Even in doing nothing, my mind does something. It hovers. It thinks. It consumes energies without me knowing, I guess that’s why I suddenly feel the urge to grab something to bite.
Today, I was at the Galleria (there’s no direct link so just look for it on the left hand sidebar). Some of the malls have tacky description, like Robinson’s Manila, read:
Robinsons Place Manila in Ermita is strategically located at the heart of romantic and historic City of Manila
Historic, yes. But romantic? Well I guess Ermita IS full of romance.
So as I was saying, I was at the said mall, and glancing on my watch, it was about 3:30 in the afternoon. I strayed along the mall, looking for a place to hide out and read a book entitled “The Mystery of Capital“. (I was supposed to meet someone, but we rescheduled it to a new date, and since I didn’t want to go home just yet I decided to stay put for the moment).
I went to Starbucks of course, but it was crowded, plus I wanted to eat something. I went to McDonald’s, and it too was crowded. Finally, my foot brought me to the only smorgasbord of tastes and pungent smells – where else but the Food Court!
I grabbed a meal from Razon’s. I like Razon’s, not just the food, but the entire concept. They went past the stage of just being a native delicacy. On my other blog, I lamented how most of the domestic businesses have never progressed past the stage of selling native delicacies.
And thinking about that, it gives a great parallel to the book I was about to read.
I’ll share my reviews and take aways from the book once I finish reading it. There’s an interesting excerpt about the Philippines, and I’m just on page 20. Just to give you a teaser, the author and his research team undertook a study to determine how long a squatter family can hope to legalize his property in the country (aside from others). Venture a guess? Read the book to find out the answer! Let’s just say we’re comparable to, say, Egypt.
Aside from the book, which surprisingly was a page turner, notwithstanding its non-fiction genre, I was equally perplexed at the volume of people eating there. I know, 3PM is merienda time for not a few office people, but there were also a lot people who were definitely there for a leisurely stroll.
I was bearish on the local economy then, and my faith was shaken a bit today when I saw the people around me. These people weren’t there just to eat. They carried one plastic bag from a retail store. Belt-tightening? I didn’t see it today, that’s for sure. One could argue that payday was just 2 days ago, but these people should be still in office, not in the mall. These people who got their paychecks would probably spend it tomorrow and throughout the weekend. But today?
This still, conjures a very good parallel to the book. There are probably millions of undocumented income earning Filipinos out there. And they are spending these here, apart from the other malls existing in the country.
Then again, if there were nature parks in the metropolis, probably the volume of people strolling in these “parks” called malls would dwindle. This is probably one reason why Serendra is a hit, even though there’s still no direct public transport route.
Well that’s it for today. I think I’ve blogged enough. The grey matter in between my ears is that free floating mechanism. As you can see, I’ve talked about malls, a book, what I ate, all in just one entry. Nifty huh.
