So off I commute to Zamora Street, where the Taiwanese stores were, where the “wild things are”-- the Ukay-Ukays, the budget stores, the “mäde in China” thrift emporiums where I spend those extra bucks as if there was no tomorrow, in my mid-life abandon—
First the shoes, like a real Leytena, I have the shoe fetish of what is true, good and the beautiful--and Bensons, Budget, beckoned me with those Thailand mules and step-ins with designs straight out from a Phat Phong jaunt.
But like a practical shopper, I do my window ogling and my cost discrimination first. I may have this spree like a malady, but I still know where to put my money’s worth. After an hour I come out from a little budget store in front of Gabrino’s with a pair of “gladiator” espadrilles, which my daughter would say later on: “Mommy! that’s too kikay!”
Ah, well, sometimes Tack in In. And for a funky Lola like me, it is understandable.
An old cinema was converted into a Taiwanese emporium. 578 was cavernous, reminiscent of Lim Ah Hong the pirate’s treasure throve. It had three spacious floors and had almost everything in it from plastic cabinets, DVD players, Android tablets, China cell phones to faux designer jeans. A minor fire gutted part of it and the perennial reason was “faulty electrical wiring”; but come to think of it, the building was wired naturally as a cine house, not as a watt-consuming emporium. As of this writing, the building is now being renovated for its re-opening, but I can’t forget my frenzy scouring the place for knick-knacks to buy that rainy day before the inferno. What was just to go in to buy a Shanghai-made umbrella, came out with a ceramic yellow and red rabbit, polyester drapes, a John Lennon T-shirt with a Peace symbol tote bag to match.
Pegged with tote bags around my body, I saunter off to my end-of-the-fever relaxation moment: A coffee at Mr Donut. Amidst sips of the brew and the karasikas of the plastic sando bags of shopped items, I fall into my usual enlightening Samadhi of a downtown Tacloban shopaholic!
