Day 312: Man On A Mission

Today was pretty mellow at school actually, but I had a busy evening afterwards. Tonight was 'Get All Your Christmas Shopping and Preparations For Boracay Finished' Night, and I had a lot on my plate. I hit LaFesta as a Man On A Mission. With list in hand I strategically hit the mall, carefully targeting each store in a fashion that would not induce backtracking later on. I was quite the whirlwind and managed to get a lot done, including purchasing Addie's present even though she was shopping *with me!* Go me!

We're doing Secret Santa at work this week as well so I needed to pick up a gift for that too. I decided that a gift certicate to the movies would be a good, safe choice and so I headed on over to the cinema in the mall. I ran into Tim in the lobby there and we ended up having quite the adventure trying to get these gift certificates.

The girl at the ticket counter told us that they only sell tickets in groups of 10 (what the...?) and that was definitely out of the 15,000 Won price range for the Secret Santa. Well on the way out we saw a sign (in Korean) that looked like "Couples Packages" were available, and this seemed like exactly what we were looking for. Well we inquired about this with the Guest Services desk and were immediately directed to the Manager. He seemed to be rather confused by our request, and upon pointing out the sign to him, we were quickly ushered into the....back staff area of the theatre!??

Following this was a good fifteen minutes of humorous confusion as the Manager and some other Suit ran around the back office looking through drawers, filing cabinets, safes, everything for what I imagined was the stack of gift certificates. Tim and I were seated at this desk surrounded by other Korean employees who were busy crunching numbers. This was strange! It was like we were the first people ever to ask about getting these certificates, and if we weren't, do all customers get brought back to the 'behind the scenes' of the theatre?

A few phone calls were made (who were they phoning? The theatre's head office in Seoul or something to seek clearance from a higher authority?) and a few minutes later a Korean usher boy showed up. He spoke English and helped us to translate what we were wanting to buy. All seemed to be on the right track but man it took a long time! Another 15 minutes for so went by until we were finally presented with the certificates! What a hassle for all those staff!

Christmas/Boracay shopping was finished shortly after that, and Addie and I celebrated our productive evening with a coffee at Starbucks. And hey, only four more days left! Woohoo!