Spent some time in Mega Mall today and had forgotten how crowded malls can get in Metro Manila. Went to Kitchen for lunch. They serve Asian/Filipino fusion food (like penne in kesong puti with dilis). The food was okay (a little too much oil, like most of Filipino cuisine) and we had a rude welcome-back-to-the-philippines homecoming courtesy of a cockroach roaming around our table. The management apologized with a slice of cake. Yeah, sure, we'll be back.

Also, saw X2 and now fully understand why they kept the plot under wraps: someone wants to kill all the mutants in the world by using Cerebro to pick them out one by one and destroy them by screaming at their heads. This forces an alliance between Magneto's and Dr. Xavier's mutants, which is forged over some smores and a barbecue. Each mutant gets to showoff their skills (interestingly, an early scene in a movie shows Dr. X cautioning one of the mutants NOT to showoff) but we've seen what most of them can do in the first movie, which leaves only Nightcrawler's teleportation skills (and Famke Jennsen's philtrum) really worth seeing. Can't complain. It was less than two dollars a pop.

Then, onto the shopcrawl. They've moved out a lot of the furniture stores and replaced them with computer and cellphone stores, making that section look more like Virra Mall than Crate and Barrel. All a good move, since that's what people go shopping for. Then, there are several bizaare shops I didn't walk into anymore, like this Millionaires in Business store (or, was that in Galleria) that looked too shady to inspect. I didn't have time to rummage through Surplus Store. Sigh.

Couldn't get through Powerbooks, which was crowded with people reading (not browsing) off the shelves. And, I couldn't muscle my way inside Book Sale, what with all the teenagers who are savoring the last weeks of summer break, gorging on the latest issues of Mega, Metro, Cosmo and Mega's new men's magazine Manual.

Incidentally, the airconditioning was superb.