On the way there we admired all the various fruits growing from the neighbours trees and I got to planning a midnight raid...
Once at our destination, which is incidentally a combination of supermarket and a 'Magic Fried Chicken and OK Noodle Bar' (no such concerns about 'healthy' food branding here) we began playing the "I wonder where this product is made" game. This game was developed out of an interest in, and awareness of, all the different branded products here. Certainly the big 'inner city' CITC supermarket has the same brands as NZ, including Pams, but the 'suburbs' stores brands are largely unknown and many have smiling Asian people on them and foriegn languages that I don't understand. So we got to playing our new game and it became quite engrossing. A lot of biscuits, chips and the like from Fiji, frozen chickens from Brasil, cordial satchets from Chile, Arnotts biscuits from Indonesia, sugar from Thailand, soap and bathroom products from Malaysia.
But glad to say the flies were local! Which is just as well as they are having a huge advertising campaign here to "Go Local". Which is indeed what I'll do if I'm in the market for a ukelele, and funnily enough I am, and have started putting money under the mattress for an eight stringed $260 one, or perhaps a woven 'bible' bag, a statue of a Maori warrior (all of which have enormous appendages - what is with that?), or the local beer, which is more expensive than Heineken!
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| Janine playing Supermarket Game No. 1 at Foodland in town. |
Of course Supermarket Game No 2 is to check the expiry dates of all food products. In fact the beauty of that game is that it can be played elsewhere as well. I bought some cold medicine from a chemist recently, advertised at $20, but got it for $15 because it had recently expired - I wasn't complaining!
It does make you think what happens to all those expired products back home and what a waste it is to bin them. Perhaps they don't? Perhaps they ship them over here! The city supermarket actually has a back room that sells all the expired products. We've bought curry powder, cereal, chips, and other things from there and have survived to tell the tale. We do feed them to the kids first though to check whether they ok? Which reminds me somthing similar I've recently heard people do to check whether the lagoon fish is ok to eat as there are issues around that. They cut a small slice of fish and leave it on the floor and if the ants leave it alone then so do they - ingenious!
So having exhausted that game, and with purchases in hand, we headed off for home, stopping at the park enroute to pick some beautiful smelling frangipani's for the bathroom. A wonderfully pleasant little jaunt, amde especially so knowing that tomorrow is another day off for Queen's Birthday. God on you Liz! My question is, when she finally passes on, will we get her successors holiday in its place. I'd feel cheated if that wasn't the case!
To end I must add that we are infrequent Coke drinkers, being health nuts and all, but it's been one of those days, and nights, unfortunately. The Rugby League Club next door had their prize giving last night and it was LOUD! Thankfully they stop strictly at midnight as Sunday is the Sabbath and they honour that. While sleeping through it the kids were up early this morning so damn it, we deserve a coke, or two! Actually, I notice a bottle of rum on the shelf that father-in-law left here...
Till later, kia manuia
Oh dear husband did you have to tell all we were shopping for ladies hygiene products, as yo use the soap too! THe back room of the Supermarket is great, although it is not so much out dated as a little 'crushed'. Nacho chips are around $7 (Pams buget brand) so if you can pick them up for $2 I say yay! Another game for the supermarket shopping is to make a list of all the items you need/want and then predict how many of these said items are unavailable... And as it is now 9pm and we still have not opend the coke maybe it was jus a walk we needed and not the sugary naughtiness of coke...
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