~* SHOPPING & GREY'S ANATOMY *~

My calves hurt. As in. When I woke up today, I felt the muscle ache on my calves. Reminds me of the saying "shop til you drop"...

My Saturday started early coz my college friends Rose, She and I had planned to go shopping at 168 Shopping Mall. I met up with She at Sucat at 6:45am, then we picked up Rose at Las Piñas and then we drove to Divisoria, arriving at exactly 8:01am at 168. We ate breakfast at the nearby Chowking and then started to comb through the 168 stalls around 9am. We went through each and every frigging pasilyo alphabet on all three floors! I spent a total of Php1,700 and took home all these: 1 black office bag, 2 puff-sleeved plain colored shirts, 3 lace-trimmed tank tops, 1 chocolate brown asymmetrical blouse, 1 puff-sleeved office blouse, 1 pink & brown plaid clamdiggers, 1 basketball shorts (for my nephew) and 1 plain cotton shirt (for our househelp).

It was my first time to go to 168 and I was thrilled with all that good bargain! You'll definitely get a lot more bang for your buck when you shop there. Anyway, here are some tips which I learned from my friend Rose who is a seasoned 168 shopper (plus some of my own input):

1. Bring cash. Everything is on cash basis transaction so leave your credit cards at home.
2. Spread your cash. Don't keep everything in one place. I had some money on my wallet which was in my bag, some on my left pants pocket, some on my pants' tiny right pocket.
3. Don't bring your ATM card. If you want to be on a strict budget, leave your ATM card at home so you won't be tempted to withdraw more money just to buy some more unplanned stuff.
4. Dress simply. No bling-blings, no expensive watch. Avoid looking hmm *rich* so you can be believable when you make barat/tawad to the tindera.
5. Wear comfy footwear. Your feet are your friend in this journey to retail therapy!
6. If you must bring a bag, go for a body bag or belt bag. Don't bring shoulder bags that tend to dangle on your shoulders and become very accessible to pickpockets. Hold your bag closely and keep it in front (not even on your side) where you can see it.
7. Avoid flashing around your gadgets. Expensive celfones, iPods, PDAs or whathaveyous may tempt the pickpockets. Better be safe than sorry!
8. Always try to make tawad. Don't just buy at quoted price. Haggle and negotiate first for a really big discount. The vendor will usually disagree with your quoted price and will make a higher-priced counter-offer. Haggle some more until you reach a middle ground. It helps if you chika the tindera and talk nicely. If they don't give you your tawad, sometimes it helps if you feign losing interest and start walking away from the stall. More often than not, they call you back in and concede to your bargain price ;-)
9. Bring one huge sturdy bag. Put every item you buy inside this huge bag so that you won't have to struggle in lugging around a lot of plastic bags from the different stalls you buy from.
10. If you're bringing a car, strive to be at 168 by 8am (or even way earlier during peak season like Christmas time) so you can still get a good parking space.

We finished shopping and left the mall around 4pm. Wow. Imagine that! Virtually 7 freaking hours of walking! No wonder my calves hurt now :-(

After bonding with my college friends through shopping, I spent some q-time with my dear high school friends Abbie, Tin and Charo who went over to our house around 9pm last night. We scheduled a Grey's Anatomy "DVDthon" and watched the first 5 eps of season 3 in my room. We ate some junk food (No crumbs on my bed! I give them 5 stars!) while watching McDreamy, McSteamy and annoyingly pa-cute Ellen Pompeo [Meredith].

Tin had a grand time copying some of my mp3s into her portable hard drive. I heard her exclaiming over finding Jeremy Jordan, Wilson Philips and Tiffany songs in my PC :D On the other hand, Abbie "checked out" (yeah, I have a log book for anything borrowed from me, hehe! I'm OC with my possessions!) some of my CDs so she can OC-ly rip them at hmm 320kbps? ;-)

We were supposed to finish all 7 eps of GA on the DVD but we were too sleepy na by 3am so they all headed home. We'll just have to schedule another DVDthon for the rest of the 3rd season eps! ;-)