adventures in the land of malls

so, it is my impression thus far that shopping malls carry quite a bit of weight here in manila. i could totally be misreading this but the mall is the place to be. it is a grocery story, an eatery, a cool (as in temperature) place to duck in from the heat and just a place to see and be seen. for all who know me well know that malls are not my thing. seriously do you really need to shop that much?? but the closest grocery store is located in mall thus the need to visit frequently.

last evening my housemates and i (three including me) headed to eat some dinner and go to the grocery store. the grocery store experience was pleasant, dinner not so much. we ate at this chain chinese restaurant call "chow king" bad news bears. needless to say we won't be returning there. anyways we are heading out of the mall and one of my housemates decides actually take one of the myriad promotional handouts people shove in your face throughout the mall. this little flyer is actually a scratch off- very fun!! she scratches the little square and WINS!!! yeah... she wins a personal alarm system. now who really needs a personal alarm system is beyond me.

as we find out she won about 6 similarly dressed men rush over to congratulate her and we are quickly ushered up to this smallish store. seriously it is almost a blur. the store appears to sell all the necessities of life- lavious chair and personal massagers, sparkling pans that have medicinal benefits, super duper air and water purifiers. one of my housemates is ushered to a lazyboy chair complete with a massager as myself and the other housemate are seated on a couchlike thing. thus begins the sale pitches.... i never knew so much about purifiers nor massagers but after i left the store i felt like an expert. during the sales pitch about 6 more people joined the sales force. seriously i think there were more sales staff than products in the store. eventually they found out that my housemates was from utah and the men were in love. i am assuming they were in love with her beauty not the fact she is from utah but hey you never know. anyways, they started calling her miss utah and miss universe. meanwhile my other housemate and i were cracking up.

while all this fun was going on i was asked to pick a raffle ticket. next to the jar were countless tickets stating "thank you for playing" so i just figured that would be my fate. boy was i wrong.... from my raffle ticket i won the lavious chair massager AND a personal massager. oh i was tempted.. and i mean tempted... but they were free, right?? yeah not some much. basically i would have to buy another product and then they were free. okay to wrap this story up... i didn't buy anything, we didn't get the chair massager nor the personal massager but my housemate was able to keep the ever so valuable personal alarm.

what a whirlwind it was.... so much fun and so many laughs. i know the text version of the story does not do it justice but trust it was a memory. unfortunately nobody had their camera so we could not formally document this occasion... lesson learned: bring the camera, everywhere.

still laughing.... still exploring... and as always enjoying life.

blessings.