A View From The Top

Right in front of me are the rooftops of the mansions in one of the plush villages in the Metro. Blending with the rising skyline of the Ortigas business district. Directly below is the bustling traffic along Ortigas Avenue.

So this is what they mean with a room with a view.

Every once in a while, a pretty lady comes through my door tending to my needs. Regularly asking me if there's anything else I need. And with just one push of a button, I can have assistance come to my aid.

Overhead the TV monitor broadcasts the latest financial news from CNBC while the silent hum of the room airconditioner blows the cool breeze into the room.

This would have been a perfect taste of the corporate life that I missed had I not chosen the entrepreneurial career path.

The room with the view. The assistants at my call. The sound of financial analysts blabbering on their predictions.

But my fantasy would have been more enjoyable had it not been for this intravenous needle stuck in my right hand.

Reality check. This office room that I imagine is room 1127 of The New Medical City.

Girls and Shoes

A few weeks ago my wife and I embarked on a mission to organize our shoe collection. Or more precisely, it was her shoe collection plus my limited shoe acquisitions over the last few years.

I think it all started during one of my bouts with diarrhea. Seated in my throne in our comfort room, browsing through my wife's various fashion magazines, the idea flashed on me in one of those glossy pages. An image of a lady with her shoeboxes neatly stacked up and organized with small snapshots of the shoes outside their corresponding boxes.

Hmmm... I could do that. I have my digital camera. Just buy a few sheets of photo paper. I can easily copy what that lady in the magazine did to her shoe collection. A picture of the shoes posted outside their boxes.

I could save my wife some precious minutes each and every night as she goes through the nightly routine of preparing her wardrobe for the following workday. She didn't have to waste time looking through each and every shoebox looking for that particular shoe to complete her outfit. Plus, you can never tell when an emergency situation will come and pulling out the right shoes could be critical. You see, my wife would never be caught dead with a mismatched clothes-shoes ensemble. No matter where it is we shall be going to.

And so we scheduled a photoshoot. Taking the shoes out of their boxes and snapping shots of them with my digital camera.

Back then, the reality already struck me. My wife's present number of shoes outnumber the total number of shoes I have collected in my entire life. And yes, that includes the first baby shoes I used when I was still learning how to walk.

Anyways, somehow our project got stalled for quite a few times. First, it took some time for me to buy some cheap photo paper to print the images on (those are just shoe pictures, right?). Then second, we didn't have the time to match the pictures with the corresponding shoe boxes. Thanks to our experiences with our recent maids. But that's another story altogether.

Finally, just this afternoon, we decided to finish our shoe organization project. It took quite a few weeks but we've finally done it. We've put the snapshot of each pair of shoes outside their box. And after stacking up all of those shoeboxes, my collection was neatly occupying a small portion of our shoe cabinet, while hers was a beauty to behold with her collection segregated into slingbacks, closed-toes, casual sandals, and what-have-you's.

Nice. Organized. Finally.

It all could have ended there. It's just that there were quite a few things that didn't fit in. There were a few boxes of shoes remaining in the middle of the room. Boxes which contained shoes inside. But they didn't have pictures to go with them.

I was pretty sure that I took pictures of each and every pair of shoes during our photoshoot a few weeks back. So there could only be one explanation for these photoless shoeboxes. And I didn't like it. Much more, I found it hard to believe.

Those shoe boxes in the middle of the room were the recently acquired shoes which my wife added to her collection for the past few weeks. Oh, I didn't wanna count how many boxes there were. And I didn't want to remember when was the exact date we made that photoshoot. Coz if I did, I would roughly have an estimate of how fast my wife accumulates her shoe collection. It's enough that I know the volume. Don't let me know about the rate of change.

What is it with girls and shoes?

But before I dare try to know the answer to that question, I must schedule another photoshoot for those new pairs. And hope that I print the pictures immediately. Post them outside their boxes fast enough before my wife goes on with her next round of shoe shopping.