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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Wall to wall

Wall to wall

Published May 2, 2026 12:05 am  |  Updated May 1, 2026 04:09 pm
MEDIUM RARE
As Fate would have it, I live in a house that is literally minutes away from all the biggest malls of the city. But then the owners of those malls wouldn’t have chosen a location inconvenient to the population, would they?
Technically, anyone can crawl a mall for 12 hours, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., without guilt or compunction. They can do everything at the mall even if or when they are penniless. The only thing they cannot do is take a shower, even if the malls have nice, clean comfort rooms.
As the summer heat continues to bear down on us, sometimes and in some places hitting 39 to 40 degrees Celsius, I think of the mall as the only refuge. Baguio would’ve been the solution were it not four hours away by car and fuel costing as much as it does today.
On the other hand, staying home means turning on the A/C, minus the happy distractions of a mall: people-watching, window-shopping, shopping, breakfast-lunch-merienda-dinner, walking as exercise. . . The only people without this mindset are those who work fulltime in a mall. For Tessie Sy Coson of the family corporation that owns SM, “going to the mall is work.”
Speaking of families, if our malls are family-friendly, it could only be because they are owned by families. Thus the Sys, the Gokongweis of Robinsons, the Ortigases of Greenhills and Estancia, the Ayalas of Trinoma and Greenbelt.
There must be something about our malls that foreigners find so engaging. Ali Mall in Cubao, Quezon City, was the first, followed immediately by Henry Sy’s SM North (as confirmed by “Mader” Ricky Reyes). Ali Mall, named after Muhammad Ali who defeated Joe Frazier 51 years ago at the Big Dome, is now better known as Araneta City, the shopping center that heralds Christmas with a tree lighting ceremony weeks before Dec. 25.
If we take our malls for granted, tourists and foreigners find them rather enchanting. Several years ago, a group of businessmen from China came around to discover what was our secret. As expected, they left without revealing what they found.
For me, the best thing about our malls is the stores that sell new as well as “previously owned” books.

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MEDIUM RARE JULLIE DAZA
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