The Village People

Tap, tap, tap. I could hear the echoing of my footsteps against the rubber track behind me. That’s strange. Someone’s following me. I couldn’t get rid of these thoughts as hard as I tried. Every time I slowed down and turned around, it was just me. Alone. Although I was flushed by a sense of relief, somehow that tapping sound kept irritating me. Am I imagining things? With sweat trickling down my neck and my heart beating like it’s going into cardiac arrest, I decided to brush it off my head and finished my final lap.

A few minutes later, I met up with Raja’s sister down at the water fountain as we planned. Along with Raja’s mom who was pushing a baby stroller –with no baby in it. Apparently, it made a good walking cane. She makes a good point. You see, lately we’ve been pushing ourselves to exercise by driving out to the KLCC park. Some took more extensive measures than others, like to walk with an empty stroller.

Somewhere in the midst of our chat, his sister brought up the subject of getting her sneaker soles fixed. It was a good 5 minutes or so, when it hit me. The echoing sound. Tap, tap, tap. That wasn’t someone else. That wasn’t a stranger. That was me. Yes, I am quite slow in puzzle solving. Feeling all Sherlock Holmes-ish, I picked my foot off the ground and inspected my running shoes. Not one, both both sides of my running shoes needed major surgery.

So we made our way to the cobbler in KLCC. It so happens that the Juice Bar was on the same path as the cobbler. Thirsty out of our minds, we made a quick stop. Instead of ordering a nice glass of orange juice or any juice for that matter, we chose the ‘wheat grass shot’. Yes, a wheat grass shot. As in like a shot of tequila, only without the liquor, but a nasty revolting green form of bubbly liquid in a small plastic cup. It was mortifying. And we drank it. And paid for it. Raja’s sister even bought a whole load of it for her cats. For fun.

When we finally arrived at the cobbler’s shop. The guy told us that it would take roughly around an hour to get both our shoe soles sewn. As we took off our shoes, he pointed towards a wooden shoe rack beside me and told us to help ourselves to any of the available footwear. Only, we did not see any available footwear. We only saw a shoe rack filled with what looked like a batch of moth-eaten rubber object that was crushed over a steam roller and thrown off the 86th floor. And steam rolled again. It was pretty nasty.

We decided to go barefoot. With socks of course.

So, imagine us, as we walked around KLCC in our shabby T-shirts and sweatpants, barefooted, with an acre worth of wheat grass in our hands, while passing by people who were busy pointing as us whispering it’s rice paddy, i’m telling you it’s rice paddy.

On top of that, Raja’s mom was more than willing to peel her shoes off and join us in our walk of shame if it wasn’t for Raja’s sister who quickly intervened and stopped her. I don’t think the world would’ve been ready for that either. I’m just glad his mom didn’t bring along the baby stroller with the imaginary baby in it. That would’ve really screamed, Is the circus back in town?!

This was taken from my iPhone. Am I cool or what?