Let’s see, I left off yesterday leaving the bank with my new-found wealth in hand. Looking back I noticed I had mentioned security but didn’t cover the part which will really seem strange to any foreigners who haven’t visited before … guards at the door.
photo credit: txd
The pedestrian entrances to the mall all have armed, uniformed guards, all day, every day. Normally when you walk in there will be a table where handbags and packages get examined and a sign that says “male” with an arrow pointing one way and “Female” pointing to the opposite end of the table. There will be a guard, almost always in a white uniform shirt and often with a tiny stick in his or her hand … this stick magically’ inspects purses and bags … I’m guessing it’s just a magnet … and then the guard will always ‘feel you up’ and the waist and especially in the small of the back checking for hidden weapons.
I’m not a security expert but I did serve in the military for some years and I went through several special security courses where we were taught to frisk people for weapons. Without going into too many details, these folks have no clue. Their procedures are rudimentary at best and will not detect even some amateurish attempts to walk in with a concealed weapon, but I am sure they have a psychological effect on potential bad guys and they certainly cause no harm, so I just raise my arms, smile and say hello. As the signs always say; “Please submit to our security procedures” … I submit. Occasionally there won’t be a male guard so a female guard will substitute … they seem very squeamish inspecting men; I’m sure it’s extremely uncomfortable for them to be stuck in that job
Doesn’t bother me of course … occasionally there’s a male guard who seems a little too interested in rubbing my behind to suit me but hey, it’s a rainbow world these days, don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue 
Every store that is more than a mom and pop will have its own security grads inside and the banks keep their doors closed, opening them only when the guard outside the door has frisked you yet again and determined that you actually have business in the bank. They do take the security pretty seriously.
So I passed by the two sets of security guards in the Hypermarket entryway, the supermarket subsidiary of SM malls and caught up with Mita who was almost ready to check out. There’s a variety of checkout choices. Express lanes for hand baskets at either end of the row of check stands, lines for senior citizens (I don’t take these because although I am one, in the Philippines this is a special government program and I don’t want to get asked for my ID card).
There are lines for a particular brand of credit card that SM and their partners, the BDO bank are pushing … I think you get an extra half a percentage point rebate if you use these aisles and that card, kinda like Discover Card in the US but you already know my thoughts on Philippine-issued credit cards. We have one, for emergency use only; I sure am not going to start charging groceries on it.
Then there’s a special “Prestige Line” which we use because Mita has a super-slick “Prestige” Advantage Card. Everybody has an SM Advantage card it seems, you use it whenever you check out and after you spend a few hundred thousand pesos you have 100 pesos on the card to spend as you like. It’s actually better odds than that. I have mine too, because just like ordering a meal without rice, checking out without an advantage card makes the otherwise very easygoing and pleasant sales ladies very nervous… it’s their job to ask for it and if you don’t have one, someone in marketing isn’t doing their job.
We get through the checkout before the Daily Prayer came over the PA system … that doesn’t stop everyone in their tracks but it definitely halts store operations … with all the really poor countries in the world who have never even heard of the Bible or the Gospel story it always amazes me how many missionaries can’t wait to come to the Philippines, a land where 90% of the population is baptized in one church or another and the rest are practicing Muslims. I guess it’s because it’s easier to try to get believers to ’switch brands’ than it is to start from scratch in a country where prayer isn’t already an integral part of daily life. This is not the place for an Atheist.
Our checkout did get interrupted by anther ritual… the Japanese sounding ‘my dog has leas’ tones come over the loud speaker and a voice intones ‘Welcome to SM” and then every employee in the store drops what they are doing , claps their hands three times and chants’ “Happy to serve You,”. It’s not an ingrained ritual or anything, only happens about three times each and every hour
The next interruption was my pet peeve. My honey purchased some lovely fresh, young pusit .. squid from the fish vendor who has a contract to run the sea food operations in the supermarket and, as has happened numerous times before, the bar code label is scrunched up down inside the bag and can’t be read. No matter how you try getting these guys to properly label their bags of weighed merchandise is a losing proposition.
Finally the runner comes back with the bag legibly labeled and I hand over the loot … 3900.85 Pesos for 67 items, 2771.65 pesos worth were taxable items for a total 12% VAT tax of PhP 332.60, there were a total of 8 plastic bags used (the guards count and compare to the receipt when you leave, the cahier’s name was Manilyn R. Rivera and we had 913.45 Pesos worth of “Buy Me” items, yet another promo, which entailed atrip to a special counter where the give you a free scratch off lottery ticket … which as usual, won nothing … but as a consolation we were allowed to spin a wheel which stopped on a bottle of Coke prize. To “avail” of the bottle of Coke you take a form from the consolation prize lady over to the Customer Service window where you get your bottle, sign a lob book and take the bottle back to the Consolation Prize lady to sign another receipt to prove we actually got the prize and had our cash register tape stamped and countersigned to prove to the guards that we didn’t steal the bottle of coke.
