shoes

“Principal Component Analysis” for shoes

OK, this is not a technical post. This is more in the realm of “life hacks“. It has everything to do with an observation I made a couple of months back, and how that has helped significantly combat decision fatigue.

I currently own eight pairs of shoes, which is perhaps a lifetime high. And lifetime high means that I was spending a lot of time each time I went out on which shoe to wear.

I have two pairs of open shoes, which I can’t wear for long periods of time, but are convenient in terms of time spent in wearing and taking off. I have two pairs of “semi-formal” ankle-high shoes – one an old pair that refuse to wear out, and another a rather light new one with sneaker bottoms. There are two pairs of “formal shoes”, one black and one brown. And then there are two sneakers – one pair of running shoes and one more general-purpose “fancy” one (this last one looks great with jeans, but atrocious with chinos, which I wear a lot of).

The running shoes have resided in my gym bag for the last nine months, and I use them exclusively indoors in the gym. So they’re “sorted”.

The problem I was facing was that among my seven other pairs of shoes I would frequently get confused on which one to wear. I would have to evaluate the fit with the occasion, how much I would have to stand (I need really soft-bottom shoes if I’ve to stand for a significant period of time), what trousers I was wearing and all such. It became nerve-wracking. Also, our shoe box, which was initially designed for two people and now serves three, placed its own constraints.

So as I somehow cut through the decision fatigue and managed to wear some shoes while stepping out of home, I noticed that a large proportion of the time (maybe 90%) I was wearing only three pairs of shoes. The other shoes were/are still good and I wouldn’t want to give them away, but I found that three shoes would serve the purpose on most occasions.

This is like in principal component analysis, where a small number of “components” (linear combination of variables) predict most of the variance in all the variables put together. In some analysis, you simply use these components rather than all the variables – that rather simplifies the analysis and makes it more tractable.

Since three pairs of shoes would serve me on 90% of the occasions, I decided it was time to take drastic action. I ordered a set of shoe bags from Amazon, and packed up four pairs of shoes and put them in my wardrobe inside. If I really need one of those four, it means I can put the effort at that point in time to go get that from inside. If not, it is rather easy to decide among the three outside on which one to wear (they’re rather dissimilar from each other).

I no longer face much of a decision when I’m stepping out on what shoes to wear. The shoe box has also become comfortable (thankfully the wife and daughter haven’t encroached on my space there even though I use far less space than before). Maybe sometime if I get really bored of these shoes outside, I might swap some of them with the shoes inside. But shoe life is much more peaceful now.

However, I remain crazy in some ways. I still continue to shop for shoes despite owning a lifetime high number of pairs of them. That stems from the belief that it’s best to shop for something when you don’t really need it. I’ll elaborate more on that another day.

Meanwhile I’m planning to extend this “PCA” method for other objects in the house. I’m thinking I’ll start with the daughter’s toys.

Wish me luck.

Shoes and metrics

The best metric to measure the age of a pair of shoes is the distance walked in them

My latest pair of “belt chappli” (sandals with a belt going around the heels) is only ten months old, but has started wearing. Walking long distances in the said sandals has become a pain. The top is nice, the sole is fantastic, but the inner sole has gotten FUBARed. Maybe it was a stone that got stuck under my feet which I didn’t notice. Maybe it was several such small stones. But with the inner sole “gone”, time is nigh to possibly retire the chappal.

But then a good pair of sandals is supposed to last much longer (and I did 2 longish foreign trips in this period where this chappal didn’t travel with me). Historically, good sandals have lasted two years or more. And it is not that this one is cheap. I paid close to Rs. 2000 for it, and it’s branded, too (Lee Cooper), and I had found it after a lot o difficulty (three months of searching). That it has lasted less than a year is not fair.

But then the question arises as to whether I have the right metrics in place. The number of months or years that a pair of shoes lasts is an intuitive metric of its quality, but it is not the right one. For, a pair of shoes doesn’t wear when it is not worn! Of course there might be mild wear and tear due to weather conditions, but for a pair of shoes made of good leather, that can be ignored.

So maybe the best metric for a pair of shoes is the amount of time it is worn? Then again, while a shoe might wear while its worn, it doesn’t wear too much when it’s at rest – I mean its shape changes to fit the wearer’s foot (over the medium term) and that might cause some wear and tear, but in the long run, there is unlikely to be much wear and tear at rest.

From that perspective, I hereby declare that the best metric to measure a shoe’s performance is the number of kilometres walked or run in it (latter causes significantly more wear and tear, but let’s assume that walking shoes and running shoes are mutually exclusive (which they’re not) ). This is an excellent because it takes care of a number of features that correlate with the wear and tear, and is not hard to fathom.

