5 a.m.?

WOW. I am in shock. Awe. Wonder. Amazed…… I don’t even know what to think anymore. My world just changed. Sleep? Who needs sleep? It suddenly struck me, I finally understood what is truly meant by the city that never sleeps. For goodness’ sake, I’m LIVING in it! I am in a whole new world where people go shopping on a weekday in the wee hours … and it’s oh-so-normal. Like, “who doesn’t do that?” kinda normal… well, except me. I’ve never done that. I’ve never even heard of a mall that stays open past midnight….nor has it ever occured to me that I would want to go shopping in the same time frame as I would enter a club. It’s like, “hey, this club sucks…let’s go shop instead.”

And there I was, standing at the grand revolting doors of the shopping mall at 3 a.m. staring at the “Opening Hours” sign where it’s printed boldly, 10a.m - 5a.m. Yup, there I was looking like I had just discovered the cure for cancer. Not just one mall, BUT the WHOLE area was buzzing with music, people, food, and cars and a million more taxis… WOW.

Fueled purely by adrenaline, I went through level after level and mall after mall of balenciaga handbags, christian louboutins, gucci watches, guess jeans, cheap no-brand tee’s, fake LV bags, plastic heels…..it was a crazy mixture of the cheap, the branded, the expensive and the fakes…My legs were exhausted to the point of collapsing. Wearing high heels and shopping definitely don’t go hand-in-hand. Add on the fact that given any other night, I should be sound asleep by now. But my brain was working overtime and seriously overwhelmed by amazement…..the only thing I could think of was “I’m in Shopping Paradise” and that thought alone made me giddy and my legs went into autopilot and just kept going and going. I could not believe it. Till 5 a.m.?! Even the movie theatres were still running and the last movie showing that night was at 4:40a.m.

Coming from a place where everything seems to die by 5 p.m. this was one hell of a shock. Culture shock anyone?