By: Lawrence Casiraya

IT was when I was around 14 years old I remember buying my first Swatch. I saved enough from my allowance along with discount coupons cut out from newspapers at that time.

The only place I know where to buy one was in SM North in Quezon City–specifically in the Annex area because I’ve seen a Swatch store when our teachers took us there during a class field trip to Manila.

A field trip then wouldn’t be complete without a visit to an SM mall.

I never went to Manila on my own before then, but in previous trips (by car or bus) I’ve always figured out that once you’ve seen it you know you’re already in Manila.

And so I skipped class one morning and instead hopped on a bus bound for Cubao, told the conductor to drop me off at SM North, hopped on the bus a few hours after and was back in Tarlac in time to show off my brand-spanking new Swatch to high school buddies who may have thought I was sick that day.

For people coming from the Northern provinces, it was then the first SM you can find as you enter the city–until SM began expanding in the provinces. In fact, SM Tarlac is set to open this year.

Through the years, SM North has largely overshadowed by more recent developments like SM Megamall and SM Mall of Asia. But with head-to-head competition from Ayala’s Trinoma, SM North has undergone major re-development.

The renovated SM North Annex was opened to the public in time for the holidays last December.

Now the whole of SM North is being billed as SM’s largest by far with a total area of more than 425,000 square meters, making it the third-largest mall in the world and of course, the biggest yet in the country, according to SM executives I interviewed during a recent visit to the new six-storey Annex.

It’s definitely a lot different from the place where I bought my first Swatch. Or the one place I remember was my favorite to go see a late-night movie (especially the not-so-popular ones) during my college years in nearby UP Diliman.

Here’s a video I took when I was given a brief tour of the ongoing developments at SM North.