Here comes the occasional emo post of this blog.

My first encounters with SM North was way back in high school. When the school has a field trip, on the way home, the bus will stop over at what us promdis used to call "SM City." And it was awesome. You see, that's the difference between the city and the province. The awesome malls. And SM North was quite big.

Anyway, while most of my schoolmates would hit Bench or Marcella for whatever trinkets to bring home, I'd go straight to the World of Fun arcade in SuperSales Club. They had this game you see, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. It was based from a cartoon/comic back in the early 90s. I'd buy five tokens to play that game. (I could only afford five at four pesos each)

That habit spilled over to college when I went to QC to study in UP. And that's when most of my SM North memories happened.

SM North became a major landmark for me. I had to walk by it every time I go to school. Back then, I didn't have Internet (or a PC for that matter). So I had this favorite Internet cafe behind SM North. It was ran by a tomboyish lady who we call Ate. A lot of research and papers were done in that store. And also hours and hours of Counter Strike, Half-Life, Serious Sam, Battle Realms, Warcraft III, and StarCraft.

Also behind SM North, was a carinderia I used to frequent. It was tackily named Point Point after the Pinoy term "turu-turo." They had the best grilled liempo. And they loved me there. I always get big servings. Haha. A few blocks away from that is a pancitan place called Tai-Tai Estero-Style cuisine or whatever. They had the best lechon kawali ever. They also make good pancit (they're better known for the pancit).

Still in that area, was a Playstation rental place that doesn't have a name. We finished Metal Gear Solid, Megaman X4, X5, and X6 there. We also got addicted to Bust-a-Groove and fighting game called Bushido Blade. There were a lot of pesky kids in that place. They always thought we played the weirdest games. Later they got addicted to the games we play. They respected us a lot. To them, we were probably gaming gods. It was in this shop where we discovered a crazy Japanese game called Incredible Crisis.

Just in front of that Playstation place was a hardcore gym called Perfect Shape. That's where Jeff and I used to work out. If you haven't noticed it yet, when I say "we" in this post, it's usually Jeff and me. Friendly people, rusty equipment, absent air-conditioning. That place was the best. I got at my fittest working out at that place.

Around third year college, I finally got a PC of my own. Unfortunately, still no Internet. By that time, Ate's Internet cafe was gone. She said it was too stressful and her business partners (friends) did not quit their jobs as she did so she was left alone to tend to the business. This was also the time we got addicted to downloading stuff. Anime pictures, mp3s, Internet babes... The works.

Not a lot of Internet cafes let you download and save your stuff back then. And flash disks were just gadgets we used to dream about that time. Luckily, there was an Internet cafe called Tomato Bytes. It was run by Kuya Rhom, and it was a console gaming and LAN gaming place plus Internet cafe. There, we played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Onimusha, Devil May Cry, Tekken Tag, Street Fighter EX3, Capcom Vs. SNK, and other PS2 games. We also befriended other gaming dudes there, guys we only know by faces.

Speaking of gaming friends, while still quite addicted to console gaming that time, we made a couple of friends in the World of Fun arcade (mentioned earlier) over Tekken Tag Tournament. It was an out-of-school youth called Butchukoy and a that time student from FEU guy who we call Julia Guy (His Tekken character was Julia Chang).

Ok, so roughly 700 words later, I'm still just at the outskirts of SM North memories. I think I'll have to cut this post into multiple parts. Until then!