In the Marketplace. Literally.

Your eyes deceive you not: the end of 2008's first day of trading at the Manila stock exchange ended with Mass.

Suffice it to say, it's one thing you won't see in New York.

In what the wires termed a "sluggish session," the Filipino market's main index fell 0.1 percent. Next week will see a slowdown of a different sort as hundreds of thousands pack the grounds of a basilica in the Asian capital for the annual festival of the Black Nazarene.

PHOTO: AP/Pat Roque

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