“YOU are here,” the mall map says.
There are malls whose maps I’ve somehow memorized without trying, more particularly on where my suking tindahan is located. Which simplifies window shopping. No need to aimlessly roam around.
But there are times when aimlessly roaming around helps me relax. Malling without a buy list, not even a grocery list.
If you always drop by the suking tindahan each time you’re malling, you may have memorized, tried on, or purchased its merchandise already.
Plain T-shirts, for example, usually look the same, the only difference would be the brand and perhaps the type of cloth used. So, it’s possible to buy a shirt and notice the first one you bought only after opening the closet and seeing this same shirt, forgotten and abandoned like some presidential political campaigner.
By the way, that campaigner’s wish to be thanked by her winning candidate has been as grandiose as the candidate’s promise to reduce the price of rice to P20.
The low-carb dieter has stopped eating rice and doesn’t mind its price increase. Keber. Ho-hum. But he will protest if the prices of beef, pork, fish, chicken, eggs, coconut oil, salt, coco aminos, and apple cider vinegar will increase. And also of gasul since he prefers slow cooking for his bulalo.
“Hanggang saan aabot ang 20 pesos mo?” was a popular mantra to emphasize the affordability of an ice cream cone. But it has stopped using that tagline most probably because it now costs more than P20 each. Yes, it has learned to move on, an attitude that the presidential candidate campaigner and the rice-price protester should also adopt.
“Promises are meant to be broken,” as the saying goes. Even the low-carb-fasting diet has its share of such promises: I promise to do my LCF duty, to God and my LCF community, so help me God.
The morning after, there I was, feasting on banana chips and blueberry yogurt. If not for the allergies that these goodies cause, they would be my snacks while writing this. I’ve already lost some weight, anyway, a taste of these sweets and carbs won’t hurt, right? Wrong.
Dr. Josephine Grace Rojo-Tan has this YouTube video, “Ano ang Pwedeng Mangyari Kapag Bumalik sa Pagkaing Kanin, Asukal at Tinapay?” I would usually have eight of those after a high-carb feast. Whew.
But at least I’ve kept my promise to not ram the LCF diet down your throat. Hmmm.
The LCF journey is much like malling but with a grocery list. It requires loads of focus, learning, determination, perseverance, and the willingness to go outside of the box that the old Food Pyramid has taught to many generations since the 1970s.
Some people do love malling and have treated malls as parks especially here in Pinas where the weather is either hot or rainy.
Once the Pinoy is inside a mall, he doesn’t have to worry about the weather anymore. That’s when “You are here” may start to sound like Rivermaya’s “You’ll Be Safe Here”: “Close your eyes, dry your tears/’Cause when nothing seems clear/You’ll be safe here from the sheer weight/Of your doubts and fears/Weary heart, you’ll be safe here.”
