Miss Plan B

Turns out I didn’t get too much sleep; woke up once at 2:45am then again around 4am, waiting for the alarm to go off. Right before I finally got up at 6.30 I had a dream that I was inside H&M and found a tuxedo in my size and a ton of Lanvin bags for my friend in KL. It was purple. She had told me yesterday that she’d wanted me to grab any bag I could find for her. What can I say, all the TV commercials and write ups all over the web have left a huge Lanvin impression on my subconscious!

So on a drizzly and decidedly cooler Saturday morning, I’m at the Americana at Brand shopping complex around 7.30. Not a single soul, except for employees still unloading boxes, is in front of the door. Did I get my dates wrong?! Am I still in a dream?

Silly wabbit, the line is over there…

and I mean all the way over there…

A few minutes after I get to the end of the line, security comes out to give us wristbands with our designated time.

We’re to queue up again in front of the store right around our time slot, and once inside we’ll be given 15 minutes to shop. And it’s limit 2 per item. I’m thinking there won’t be anything left by the time my group makes it to the front door. But as we’re all shivering outside in the rain, mall security brings out coffee and pastries…hope is revived!

So if we’re all given a specific time to check back in, why are we all still standing in line? It’s like we’re terrified to lose our spots! Anyway, to kill time I spot a few Chanel bags in the mix–hehe.

About 40 minutes after I first get in line, we are moving. Word gets back to us that after 8am, we’re allowed to go into the store to buy menswear only. If we want to buy womenswear, we’d have to wait according to our wristband. And the line starts to move past the signs, food truck, and lovely grounds.

Finally the end is near…I can hear DJ music inside the doors already. Everyone's pumped!

Then all hell breaks loose. H&M staff announces that we can now go to the front of the door if we just want to shop in men’s; the main line is for womenswear. So a bunch of us do so. I still have 4 hours before I can shop in women’s so why not kill time in menswear, right? Anyway, I am third in this new line at the door and I can smell victory…

but NOOOOOOO! The two women in front of me get in but I’m stopped dead in my track by the security guy with a stopwatch. He tells me they’ve exceeded the number of people they can let inside the store and that I’d have to go back to the end of the line even just to shop in the men’s section. Uh uh, no way! So I negotiate for a few minutes and he allows me and the people now behind me to stay outside the door until he could let more bodies inside. So close and yet so far…

Then some loser shows up and starts yelling at security to dismantle my line. He accuses us of lying about going to the men’s section only to get in and weasel our way into womenswear. Geez. It’s only shopping, people! But he doesn’t stop shouting so I have a Norma Rae moment and break out in an impromptu Lincoln-Douglas debate against him right in front of the store. The people behind me are cheering me on, but extra security comes out and tells us that, for the moment, only MEN could bypass the line to shop in menswear. Believe me, there are now a lot of unhappy people behind me.

So that’s what I did this early rainy morning. Did you have a better start to your day?

But really, you just want to know what happened to the rest of my story, right, because obviously the first photo is a picture of a shopping bag.

I’m heading back to meet my noon group for womenswear now and will continue the story later. Let’s just say I always have a backup plan. They don’t call me Miss Plan B for nothing :D!

November 20, 2010