time it lasted until I got to the mall. Unfortunately, I had to still look for a decent place that sold decent looking shoes. Upon entering the mall, the shoe fell apart AGAIN.

This time, I knew that method wasn’t working, simply because the staples weren’t piercing through the entire pvc flap, it was merely holding it together on the surface. So I thought of a solution to the real problem. See, the real problem was the 2 seperated flappers flapping when I walk. So, I improvised the solution, and stapled them to their respective sides of the shoe instead. This way, they wouldn’t flap, and wouldn’t attract much attention to my defunct shoe.

This actually worked really well, and a few steps later, I found a shoe shop with a passable replacement at an acceptable price.

Tada!

Mind you, all this happened while I had 1 hand carrying my laptop/work bag, and the other pulling my luggage, so you can imagine how stressful it was for me to deal with the problem at that time.

Phew, thank you God for giving me a new pair of shoes, in your most mysterious way.