I’m laughing when I am writing this because I know some of you are going to be saying, “This guy is crazy, how absurd, he’s making this all up.” Well, as my friend Mr. Dave Barry once was famous for saying. “I’m not making this up.” This is just a normal, everyday trip to the grocery store. Promos, prizes, “gimmicks” and prayers, log book signing, receipt stamping and counter-stamping are an integral part of retailing in the Philippines.
Since it had stopped raining we decided to get take out food and get home while it was dry, so we bought a couple servings of fried calamari rings at one stand (20 pesos each 5 piece order), an order of scallop dumplings, (34 pesos), and a couple orders of beef dumplings with noodles also 34 pesos a serving. Total cost for lunch then was about 142 pesos.
Make for the exit, get all the receipts in order for checking and the guard didn’t feel like counting bags today and just waved us through. Into the car, dig the parking receipt out from my wallet, drive through one more checkpoint where they take the parking slip and compare it to your license plate and we’re finally on the road home. Time elapsed? A little more than an hour and 50 minutes. Money spent in total, a little over $80 USD. Experiences to be savored, endured pr occasionally cursed? Priceless.
So many people always search here for prices I thought I would throw in a link to reader Ellen’s blog. Ellen write mainly about her cruising lifestyle (she’s the only returning Filipino OFW I know who never paid a dime in airfare to come home) and many of you may not be interested in boats. But her current post gives some excellent ideas abut prices in another area of the Philippines, Davao, and has some great market pictures. Where I live we do not have markets with the quality and variety you would get in Davao, Cebu or even in more rural areas of Luzon, but it’s all good for all of us, in one way or another.
Popularity: 54% [?]
Hi Philly – One thing that I worry about regarding the security guards at all of these places is that they generally do not pat down the women entering (at least not in Davao, where I live). Yes, it is only a cursory pat down of the men. However, if you look at the situation in Israel and around the Middle East, these days, women are more likely suicide bombers than men. The fact that women here are not checked at all (other than purses being checked) is worrisome.
Regarding the SM Advantage Card, yes, we have the Platinum card too. Actually, I have to say that we have gotten some real nice rewards with that. Start buying some items like a big screen tv and such, and those Pesos add up quickly! Also, they offer other advantages to Platinum members too, for example, if you are shopping for clothing you have a dressing room that is reserved for only Platinum members, which is nice if there is a crowd (not too many people are able to get that Platinum cards).
By the way, over the months, I have heard you mention that thing at SM where the employees clap three times, and say “pleasure to serve you” or whatever. We don’t have that here. Must be a Manila thing.
@Mindanao Bob: You’re right for big ticket shoppers Bob … the promos available are too numerous to go into … I burned up a thousand plus words there in that post and didn’t begin to cover all the di8fferent promos and ‘deals’ one could get into in just one trip. Any time you spend more than 1,000 Pesos on one ticket tape you can also enter a dfferent raffle with prizes up to 50 Million Pesos and there’s other give away deals going on all the time too.
Mita has the Platium card, I don’t know how much she spent to get it .. not as much as you might think becuase we haven’t bought all that much from SM in the past two years. I never by clothes there so I didn’t know about the specila dressing rooms. Thye have special Prestige Parking also but I usually do better on my own … but the pesos do add up.
The “Happy to serve you” is in Hypermarket, not in SM itself. For those not familiar, SM itself is a full-service department store like perhaps Bambergers or Macy’s in the US. Hypermarket is a subsidiary which is normally paired with SM … t’s a bit like a small-sized Wal*Mart Super Store, they have cheaper lines of most of the department store items and a full-service food market all together. I’ll ask next time where the “Happy to Serve You” business came from, it’s been going on in Hypermarket here for at least six months now … perhaps it takes longer to work it’s way out to the “Provincianas”
We don’t have Hypermarket here, so no wonder we don’t have that little jingle!
I am not taking any offense,because I don’t think you mean it this way, but “Provincianas” is generally a way of insulting people who are not from Manila.
@Mindanao Bob: Can you translate “Aye, pee mon”? I’ll mail you a hanky … correction, I’ll LBC it, the mail won’t work
Yes I know what proviciana means … even though we have to live withing the soot fallout pattern and almost in sight of Manila, we’re provinciana’s too. We’re definitely at the end of the line for services, etc.
