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Yes, it has a lot to do with the blue, the one that stands for the oppression of contractual workers, well yeah, that’s the way that wheel turns. There’s the fact that we are all stuck in consumption, and probably the worst kind of it: oh you with the biggest spaces as black holes, why can I not resist you?
Well, because you are the cheapest of all spaces. I tell you, and I don’t even have to wait for sales (though those are good, too). In fact, it is here that I find the cheapest box of puzzles for the little girl who lights up my life. Here that there are the best choices for food, oh yes, not cheap but definitely different and worthy of your trip, i.e., everything from tourist fare (champoy, sampalok, polvoron, broas) to imported (Lindt!) chocolates (swoon!), how does one beat that? And you swipe your card and get points for everything you buy. You swipe your credit card and you get even more points. You use the bank that’s attached to this world, and you get even more points!
Oh it’s evil really, but how does one escape the lure of the cheap? You don’t, and here it is that I find the best things for so much less, tiangges be damned. At least here the dressing room’s airconditioned; at least here, you get extra, uh, points. So after a search for the best looking slacks that I could wear with conviction, i.e, without feeling like I’m an old fart wearing an old fart’s clothes, I was exasperated that slacks apparently cost as much as, even more than jeans, and that doesn’t quite cut it, yes? After all I wouldn’t wear this everyday, and that P1,000-peso price tag for one pair could get me three dresses easy. And so I found myself at the tail-end of my search, at the wrong last stop, because it should’ve been my first: a thousand bucks equals, yes, three pairs of slacks in every conventional color, no old farts in site.
And yes, I might have the next person wearing exactly the same thing, but that could only mean I wasn’t creative with the rest of the outfit. So here, let me just find some one-of-a-kind P150 t-shirts, hell yeah, they’re all mine: the joy of the children’s section and their double-XL sized t-shirts (oh and the bigger the better attitude about kids too, which is a bad thing, but which gets me happy kiddie shirts). Of course for the possibility of the formal, find it in the women’s section, but only for the way they do cheaper versions of the dresses that are elsewhere, so obviously leeching off of other people’s ideas, but then selling it for so much less. You seem to be held in the palm of their hand: you drool for the more expensive, and will get the cheaper copy as second best.
Ater all, there are P245 sandals here, and P350 wedges. And you buy as a matter not just of wanting the more expensive versions, but for the sake of having done so – what is it that you work hard for, no matter how little? And here, where you are, there is still buying power for your peso. In fact here, it still seems valuable. Everything here can be had on tingi: if you can’t afford the whole pack, buy it per piece; can’t afford the whole outfit, buy the cheapest item that’s part of it. Here where you are, consumption’s the name of the game, and cheapness is the whole point.
You cannot refuse it really, in the way you can’t an ice cold drink on a hot day. The moment you’re in there, you’re sucked into the need/requirement/goal which is to prove to you that yes, they fulfill their promise, this empire. They do have it all for you.
You remind yourself that the more they have though, the less that you do.
Photo: "random pile 1" by KSSantiago, July 2010.
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