Give US the road pavement WE deserve

Fuck!

I cannot find the appropriate word or phrase to describe how furious I am right now.

My black patent leather stiletto heels could remain intact just for four days. FOUR DAYS!!!! And now, here it is, the top layer of the right heel has been scratched off thanks to Hong Kong's notoriously shitty road pavement.

They are no designer shoes (Thank God!), but still I paid a good HK$8XX for them. Today was only my fourth time wearing them, and then, despite how careful I was, the heel got stuck in a gap between the bricks on the road in Wan Chai. As I gently pulled it out, a significant part of the coating on the heel is gone. The heel is wounded, scarred, and nothing can be done to recover its beauty.

It is the same old story that many of us living in Hong Kong have experienced. Just why? I work hard. I pay tax on time. And all I do is to buy a pair of nice shoes to cheer myself up and look good when I'm out on a mission (either a professional one or a personal one). But all I get is this sad ending. Just why can't there be better road pavement to allow our heels stay intact for a tiny bit longer? I want to cry, but there are no tears. I have lost count of how many pairs of heels have been wounded by the shitty road pavement.

No matter how careful you are, there are death traps for your shoes everywhere in this city. You think that putting on a pair of nice heels would make you look better, more elegant and confident? No. You have to keep you head down walking on the rugged roads to make sure you won't step on any of those holes and cracks. There are taxis, but as we all know, you can't go everywhere door-to-door from point A to point B just by taxis. There are areas where taxis don't stop. You get angry looks from taxi drivers if you only take a ride for a short distance. No matter what, you still have to walk, and your shoes are exposed to the uneven road pavement waiting to rip your heels into pieces.

Because of this, I have stopped buying designer shoes years ago, even if they are on sale. It's no point to spend so much on something so beautiful but is doomed from day one. The authorities always say that Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan, but seriously, it is no where near cities like New York or London. Hong Kong is an extremely hostile place towards high heels, a symbol for beauty and power belonging to women only. They sell you the shoes, but you are not supposed to wear them out and about. If you want your heels to stay healthy, keep them in the shoebox, as if the road pavement of the city itself has become a cage, trapping women who can afford to and who want to look good for themselves, shouting at you "you don't deserve to look good". And the only way to escape from it is to wear flats - flats that no one cares, flats that are disposable, flats that make you look short and chubby and therefore putting you down in front of the male species in this patriarchal society of Hong Kong.

I always wonder who takes care of the road pavement in Hong Kong. Is it the Highways Department? I looked up their mission statement on their website, and one of the "missions" is to "provide high quality technical support for the planning, design, construction and maintenance of the road network". Then why keep using those cheap small bricks that crack easily? Because they are more convenient for hole-digging? Can't you organise the hole-digging schedule better so that you can use better large flat tiles to pave the road? Let me tell you Highways Department: "The quality of the road is bloody shite! I fucking pay tax! Now do your fucking job!"

And apparently those in-charge of this are definitely men - uneducated, insensitive country bumpkins who have absolutely zero understanding of women's needs. And mind you, now that more than half of the percentage of the city's population is women, you, the HK SAR government, should bloody take care of this!

We taxpaying women deserve better road pavement. And seriously, it's not too much to ask for.

ENDS