Revisiting Glorietta

i was at glorietta on saturday, after what i realized was almost a year. yes, i have no life. i haven't gone malling (as opposed to say, popping in for twenty minutes on a quick errand) in glorietta since i quit working in makati. fun nga pala mag-glorietta, even if it was a little disorienting at times.

there are so many people!

there are so many new stores! yay for zara, chef tony's and the mini-bibingka stall!

buhay pa pala ang piadina sa glorietta 4 food court! my family and i used to eat there when it first opened way back when. this really blond, moon-faced, harrassed italian woman used to do all the cooking by herself.

kamiseta has become so freaking expensive!

i don't recall there being so many food freebies. marlon (he's here on his first business trip in months) was so pleased. aside from the coffee fair on the ground floor (free chocolate mousse coffee from kape isla!), we got free nibbles from auntie anne's and chef tony's. mmm.

i also don't recall there being so many dumb moviegoers in glorietta 4. did they all migrate to greenbelt or something? marlon and i watched the departed (great movie -- brilliant scorsese redeems himself for gangs of new york ten times over) and had the utter misfortune to be seated to not one, but two epitomes of the moviegoer you love to hate.

not only was one woman's phone not on silent, but she took forever to answer it and must have said "hello. hello! nasa sine ako!" at least (i'm not exaggerating) eight times. our combined dagger looks only prompted her to pass the phone to her seatmate (!!!!), who continued the same line of conversation. "nasa sine kami. oo. sine. sine nga sabi. SINE!"

said seatmate was one of those running-commentary dunderheads. you know the type -- those morons who are so deprived of intellectual accomplishment that they repeat every single onscreen event to themselves as it happens so that they can pat themselves on the back for remembering names for things. (e.g., "ayan, naglalakad na siya" = "shetanggalingko i remembered that putting one foot in front of the other constitutes walking').

they also hurl theories at the screen for the unbeatable, mindblowing intellectual thrill of being right later on, which they fervently pray for throughout the entire movie. ("SABI ko na nga ba mai-in love rin siya doon sa isa!")

all puffed up with this sense of achievement, these types are also the ones who are most disappointed when the movie turns out to be *gasp* DIFFERENT from other movies that they have frantically tried to understand and loudly played back to themselves. i almost bashed my tub of chef tony's parmesan popcorn over the woman's head when, at the film's gripping, perfectly fitting ending, she said, with a half-scandalized, half-gimme-my-money-back snort, "ano ba 'tong palabas na 'to, *nachop-chop lahat ng bayag ng mga ng artista*!" (okay that didn't really happen but i'm trying to prevent spoilers here.)

as colin sullivan (matt damon) would probably say in his atrocious boston brogue: "fuck! lady, it's MAH-tin fuckin' scuh-SAY-see. whadya fuckin' expect, HARRY fuckin' PAH-tuh?" (then again, she might have been expecting titanic for godsakes because, like, leonardo dicaprio is in it.) and then he would take out his gun, waste the bitch and blast what miniscule brains she had all over the back of the seat.

ay sorry. let slip a bit of wish fulfillment there.