Having turned off Highway 13 onto Highway 313 (being the third highway which turns off Highway 13 - isn't having a highway numbering system grand?) we should start seeing signs for the town of Carpet-On-The-Wold. Towns like this used to be on the highway but because everyone wants to make good time while not having a good time, these towns frequently complain about a past which never was, which is based on a form of nostalgia for a thing which never existed.
We however are not going to drive into Carpet-On-The-Wold partly because it is a boring town which only has a few houses and the usual Imperial, Commercial, and Royal Hotels, as well as the fake Irish pub, the Fisty McPunchup; which is an off the shelf flat pack Irish pub complete with flat packed tat. We are also not going to drive into Carpet-On-The-Wold partly because I have no idea what a wold is, nor why one would want to carpet over it.
Just off the turnoff for Carpet-On-The-Wold Road, is a generic shopping precinct which has both a Hammerbarn and Super J-Mart Hair Care and Tyre Centre; as well as an Eastfields with all of the usual supermarkets like Woolard's, and Try N Save, and the usual tat shops that used to occupy the high street of Carpet-On-The-Wold before they all moved far out of town and into the Eastfields in the name of 'convenience'. Locals love driving out of town to go to exactly the same shops that they used to visit in town.
I warn you that once we have parked the station wagon and gone inside, that this Eastfields will look like every other Eastfields in the world and its only concession to the country that it happens to be in will be a multicoloured swirly logo in the shape of an animal which used to live here before they plonked down the Eastfields.
We park the car in a car park which has coloured lights which tell you if there is a car in the spot or not; which you probably could have already been able to tell by looking to see if there is a car in the spot or not. We then take the escalator and enter into a wonderful land, filled with two hundred specialty shops which all specially sell things which you could have gotten at any other Eastfields. All of them are scientifically designed; with doof-doof music which isn't good enough to be playing in a nightclub but where the lyrics all seem to contain references to being in a nightclub; and where the music is just loud enough to drown out your own internal monologue, thus making you spend more money. Remember capitalist consumers, you can not be what you can not buy.
Although some of the floor space is devoted to the food court, some to the supermarkets and department stores¹, and some to the big variety stores, most of the rest of the shops will be for women's fashion or jewellery, and if you are lucky there will be one book store, three men's clothing shops, two shops for computer games, a toy shop, and Top Dollar, Hot Dollar, Silly Willy's Two Dollar Store, and a bank which will almost never have anyone who can help you with anything more complicated than normal transactions.
The obvious question is why I want to go here while on a road trip and the answer to that is that I am hungry. We could spend ₱25 at the O'Fools Burger Shack and get a Big Fool but why do that when you can get a muffin, a banana and a properly made coffee for less than a fiver.
I'll let you go and walk around for a bit; maybe get some breakfast.
...
What did you get? I got a spring roll, a muffin, a banana, a copy of The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, a can of Mary Berry's Heart Exploder², and today's copy of The Globe newspaper.
Of particular note in every single Eastfields in the world, is the proliferation of teenage nerd herds, goth herds, jock herds, and prep herds. In general, most of these herds have no money to speak of and will roam around the Eastfields in a circular direction; occasionally coming across each other and having pitched yelling arguments using language that would make sailors blush and army veterans want to join monasteries and nunneries.
We will be back on our way up Highway 313. There's a road that goes to Lake Ennui which is a nice drive.
¹some department stores have a "bored husbands' corner"
²now with nine kinds of sugar, super extra caffeine, taurine, guarana, and tex-mex-hexadrine³.
³which is a name that I totally made up but have subsquently found out is an immunosuppressant.
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