Shopping center

I went to the 101 Building today. Apart from finding the bus lines that can take me there instead of the MRT, I thought it was about time to pay a visit. I have not gone up the tower, even if there was probably a nice view this evening, because I was not in the mood of queuing for half an hour and it was a little late. It's no big deal, I still have many days left to do it.


So I took a walk around the shopping center that is sprawled at the bottom of the tower. As you can imagine, with a building so large, the shopping center is also very large. And typical. It is full of multinational shops, extremely clean floors, many lights and wide spaces dedicated to nothing. Not much different from any american or european mall. I can't help it, I feel emotionally empty in these places after a while, and almost dirty.


But I made a very interesting discovery in the Page One bookstore, which has a huge amount of books in English. I don't think I will have any problems of running out of stuff to read. As usual, I got a couple of books.

The funny moment was when I wandered into a toy store —you know, Christmas is getting closer and I must look for ideas for the little ones— in a different floor. In hindisght it was inevitable, but I did not expect it until I saw it before my eyes: so close to Japan, it is not so strange to find robots and all kinds of manga figures. I drifted back to 1978 or 1979 for a moment, in the middle of the post-Star Wars and Mazinger Z craze, when my grandparents came back from a trip to Japan and they brought us a robot from some popular TV series, that we did not know. How all the japanese packaging fascinated us.

Well, then, there were several Mazingers on sale

and I saw the same robot that must be somewhere at home. I could see how that little kid of so many years ago was smiling inside.