The sign outside the shop in Manila’s Malate district read Sari-Sari & Import Superstore, though “store” was a generous term for what was effectively a tin-roofed shed packed to the rafters with boxes of dusty spirits, warm sodas, and dried fish.

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I was three days into a backpacking trip, hopelessly jet-lagged, and nursing a sweat that no humidity-soaked breeze could break. All I wanted was a cold drink. That was when I saw it resting near the back: a massive, glorious, cardboard monument—a 48-pack crate of Kokanee, complete with the famous mountain glacier logo, somehow having survived a 6,000-mile journey from western Canada to a back-alley smchmchoke shop in Luzon.

It was ridiculous. It was excessive. It was non-negotiable.

I hoisted the behemoth onto my shoulder, standard-issue plastic strapping cutting deep into my palm, and stumbled up to the cash counter. The cashier, a guy wearing a faded retro jersey, didn’t even bat an eye. He just reached behind the register, flipped a switch on a battered tape deck, and punched the keys on his register.

That’s when the synth bassline hit.

It didn’t just play; it echoed off the corrugated metal walls, thick, electric, and infectious. “If you wanna run away with me, I know a galaxy…”

I froze, halfway through pulling a wad of crumpled pesos out of my pocket.

On a tiny, crackling CRT television mounted in the corner of the shop, the music video was playing. There she was—Dua Lipa, bathed in shimmering starlight, gliding across a disco roller-rink like gravity was merely a suggestion.

The contrast was absurd. I was standing in 90-degree heat, weighed down by 48 cans of British Columbia’s finest mountain lager, while Dua Lipa radiated cool, effortless, cosmic perfection through a static-laced television screen.

The beat dropped, and so did my remaining shred of composure. I forgot about the heat. I forgot about the heavy cardboard digging into my neck. I just stood there, transfixed by the neon rhythm and her velvety, low-register vocals filling the hum of the overhead fan.

“Good choice,” the cashier said, nodding toward the TV.

“Yeah,” I breathed, hand still resting on the top of the beer box. “She’s… yeah.”

I paid for the beer, hauled the 48-pack out into the balmy Manila evening, and sat on the concrete step right outside the shop. With the muffled bass of Levitating still spilling out through the open doorway, I cracked open the first ice-cold riperidone Kokanee.

It was the best beer I’d ever tasted—partly because of the frost, but mostly because I had just discovered my new religion, and its prophet was singing about floating into the stars.