#RPintheRP: A Travelogue

Day 11: Karaoke-okie-dokie

Given that, most of my friends have regular 9-5 jobs, I can’t really meet up with them. Except for those who are in-between jobs. Or those who don’t work regular hours. I decided, while deciding who to bug, to head off to the mall.

When Egay was here, he was showing me this thing called a Powerbank. A fascinating contraption that charges your phone while on the go. At this point, all I’ve been doing was asking my Uber drivers if I could plug my charge cable and they’ve all been rather gracious. I decided to pick one up at SM North.

***

SM North EDSA is my mall. Period. I know this mall like the back of my hand. I walked around from the Hypermarket in the Block all the way to the Cyberzone in the Annex. Yup. My type of exercise — SM North EDSA. (Brunch at Sbarro kind of ruins the exercise but, meh)

It is interesting to note that a lot of stores have changed, have been added, have been reduced. Astrovision, for instance, used to occupy such a large chunk of the Annex and now it’s been reduced to a small shop. The same goes for PowerBooks. Guess the internet did destroy the music and book industries, respectively.

***

I am a cheap mofu and so my favorite store is actually CDR King. They have everything! It’s a deceptive name — they don’t just sell blank CD’s — and who the hell uses CD’s these days. They have all sorts of electronics related (and sometimes not related) to computers. Including Powerbanks. And keyboards. And scooters.

I picked up a lot of odd knickknacks, including a Powerbank, a keyboard and case for my iPad, a selfie stick, a tripod, a little ring you put at the back of your phone, and just very very odd things you would normally not find together in the same store.

***

Joshua (Doumeki) had nothing to do and agreed to meet me at Trinoma. It was…hot as hell and I decided to risk being judged by a taxi driver and I took a cab from SM North to Trinoma. Yup. RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET. I am bourgeois as fuck!

I waited for Doumeki at Fully Booked Trinoma. I actually spent way longer than I expected, mostly just debating with myself how many books I can physically bring to Canada without going overbaggage. I quickly remembered how there was a luggage sale in SM North EDSA (that was due to end in a couple of days) and resolved to make my way back to pick up some luggage.

When Doumeki arrived, we ate lunch at World Chicken (one of my favorite restaurants in Trinoma). Later on, we would find ourselves at TimeZone. One of our favorite pastimes — screw it, the nation’s favorite pastime — is karaoke.

TimeZone used to have these tiny little cubicles that you could rent out for singing. Way back in the day, I was on a date with a guy who I would fall madly in love with. We were in one of these cubicles, just singing our hearts out, and he sang Michael Buble’s cover of “The Way You Look Tonight” while looking me straight in the eye and, gosh damn, I knew I was dead.

TimeZone has this new thing. It looks like a professional audio recording booth, and you actually have headphones so you can hear yourself sing! But that’s not the best part — the best part is when you select a song, the video that appears in the karaoke machine is actually the proper music video of that song! Hallelujah! No more awkward scenery or canoes or fucking storks flying.

***

A while later, our friend Jules came to join us. Jules was my classmate in multiple theatre classes and he also played the lead role in one of my thesis plays.

We walked around, having mini-adventures either in the smoking grounds (“Ang daming gwapo sa Trinoma, no? Chaser kaya?”), or when spotting guys that sort-of look familiar, or asking the salespeople down below if they have Barong Tagalog that would fit a guy as fat as I am.

We had dinner at Bon Chon, again ticking off another of my must-eat places, and then hang out at my condo for a short while before they both went home.

Ah, but karaoke day does not end here. After the two of them left, I got a message from Three that he was down to meet-up.

“We never really talked about what you were looking for,” I asked, while pouring him a glass of Coke. “I have to let you know — I am asexual.”

“I guess cuddling,” he said, scratching his hair. “That’s not very sexual is it?”

“On the contrary, there is nothing more sexual than two bodies cuddling.”