Just a quick xote on the xlog tonight. One of the oddities I've noticed here in Colombia (obviously, there are many - I'm keeping track of them and will periodically publish a collection when I've accumulated enough) is the extensive mall security. The first thing that happens when you walk into the mall is a bag check, the kind you'd encounter at a sports event or concert. If you're lucky, you might even get metal detected.
And then, when you exit certain stores (I've only been to the 2 huge Wal-Mart style places, so I don't know if this goes for smaller stores, though I doubt it), you're supposed to show your receipt, which the security guard signs. My first encounter with this part of mall security was the first time I went shopping at the mall, and declined plastic bags, purely out of habit - I actually needed some for use in garbage bins. Anyway, I was carrying something in a box, and after a couple minutes of lingual struggle, I figured out he was telling me I was supposed to put the box in a bag. A total reversal of North American culture, in which we're discouraged from using plastic bags. I've since learned that it's frowned upon around here to bring your own bags.
My second personal encounter with mall security came today, when I entered Exito, one of the Wal-Mart clones, and set off the sensors. After a fairly extensive search of my bag (they were very determined to find out what had caused the disturbance), the dude found a package of aspirin which I had bought previously (and at a different store), but still had some sort of tag on the inside which, apparently, one is supposed to remove upon purchase. Luckily the guy was friendly about it - for a transgression so severe as forgetting to take the tag off of a product I had paid for a day before at a different store, I could just as easily be detained in a dark basement mall jail, unable to communicate to explain myself, trapped for eternity!
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