I realised that it was this day last year that I ventured into the cavernous maze of Vivo City shopping mall. You get the sense that it should be full of life and Spanish music. Which of course it is not. It is always full of people and booming echoes. Nothing like a lively shopping area in the south of Spain.
This year, by sheer co-incidence, I did not go back to Vivo, instead, I ventured along Orchard Road, - rather like Oxford Street on any day. I ventured out early to beat the crowds, get the whole rigmarole of shopping out of the way early, and thereby minimise my chance of having to queue, which I eloquently bah-humbugged about yesterday.
I targeted the Paragon shopping centre, for numerous reasons. Mostly because I had become rather weary with waiting on the phone for 37 minutes and then not getting an answer to my query to that I could purchase the item on line. It appears that shopping on line is really not a substitute for walking into a shop and having a face to face interaction with a real person. A prime example of why queues are not going anywhere, fast
The name Paragon, always strikes me as a strange name for a shopping centre. One normally associates the idea of paragon with someone of extreme virtue, merit or excellence. Personally, I do not find parting with obscene amounts of cash in a glitzy shopping centre to be either virtuous, merit-worthy nor excellent.
Not unexpectedly, I still had to queue at my final destination. But until that particular retail outlet lifted its shutters to blast an overly-zealous welcome to our store in my ear when I was trying to read a book - I was not going to be outdone by the waste-of-time-queue-monster - I decided to run some other errands in some of the shops that were open.
That is easier said than done.
Like last year, this place of shopping seemed to be filled with humans who were shoaling. Shoaling like fish, not Shaolin' like the Kung Fu monks. Everywhere I turned, semi-vacant individuals meandered around shops, not really with a purpose, almost as if they have been brainwashed to enter a shop, wander around and then purchase something of non-descript purpose, to wrap up and pass off as a well-thought out gift to someone they are not sure why they are buying a gift for in the first place. It might also have been that it was fairly early on a Saturday morning.
Nevertheless, when humans mill, shoal or even peregrinate, (there is a good word, meaning to travel or journey on foot, which is exactly what they are doing, gyrating around the shopping aisles and displays, on foot) they seem to morph into a state of oblivion of the world or anyone else around them. That was rather a lengthy and complex sentence but it captures the rigmarole of trying to avoid these quasi-shoppers. Unaware, they gravitate into my walking trajectory and block my way down aisles that make you feel like you entered the rubbish crusher in Star Wars. Where is Yoda when you need him?
All of this invariably leads to me muttering under my breath about awareness. I seem to remember the same thing happening when I went to buy milk on Tuesday. No wonder Neil Gaiman ended up on an adventure when he went out to buy a pint of milk. Fortunately the Milk, great book
Once again, as I sat awaiting my turn to be called from the digital voice linked to the linear queue system, last year's tongue twister came to mind:
A Singapore Shopping Centre, Swimming with Shoaling Shoppers
Good job there were no sharks around.
BAH HUMBUG
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