Tuesday, December 18, 2007
It's beginning to look a lot like...Bangkok?
You know, I had hoped that my trip to Thailand would be a life-changing experience in some way, but what I never expected it to change my perspective on...Christmas shopping. But indeed, apparently the most lasting effect of my Thailand experience is that it's made me more tolerant of crowded shopping malls. This past weekend, I undertook the dreaded task of heading to Tyson's Corner, the biggest and baddest mall this side of the Potomac, to gather up the remaining items on my Christmas list. Given my previous nightmarish experiences with Christmas shopping in Birmingham, plus the fact that Tyson's seems to maintain a pretty high level of crazy on any given weekend, I was not looking forward to it at all. But I was pleasantly surprised: Getting into and out of the mall was amazingly efficient (Birmingham city planners should have come here and taken notes before designing their shopping centers, because spending an hour trying to get out of a parking lot during the holidays? Is ridiculous), and the mall itself, while definitely crowded and crazy, was still only about half as crazy as Bangkok's MBK Center, with its floors upon floors of teeny-tiny crowded stores, each blasting a different thumping dance song from its neon-emblazoned frontage. Each time I would start to feel overwhelmed by the crowds at Tyson's, I'd take a deep breath and tell myself, "This isn't nearly as crazy as MBK." And then, restored and revived, I was ready to continue my shopping expedition.
Oh, and? The gigantic poster of John Krasinski looking adorable in a striped scarf at the Gap also helped immensely in making the trip more tolerable.
You know, I had hoped that my trip to Thailand would be a life-changing experience in some way, but what I never expected it to change my perspective on...Christmas shopping. But indeed, apparently the most lasting effect of my Thailand experience is that it's made me more tolerant of crowded shopping malls. This past weekend, I undertook the dreaded task of heading to Tyson's Corner, the biggest and baddest mall this side of the Potomac, to gather up the remaining items on my Christmas list. Given my previous nightmarish experiences with Christmas shopping in Birmingham, plus the fact that Tyson's seems to maintain a pretty high level of crazy on any given weekend, I was not looking forward to it at all. But I was pleasantly surprised: Getting into and out of the mall was amazingly efficient (Birmingham city planners should have come here and taken notes before designing their shopping centers, because spending an hour trying to get out of a parking lot during the holidays? Is ridiculous), and the mall itself, while definitely crowded and crazy, was still only about half as crazy as Bangkok's MBK Center, with its floors upon floors of teeny-tiny crowded stores, each blasting a different thumping dance song from its neon-emblazoned frontage. Each time I would start to feel overwhelmed by the crowds at Tyson's, I'd take a deep breath and tell myself, "This isn't nearly as crazy as MBK." And then, restored and revived, I was ready to continue my shopping expedition.
Oh, and? The gigantic poster of John Krasinski looking adorable in a striped scarf at the Gap also helped immensely in making the trip more tolerable.
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