’Home Shopping TV’ meets ‘The Amazing Race’

Mom sometimes complains that I shop too much. When I see something I like, a struggle between my heart and mind ensues. But, more often than not, I am likely to buy. Recently, I read a piece of news that the Philippines has one of the world’s lowest savings rates. I guess Pinoys would rather shop than save.

Fact is, I’m like most Filipinos. Shopping, after perhaps texting, is the national obsession, like what soccer is to Brazilians.

I recently got a rare chance to shop and test how good I am at it. The good part was I was to shop not with my own money in one of the world’s greatest shopping havens, the city-state of Singapore.

It gets better: I would get more money if I proved to be really good at it.

As part of its effort to sell itself as a bargain-basement destination, the Singapore Tourism Board held an island-wide Sale Shopping Challenge. There were 17 teams with three members each from all over the world. Each team was given a list of 10 items to buy, including household goods, clothing, shoes, toys, electronics, food, jewelry, and food supplements, using a prepaid MasterCard credit card loaded with S$1,000.

The team that generated the most savings would bring home the top prize of S$10,000 cash.

This was Home Shopping TV meets Amazing Race. For a shopaholic, it doesn’t get any better.

So how does one prepare for such a contest?

Simple, by doing more shopping – window-shopping, that is. Two days before the Shopping Challenge, we were brought to four participating malls to test our skills at spotting bargains.

Trust me, it was not that easy. There was no room for impulse buying. We got stuff that we would normally ignore but which yielded big savings. And we were given only three hours to shop. Add to this the psychological burden of having to defend the title. Yes, the Philippines was the defending champion – somehow we were not surprised.

So the three of us decided who should do what. They would do the math, even talking in Mandarin if need be. I, who don’t particularly care about numbers, would carry the bags and, thanks to my years-old fixation with subways, figure out how to get where.

On the day of the Challenge we had everything down pat, from how much time we would spend in each mall to having the exact change ready for the subway fares. We were jittery but found some comic relief at the starting line where there was an official waiting to fire the gun. "Boy, they really take this seriously," I thought to myself.

Precisely at noon the gun barked and we ran to the first mall, a few feet from the starting line. Our hearts were racing, though I felt a bit ridiculous. "We were running like mad just to shop?" I thought to myself.

Our strategy was to buy first the products that got us big savings: a camera at S$299, down from S$899; a Swarovski necklace which was half off; and Chinese lanterns at S$9 from S$69. The bags got heavier and fuller, but the adrenalin rush kept us going. Years of carrying grocery bags also helped.

Like in the Amazing Race, we had a photographer in tow, which irked me a bit because I’m not used to having my photo taken during unguarded moments, like tying my shoes in the subway.

Surprisingly, there were some Pinoys in the malls who cheered us on. A Filipino family even shouted, "Kaya niyo yan." To which we smiled and I responded, "Kapagod!!"

We reached the finish line at 2:50 p.m. After dropping off the goods for the officials to tally, we were escorted to a bar to rest and refresh ourselves. Word was some teams had saved at least S$3,000. We slumped on the couch, on the verge of accepting defeat while waiting for the food to come.

Our spirits, however, perked up when we chatted with some of the Filipino waiters at the bar. I took this as a good omen.

Soon all the teams were called onstage to announce the winners. When our hostess, Denise Keller, announced that we were second runners-up, my mind went blank. I never won anything before.

We may not have successfully defended the title, but I think we proved our point, that Pinoys are mad-serious when it comes to shopping. Also we were in the top three, and our savings were much higher than the top winners last year.

The first runners-up were the Malaysians who found dresses marked down from S$300 to S$25. The difference between us and them was only S$300, and up to this day we still have these "if only" moments.

The winner was definitely a surprise: Australia. No one thought they were serious contenders because they were the most easygoing among the teams. While the rest of us were running around, they seemed to be happy just strolling.

You’d think that with our share of the prize money, we would be headed to the malls. Well, not us and our Malaysian competitor turned kulitan buddy Rina Omar, who hosts a slapstick comedy show called The Weekend Quickie and who won second place.

"No more!!! No more!!" said Rina who seemed to have associated the word shopping with hair-pulling. We just spent the rest of the night bonding over drinks while sitting on the benches along Orchard Road. We were raving about how safe it is to hang out in the city even in the wee hours. We talked about why we can’t do this in our respective capitals, and the similarities between Bahasa Malaysia and Tagalog words when it comes to the different parts of the face. We ended the night by discussing politics in our respective homelands. The Malaysians find our President cute.

While we were on stage some photographers were signaling to us to pose with the very "scripted" raised fists. Of course we ignored them and just smiled for the camera, for as we murmured to ourselves, "Di kami baduy noh."

A big thanks, also, to our Singaporean guide Caroline Koh who really took good care of us.

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E-mail the author at ketsupluis@yahoo.com.