I’m leaving tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a pretty grueling flight. I hate flying. Not because I’m scared but because it’s exhausting. Here’s my flight schd:

Hartford to New York, where I’m in transit for FOUR hours.

NYC to Paris and a five hour transit. I hate Paris Airport, btw. The French are incredibly snobbish. I came to the States via France and I swear every time I asked airport personnel for directions in English, they answered in very abrupt French. When I informed the smart asses that I do not, in fact, speak French, they’ve wave me in the direction I was to go with a sense of exasperation.

Finally, Paris to Bangalore- a 9 hour plane ride.

I hate flying. How come we haven’t come up with an easier method to transcend space and time physically? Whatever happened to, ‘Beam me up, Scottie’? What are all our scientists doing?

Chef and I went shopping yesterday. He wanted to buy me shoes. Now the thing is, I’ve never been keen on shoe shopping. In that respect, I wasn’t the typical girl going ga-ga over footwear. I’ve always had the basics:

A pair of running shoes that masquerade as warm shoes or shoes for rainy times.
A pair of open toes slippers OR sandals.
A pair of heels (to be worn only at weddings)

When I met Chef, I was living the three-shoe lifestyle. Less actually, because a year ago I had two pairs: running shoes and a pair of worn out open toe Zara flats. Chef was stunned, to say the least, and one of the first things he did upon my arrival here in the States was to go out and buy me FOUR pairs of shoes. In ONE day. It was great.

The Chef is a man of immaculate taste. He likes fine wines, good food and fancy clothes (on me, ie. HE walks around in torn, burned white tee shirt he wears to work-ah, but it is a Calvin Klein tee!) He has great sense of aesthetics and can pick out pretty jewellery and clothes for me. Which is a good thing because I spent a lot of time rebelling against these ‘girly’ things. I thought I was all ‘dark’ and ‘goth’ and ‘brooding’ and ‘bad ass’. When I told Chef this, he burst out laughing and opened my lingerie drawer to say, “Honey, you’re as girly as a girl can get. All you’ve got here are pink panties with flowers on them.” He’s also a very perceptive man. I’m glad he has good taste because I need help and now, under his guidance, I’m proud to say I kinda like shoe shopping.

So anyway, yesterday he told me that four pairs of shoes aren’t enough for a young girl. Three, to be exact, because I’m leaving the snow boots behind. We went and got me a pair of pretty pink open toe flats and a pair of bright green Crocs. Yes, yes, I know. The world hates Crocs but they’re so bright! Ha ha. I’m only going to wear them in the house anyway.

Now I have a grand total of seven shoes and I promised Chef I wouldn’t wear the pink shoes ALL the time and wear them out like I did the Zaras. We settled on twice a week. At all other times, the shoes being abused will be my skull and cross bones keds.

Here’s to hoping I survive the long flight home.