In fact a credit card customer service lady told Mita that on the phone the other day … Oh we no longer courier our bills out to the provinces … and since you already know abut our non-existent mail service that seems as if we will never get a bill.
I was going to mention that to our bank manager but when I saw him last the blankety-blank ATM network was down yet again and he told me, with the face that only a man who once had career dreams but was now banished to the provinces could have, that the bank IT department would get our part of the network fixed after Manila “Proper” was back on line. The poor guy was already down, I didn’t have the herat to kick him … just call me Manny
Strictly speaking “Manila Proper” is only a relatively small city, I don’t know if it even equals Davao in population … but the other 16 or so municiplaities that make up Metro Manila still are chock-a-block full of the old “Imperial Manila” mindset folks. I jave to dig up some populaton figures.
To a majority of government agencies and many businesses there is Metro Manila and ‘the rest of the Philippines’. You can live in the provinces or you can have respect, but you can’t have both.
Hi Philly – I am not sure I understand your response….
I surely don’t know what “Aye, pee mon” means, never hear of that before. I even Googled it just now, and could find no references to that term.
It sounds like you don’t like the term either….. but when I said that I didn’t take offense to you calling us provincianas, your response seem to be that it was the word you termed intentionally. I think I must be missing something.
Come on Now! almost 2 hours for a trip to the store.
Is this the ‘Norm” shopping procedures or is it the way Expats shop because they have more money than most Locals?
Wouldn’t it be easier to shop at the local wet/food Markets like the Locals do.
Hi Philly,
I had forgotten about the armed guards, that you mentioned in this post. Guess we just got used to them. They never checked us much as I guess we looked and acted like tourists – just gawking at everything! My Canadian friend even got a couple to pose for him in San Fernando! http://picasaweb.google.com/Misterex/PhilippinesAug18Sep092007#5110681607166126290
Nasty shotguns!
Neal,
We don’t go to the local wet market except the one in our old hometown of San Marcelino, Zambales. We are lucky to have two ladies from Nueva Ecija who bring us fresh produce 5 days in a week, right to our doorstep. Their prices are a bit higher than the local wet market, not by much if you’re a regular or “suki” who never makes utang. You can order anything from them and they bring it the next day. I’ve bought meat curing salts, Dave’s Hanes t-shirts, shorts…aside from the usual fresh produce. There are also small markets called talipapa around our neighborhood if there’s anything else I missed. I hardly ever go.
SM is basically for milk, eggs, bread, junk food, canned tuna or tomatoes, OTC drugs, herbal drinks, tea, coffee…those kind of things…
Bob,
“ay, piman” is Ilocano and means “oh poor you,” a phrase my mother would often tell us kids when we were starting a tantrum because we couldn’t get our way. Dave loves the sing-song, sad-face manner my sisters and I use this for a lot more than just sarcastically ribbing each other and now he has made it his very own, often-used expression.
Hi Philly, That’s funny– nobody from the province should feel sensitive about it. We call ourselves “promdis” or “prom de province” as Dolphy would often say in his movies. The province lifestyle is one that is a preferred one for us, but I’m just an old fashioned girl! Our SM experiences are very similar to yours, but I just think of every market trip as an adventure. Once I was trying to buy an ice cream cone at a small concession inside SM for my neice. I was made to go to the bakery across the store to acquire a receipt in order to purchase the cone of ice cream! It was OK though, because while I was at the bakery I spotted a “lechon bread”, baked to look just like a small roast pig which I bought while I was waiting. One day I asked some sales help to assist me in finding a kitchen sponge. With four salespeople and myself all looking, it was announced that “they didn’t have any”. Every market trip is a fun adventure!
Hi Dave, thanks for the plug
You know I totally forgot about those prayer sessions they have in the malls there until you mentioned it. The first time I experienced it, I was very surprised. I don’t think we have it here in Davao, maybe we are all dimonyos here
or maybe I don’t stay too long in malls to notice. As for those male/female entry through the guards, I still forget and just go in anywhere – usually the male section.
As for the provinciana thing, I get that a lot from my relatives in manila. Actually they say we are “taga bukid” – meaning, from the boonies or from the farms, outskirts. Mainly it is linked to how we dress. Well, they haven’t seen how I dress when we are cruising yet – hahaha. Our clothes are either wrinkled, smell like diesel, or have lots of rust marks from rusty clothespins.
