Coming out (with) tops!

Important note: So I spent a total of four hours in three malls and I did not buy a single pair of shoes. Ha!

Sorry, I needed to activate my GPS (Guilt Prevention Statement) before proceeding further with the post.

When I was young, I often heard Mom make a particular statement after she came back from shopping.

"Bahut paise kharch kar diye. Maza aa gaya!" ("Spent a lot of money! What fun!")

I'd be puzzled with the weird nature of the statement, and she'd say "You won't understand. Not earning, and yet spending money is just a different kind of high."

And now I think I finally understand what she meant.

So yesterday I'd gone to the malls to look for accessories for baby Aish. Two baby shops later, I found something I liked - little fox boots for babies. They were brown boots with fur (fake I hope!) lining, which probably wouldn't go with the 35 wedding lehengas that relatives seem to have got for her, but they were incredibly stylish. (Besides, what do you expect from someone who goes to buy gold jewellery and comes out with an ipod nano?) The problem was - the pair for 6-9 month-old babies had one boot missing. So I found the only sales assistant they had, and told him the problem.

"There's one boot missing."

"Err... okay let me go find it."

Before I could tell him that I didn't mean "one boot missing" in the sense that one would have to "go find it" but more in the "please show me another pair" sense, he'd disappeared into the jungles to go fox-hunting. Fifteen minutes later, there was still no sign of him. The counter staff were busy with the looooooong queue of parents - expecting and otherwise (and they say Singapore doesn't have enough babies!). So I had to give up.

You know how there are people who go shopping to buy something for themselves but end up buying stuff only for other people? Well, I'm not one of those people. I decided to vent off the "missing boot" steam by spending money elsewhere. So I entered this clothes store in Suntec City - one I'd often seen but never really explored. The salesgirl - dressed in what I'd call a Japanese doll costume - was a real darling. She patiently found the colour and size I was looking for, of four different tops, and waited outside the trial room while I tried them on.

You know how when you buy a book online, they send you recommendations on what else they think you'd like? In Singapore, they do that in the clothes stores. As you try on the clothes you have picked, you are startled by more clothes being flung over the top of the door with a sweet "Miss, you may want to try these too!" And this is not just a random process. They actually look at the kind of clothes you have picked, get an idea of your taste and so the clothes they fling over the door are the kind you would actually like. So I spent a good half an hour trying on the seven tops I'd been armed with.

So in the end, when I came out of the trial room and handed her the small hill of tops, she gave me a sad smile and said, "None?"

"All." I said.

The kind of high you get from seeing someone's eyes light up the way hers did can only be surpassed by the kind of psychotic high you get when you spend a lot of money (let me put it this way - they gave me a lifetime membership card) a week after you quit your job.

Maza aa gaya! :D