The first time I learnt about a woman's insatiable need for shoes was in my freshman year in university.

The exams had just ended, so I celebrated with a bunch of schoolmates by heading to Johor Baru twice within a week to shop, eat and watch movies.

On our first trip, the only girl in the group saw a Charles & Keith shop in a mall and sprinted towards it, exclaiming something like, 'Their shoes are half price here!' as she disappeared into the store for half an hour.

She bought two pairs of shoes. To my amazement, she wanted to do another 100m dash on our second trip to the mall barely three days later. Mindful that another half an hour of my life could go down the drain, I said: 'But you just bought shoes here last week.' She turned, cocked her head and said: 'Yes. Your point being?'

It was then that I learnt about the female love affair with shoes. Women don't buy shoes - they hoard shoes. Lots of them.

With so many choices, women can say they 'need a different shoe for each different top'. But of course, they then betray that thought by buying shoes when there is no top in their wardrobe to go with it.

'It's fine, I'll buy a top to match this,' a friend once said.

That, to men, is sheer madness. Shoes are functional. They are at the bottom of the body, for goodness' sake. Who spends all their time looking downwards?

I have five pairs of shoes, which I think is a fair number for most guys. Three pairs are sneakers, since these are comfortable and what I wear most often. One pair is a slightly colourful loafer, for those smart casual parties. Then there is a pair of black leather shoes for formal occasions.

Ta-dah. The simple life is the good life.

If there were any part of my brain that was even mildly interested in choosing shoes, it would have died from lack of use, after 10 years of white Bata school shoes and two years of black army boots during national service.

Coming from a family with four guys, I cannot fathom someone having 20 or 30 pairs of shoes. For a long time, none of the men in our house had more than two pairs of shoes. My Mum had maybe five, but that was about as far as it went.

'Why do you need three pairs of shoes for?' she chided me when I first broke her 'Stop at Two' policy a few years back.

It's amazing what some women will go through for a pair of shoes. I once witnessed a friend take off her shoes and walk barefoot for 100m in the rain so that her new shoes won't get wet.

What about corns, blisters or sores? No problem, if it's for a good shoe cause. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard women say: 'These shoes are killing me, but they are so beautiful.'

Last I checked, shoes were invented to protect the feet, not the other way around. I once had a pair of new leather shoes that had the nerve to give me a blister at my heel. It has now been banished to the top of the cupboard, where it will stay until it has learnt that I do not pay $100 to get blisters.

And that's the bottomline - no matter what Charles or Keith says.

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times on Mar 20, 2008