Going by this metric, my current pair of “belt chappli” has put in considerable service. Over the last ten months, the frequency of going on “beats” in Jayanagar has gone up, and the distance covered in each beat, too. Having pretty much stopped driving, I walk more than I used to, and this is my default shoe for such perambulations.

The problem now is the search cost – good belt chapplis that fit my feet are hard to find. It’s a liquidity problem, I think (:P). Maybe I should just consider getting the inner sole replaced and get on with this one.

Search Phrases – February 2009

I don’t plan to make this a monthly feature, but will write this whenever I find enough funny search phrases to make a post on them worth it. Googlers and google seem to have had a field day this month,

The top search phrase that has led to my blog is of course “noenthuda“. In second place is the fairly boring “blog.noenthuda.com” . Third place is extremely interesting – top reasons marriage engagements break in pakistan. And I’ve got over 50 people who have searched for this phrase in the last month and then landed up at my blog! Now it makes me wonder what the top reasons are for marriage engagements breaking in pakistan.

Here are a few other gems from the month gone by.

gay in iimb (17 hits)
3-letter word for pertinent
aunties in chickballapur (chickballapur is my father’s native place, for the record; it is famous for its extremely spicy chillies)
best english speaking course in north india
can we put the shoes and chappals near the entrance of the house
cricketers animal names
funny message for my cousin who wants to move back to bangalore
i am working in singapore what do i need to do to buy a car in delhi
i don’t know how to speak english but i know hindi can i work in delhi
iimb course to be on your own
job interview edition on savitabhabhi.com
karwar muslims
matha amritha, things she does
number of north indians settled in south india
societal influence on a bastard child
the true story of a man who learnt fluent spoken english
which indian breakfast item can be made with bread?

Ok that has been a very long list indeed. Much longer than I intended it to be. But it only reflects the brilliance of googlers and google in the last one month.

I bought these Adidas sneakers earlier this year. Maybe in February. I ddn’t really need a pair of sneakers back then – my old Nikes were just fine, but I thought some retail therapy might help cure my NED, and hence the new sneakers. The therapy’s effects were short-lived. I got back to my then-ground state of NED the following day. NED meant unwillingness to wear my new sneakers to the gym, or to work, or anywhere else. So they lay, in a box, until I brought them to Gurgaon three months back. The old faithful pair of Nike was left behind in Bangalore.

I don’t know if my feet have grown in the last ten months. Or if in my eagerness to shop way back in February, I didn’t check properly for the size. But the sneakers are simply too tight. One theory is that my right foot is bigger than my left, and when I had tried out these sneakers in the showroom, I had put the left one on, found it perfect, and bought the pair. This reasoning is based on the observation that it’s only my right foot that hurts, and my left one does fine. The length of the shoes is perfect. It’s a problem with the width. The fourth and fifth toes of my right foot end up getting squeezed.

Having made a mistake the last time I shopped for sneakers, I don’t want to take any chances now. I don’t want to buy another 2K+ pair. I want something cheap, yet comfortable. Went shopping last weekend, checked out all the major showrooms, and whenever I found what looked like a good pair, I would chicken out, head and feet full of self-doubt. I still wear the same tight pair to the gym every morning. And the fourth and fifth toes of my right foot still hurt.

It is winter in Delhi, and gets fairly cold in the evenings, and sometimes even during the day. In Bangalore, Madras, Bombay, etc. my normal footwear (when I wasn’t required to wear formals or sneakers) was floaters. That clearly doesn’t seem to be an option here in Delhi. Which means I need a general pair of shoes. So far in my life, I’ve owned only one “general” pair of shoes. The rest have either been uniform, formals, floaters, bathroom or sneakers. That one general pair I own has been left behind in Bangalore. It’s an old faithful comfortable Liberty pair. Now, the presence of that shoe in good condition, even though it isn’t accessible, deters me from making up my mind about spending on a new pair. Last weekend, I found some really good shoes at Woodland, but again chickened out. Maybe the scars of the wrong choice of sneakers has started affecting in my other shopping decisions also.

On a different note, one thing I’ve noticed here in Gurgaon is that service providers who come home (for example, the guy who fixed the washing machine) refuse to take off their shoes when they enter your house. They even don’t think twice entering the kitchen wearing shoes. Coming from a background where shoes inside the house are a strict no-no, I find this fairly shocking. I remember reading in A Farewell to Alms about differences between Japan and Europe. Japan seems to be like South India in this regard, outlawing footwear inside homes, while Europeans had no such restrictions and is hence like Gurgaon.