Hi Dave’s Wife – Thanks for explaining that! I had no idea what it meant!
Hi Ellen – We do have the prayer sessions in Davao malls…. you just have to be there at the correct time.
@Mindanao Bob: Yeah, nothing worse than email or blog post humor, Bob … it falls flat, as I should know. I decided to even write apost about the ‘provincial’ business necuase it’s areal fact of life … there are acertain category of flk here who are always going to consider you ’second class’ if you don’t live in Metro Manila. I know you have felt it in the past … I remeber Feyma bloggng about the near impossibility of getting a repair part for some appliance … and it can even impact financially, such as banks refusing to send you a credit card statement.
I didn’t know the I pe mom … my phonetic spelling attempt was so localized … but hey, now we both know. It comes in very handy for time when someone is offended … espcially if it’s one of those things that you cna’t do anyhting about amyway, like being second class becuase of where you live. Some of the girls even use it as an adjective, try clothes out in front of a mirror and say, I don’t like this it makes me look too aye piman … poor me.
Isn’t langauge fun?
@Neal in RI: Hi neal … was that too fast for you? it’s easy to make it take longer
Seriously I have seen alot of foreign friends get themselevs into atizzy here becuase they get up in the am and decide they will do this, this, this and that in a day. They get down to the second ‘this’ and it’s supper time, getting dark and they are frustrated as all get out. An Americna friend who runs a business out of Cebu and the US told me years ago … never plan to get one than one thing a day done and you’ll live longer and smile more often. So far his advice has been right.
Tomnorrow is agood example. We’re taki8ng >momma” to an eye doctor in Quezon City about a 40 minute drive away. We’re leaving a little before 9 am. But there’s construction on at least one of the main streets we will traverse and it’s Decemebr, which makes the traffic two or three times normal. We breifly discussed another stop after the doctor, buyt decided to can that idea … if we get to the doc, get the mother seen, and get home before supper time, the day will be a success.
People ask all thetime what do i do here all day … well I write about that … it takes time, it really does.
Mita answered your question regarding the wet mrket. Where we live it is much better to let the market come to us. If we lived farther out, we’d go to the market on market day for sure … we always time our trips to Zamables or Pangasinan around the market days and come home with a cooler full of ice and fresh stuff, but living here it’s seldom a good choice.
@queeniebee: Thanks for reminding me about “prondi” … I did know that word but completely spaced out. technically speaking, provinciana is only for women and it should be provinciano for men also, but “promdi” is much better and ‘younger’ sounding … I not only write ‘long’ I tend to write old and ’stuffy’, which I suppose I am.
I like that lechon bread idea, the boys would love it. baboy is their second favorite food.
I’ve had expereinces like the ice cream receipt also, a store sets up a kiosk out in the mall but they keep all the cash and records in the store itself … it makes sense. to the store owner anyway.
@Ellen: Rather be [atted down by a man, eh?
Actually when there is no female guard and the male guards have to fill in they look way, way more squeamish. I think some famle guards like to pat me down … not becuase they are attrcated but they can’t believe that stomach is really that big LoL.
I like “taga bukid”. I gues it could also translate as hiding out in the “boonies”, as in taga na taga … TnT. Bob told me once that in Bisaya useage bukid only means mountain but here in the northland it’s often used for a farm and people who work the farm or live there. And of course I just used, without thinking, the most common Filipino word that has found it’s way into every day US English, boonies or boondocks derived directly from “bundoc”. I’m not sure if that is common in “Canadian English” but it’s pretty much understood in all 50 US states.
Come on Dave, you gotta learn the right Filipino words (or maybe you are just typing too fast). TNT means tagO ng tagO- means forever hiding – like the illegal immigrants.
Yup, the canucks use boonies and boondocks too. Aha, now I learn something new – it does sound like “bundok” (mountain). Thanks!
yup, bundok made its way to the English language as boondocks…just as the boondocks of the Zambales mountain range inspired a US Field Artillery officer to come up with the Caisson Song, the official US Army song…..
“over hill, over dale as we hit the dusty trail And those caissons go rolling along….”l
@Ellen: Sorry. Ever say or type somehting and then a couple hours later, when you are thinking about somehting completely different, have a thought pop into your head … oh firetruck … that was the wrong word. Guilty of all charges, but do I get partial credit for knowing it was wrong before I read your much appreciated correction? No, not really, I’m fishing
Aye pimon …
Hi Dave, I am guilty too. Come to think of it, I think I spelled “ng” wrong, maybe it is “nang”. Who cares, tagalog is not my main language. Maybe Dave’s Wife can correct me