THERE could not have been a worse mistake - going to Manila's biggest shopping mall with Christmas looming.
It's a mistake that could easily have been avoided, but somehow the traffic jam on the way past SM City in suburban Quezon City seemed to draw the car ever onward and inward instead of past, as had been planned.
And once there, there literally was no turning back. Wall-to-wall traffic, people, bonhomie and sales pitches, and things nobody in their right mind would buy but everybody does anyway, just to make the torture of the occasion that much more exquisite.
Manila culture of the past decade has been built around shopping malls.
Shoemart, a company that started with a little shoe shop in Manila four decades ago, somehow evolved into a department store and from there into a mall-building. It started a trend which has created nine monsters in the capital that contain under one roof everything ever needed in one lifetime.
In air-conditioned splendour, shoppers can avoid the sticky heat of the city, the diesel fumes and the tropical downpours.