Unlimited Sonnix

Ok.

Something has been bugging me for a while now. I have to get it off my chest. Here goes:

For some reason, everyone (at least 70% of everyone anyway) stares at my shoes. Uh huh. My shoes.

When I first got here I started noticing people would look down as I walked by. At first I assumed it was because they were shy. Maybe people over here were just uncomfortable with eye contact. Maybe they were just uncomfortable looking at me. I didn’t put much thought into it.

As time went on I noticed that the people who avoided direct eye contact weren’t just looking down, they were actually looking down and towards me. The first few times I figured I stepped in dog shit so I’d look down too. Eventually I stopped looking for the dog shit I knew wasn’t there (Side note: This screwed me one time as I actually stepped in a heap of dog shit and walked around for who knows how long before I realized it). The good news was I wasn’t stepping in inordinate amounts of crap. The bad news: I was still no closer to solving my mystery.

After another week or so it dawned on me that maybe they were staring at my shoes. I’m the proud owner of a fairly shitty pair of no-name skate shoes that I bought at SportChek for about thirty bucks. They are entirely unremarkable. Maybe if they were some recognizable name brand or had some snazzy design it would have dawned on me sooner, but seeing as they are even shittier now than they were out of the box, this didn’t seem reasonable. I told Andrew the situation and, understandably, he thought I was nuts. A short stroll down Rizal St. was all it took to make him a believer. My dirty, smelly sneaks were celebrities.

Hideous.

I had an idea. I went to NCCC and picked up a new pair of shoes. I needed a new pair anyway as the first pair threatened to call Kids Help Phone if I didn’t ease up on the abuse (that’s terrible). Overall, the new pair is pretty much the same as the old pair. Same basic shape, same basic design, slightly different coloring. The new pair also have a snazzy green 55 stitched on the side, which I assume must be quite cool, because everyone still stares at my feet. I figured a Filipino shoe would fit in better than a foreign shoe, but it seems to stand out just as much. Maybe even more.

The flash conceals most of the grime.

The ladykillers.

I decided to write this post after an incident last night. I went to Jollibee, got some food, went upstairs, and walked to the side of the restaurant to sit down. Before I got to my seat some dude with two young children gave me a half-assed glance and then focused every bit of his concentration on my feet. He was mesmerized, probably by the 55’s. It is a deadly number. The two kids saw dad staring at my feet, decided they were missing out on some once in a lifetime opportunity, and followed suit. I uncomfortable slink over to the table and sit down, the family fixated on my every step.

“Unlimited?” says Dad.

“Huh?”

“Unlimited?” he repeats, pointing down.

Looking down, expecting dog shit for the first time in a while, I look back at him and shrug. I don’t know what he’s getting on with. He points directly at my shoe so I pull my leg out from under the table and look at it with him.

“Ahhhhh, Sonnix” he decides.

Before I can say huh again I look at the tongue of the shoe and, of course, the name brand is Sonnix. I guess I picked a winner with my second pair. Sonnix is probably some huge Filipino brand. And maybe everyone is so enthralled with my other shoes because they kind of look like Sonnix or Unlimited shoes. I guess I just have impeccable taste. Yeah, definitely. So in the end I guess I figured out why people are always staring at my feet. I have exquisite taste in footwear. If my next blog entry is “So I got the shit beat clean out of me for my shitty sneakers" at least you'll have some background info.

"Give me those fucking Sonnix"
Last time I'll use him for a while. I swear.