Birkenstock sandals and blisters

I have a love-hate relationship with Birkenstock sandals. They support your feet nicely and are comfortable once you break them in. The problem? The entire breaking-in process.

Every year, I need to break them in. I had thought that a couple of days of wearing them would be enough. Nope.

I wore them on my first full day in Shanghai. By the time it was late afternoon and I was sitting on the tour bus heading back to the main stop closest to my hotel, I touched my left heel and noticed blood. Not only did I develop a blister, but it had burst. Both blood and fluid was at the bottom of my heel. Luckily, I carry tissue, so I wiped up and tried to stop the mess from oozing out.

I do come prepared. I came back to my hotel room, cleaned up my heel area, and found my stash of bandages. It has been three days and the area has nearly dried up.

If you do experience a blister on your foot that bursts, do not try and get rid of the flap of skin. It's better to have it there to protect the area from any infection. Just wait for the area to dry on its own. I tend to have a bandage on it when I am out. When I am back at home or the hotel, I let the area breathe without wearing any shoes or socks on.

Being on vacation is never dull!

X is for Xerox and other brand names that have become either nouns or verbs #AtoZchallenge

Whenever I do a challenge that involves writing about a topic that begins with x, I think so much that I could probably send smoke signals calling for help.

I decided to go with Xerox. My third printer that I ever owned in my life was a cute, multifunctional Xerox. It looked like an old-school telephone. The receiver part was a handheld scanner. You could take it off to scan, or you could feed your paper through it while it was securely on the printer. I loved it, but it died.

Xerox is one of those brand names that ended up being a verb. Did you xerox that contract? It became a synonym for photocopy.

I first learned about this phenomenon of a brand name becoming a noun or a verb when I was fourteen years old. I travelled with my mom to Hong Kong. It was my first time on Cathay Pacific airlines.

I had nicked my finger. I asked one of the cabin staff to get me a Band-Aid. She didn't know what I had meant, so I explained it to her a bit more. She then said that I was looking for a bandage and got me one.

Growing up, we always referred to the average bandage strip as being a Band-Aid. It's interesting how I took that for granted.

When I think about this incident, it made me more aware of the English language. I also became better at explaining myself. I suppose that this experience sparked my ultimate destiny of becoming a writer by trade.

The same goes with grabbing a Kleenex. We grab a tissue before we sneeze. Well, at least we hope that we're that prepared.

Then, there are Q-tips. Do you have any Q-tips? We need cotton swabs.

I suppose we take brand names and say them so much that they become verbs. Look at Google, the search engine. Go ahead and look up that term. Google it.

English is a fascinating, confusing language. It never gets dull to me.