Wearing Draven shoes in my thirties

Even when I was younger, I have mostly stayed clear of sneakers, preferring heels and strappy sandals when it came to footwear. In fact, aside from the gym (or before that, PE classes) I went for years without wearing rubber shoes. So it was with a bit of chagrin that I visited the Rouge Shop in Trinoma to cash in the GCs that I got from Tita as an advance birthday gift.

The array of shoes that greeted me were rather intimidating, because they were the sort that I would never buy for myself. They were cool though, reminded me so much of the Ed Hardy shoes that my younger cousins love. As far as aesthetics go, I did appreciate Ed Hardy shoes—just that never really saw myself wearing them.

this style also comes in aqua blue, which would have gone better with my chief medic uniform but it was too OTT for an thirty-something like me so I just opted for this one.

With a very obliging sales guy named Sonny, I settled on a relatively tame pink, white, and black high-cut pair. I figured that this will be handy for wearing with my tactical pants whenever I’m on duty as a volunteer medic. (And speaking of which, if anybody is interested in becoming a volunteer for our NGO medic group, do give me a shout out. It really takes less time than you would think, its something you can do even if you have work or school, and it can really make a lot of difference in your lives as well as others.)

Between you and me, I felt really old as I bought my shoes-- Made me realize that I have outgrown some things already, but in a good way. You know that feeling?

When I got home, sure enough, my teenaged cousin J was all over it—which figures, I guess.

Just a note on redeeming GCs from Draven though: you can only get items that are not new arrivals, and you don't qualify for any other discounts, and that really sucked. My tita, who is also a DJ, got these GCs as payment for a gig, so in effect, they should be redeemable without any restrictions, right? As it was, I only had about ten pairs to choose from, and this pair was actually on sale at P1800++ but I had to shell out some money out of my own pocket since the two thousand pesos' worth of GCs did not amount to its regular price of P2385.