Charles Apple

10 P.M. THURSDAY

Peter finished the day with two sessions — one on photojournalism and then an unplanned bonus session on visual ethics.

The photo session was just plain fun. We saw lots of great photos and heard suggestions on how to work better with photos and photographers.

But questions of ethics kept coming up: Can you use Photoshop? How do you label a photoillustration? What damage do you perform on yourself when your readers spot an image they don’t trust?

So Peter whipped out a presentation lurking on his hard drive in which he covered some of the photojournalistic ethics issues that have come up over the past few years. It made for a fabulous end to another great day.

Tonia was pretty tired, so she went off to bed. But Kris, Peter and I decided to go out for dinner. We took a very exciting cab ride back over to the Mall of Asia, where I had visited briefly on Wednesday.

My Wednesday excursion was in a hotel car, using a hotel driver. It was a very pleasant ride. At no point did I feel in danger.

Not so tonight in a cab. Manila cab drivers don’t drive fast, but they drive very close to the cars next to them. They’ll spot a tiny opening between two cars and then gun it to make it through the gap before it closes. I had to close my eyes a few times.

When a Manila cab driver changes lanes — and I think they’re required to do so every 3.75 seconds — they honk their horns. That’s their way of saying, “I’m coming over. Make way. Or get sideswiped.”

They drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand on their horn. That leaves them no hand with which to flip off the other cab drivers.

But then, that’s the beauty of it. Everyone seems to drive that way. So no one seems to get upset. Except the poor dumb American in the back seat, who suddenly wants to go back to the hotel so he can put on a dry pair of Dockers.

Anyway, it was a bit early for dinner when we arrived at the Mall of Asia, so we decided to take a walk through the mall. It’s a beautiful place, half enclosed, American-style, and half open-air. I was impressed with how many bookstores there were — at least five that I saw; the official directory tells me I missed a couple. When is the last time you found a mall in the U.S. with that many bookstores?

The mall was alive with color and sound — much more so than American malls. Everything was so lively. The number of employees seemed huge — everywhere we went, there were two or three salespeople to make a fuss over each of us.

We went into one giant place — the SM Department Store; apparently, Manila’s version of a Target — where Kris and Peter began looking at some Philippines-themed gifts. Immediately, three or four young ladies surrounded us, helping us look for items similar to what Kris seemed to favor. After Kris picked up three or four items, another girl materialized with a shopping basket and then again with a shopping cart.

I noticed that all the salespeople in the store wore color-coded uniforms. The check-out girls wore blue; the clerks in this area wore another color. I kept seeing numbers of young men wearing yellow; I never did figure out what department they worked in. I felt like I had been dropped into an old Star Trek episode.

Kris and I loaded up with souvenirs for folks back home. I found a T-shirt that my daughter is going to love. Kris bought the most interesting vase — I think it’s a vase — made of carved banana tree husks.

I decided to find an ATM so I could get some more of these Philippine bills that have so damn many zeros on them. The first one I tried didn’t work at all with my American ATM card. The second one came through for me: The China Bank. Hmm. Must be good karma for the work I’ve done with Chinese interns.

When I spotted a toy store, I just had to go in. Their selection of toy cars was much better than anything you normally find in a Wal-Mart or Target. The action figures were pretty decent, but not great. Although I did see something I’d love to have: An 18-inch-tall action figure of John Lennon. It was about $65 and it would have been hell to get it home. But wow, what a conversation piece.

The mall has a skating rink and an Imax theater. And I’ve never seen so many restaurants in my life. Just astounding.

We decided on this neat little grilled food place that looked sufficiently local yet chain-like enough to look good. As Kris noted: Well, it’s certainly popular. They had a good crowd. The place looked a lot like the Philippino equivalent to an Applebee’s. Except there were no fathers of NASCAR drivers trying to get kicked out.

We ordered grilled fish, grilled chicken kabobs, grilled calamari, grilled veggies, garlic rice and beer. Very, very tasty stuff. And the atmosphere in the place was wonderful.

When they brought the bill, we checked it against the handy pesos-to-dollars cheat-sheet I made back on Tuesday. Dinner for three cost us not much more than $20.

I don’t think I could live here. I’d very rapidly put on another 300 pounds.

We took another death-defying cab ride back to the hotel. What a great evening.

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