agoraphobia

My Top Five Shopping Malls in Metro Manila:
1. Shangri-la Plaza
2. Power Plant
3. Gateway
4. Podium
5. The Block at SM City

View from Sebastian's ice cream place at The Block.

Notice that my favorite malls are tiny, relative to the giant supermalls that are mushrooming all over the place. I'll tell you why.

When I was a small DB-- maybe five years old?-- my aunt and her then-boyfriend took me to the old Harrison Plaza. Everybody used to go there because of the bump cars. (Martial law babies, you know what I'm talking about.) They decided to be funny and let me walk ahead and then hid from me. I freaked out. Only when I started crying did they come out from their hiding place. They were laughing at me, naturally.

Since then, I have had an unreasonable fear of wide open spaces inside huge buildings. Does that make sense-- open space, but indoors? The first time I entered SM Megamall, I got vertigo.

I'm not bitter.