Curses and Cucumbers and Carrots, Oh My!

I know I’ve talked about grocery shopping in Sri Lanka before (here), but now that I’ve been here a while, I feel like it’s time to revisit it, specifically with my trip to the store yesterday.

I do know that we are fortunate to have actual grocery stores here. For that, I owe a HUGE shout out to British colonialism and David Sime Cargill who started a warehouse, import, and wholesale store in 1844. In most other countries in this region, getting groceries means going to a shop that has meat, then one that has bread, then one that has produce, then one that has eggs, and then who knows how many other shops to find everything one needs. I could definitely do that here, as well, but thanks to Mr. Cargill, I have Cargill’s Food City and one or two other chains of grocery stores to frequent. Since I also have three Little Explorers and approximately zero patience, I am eternally grateful to Mr. Cargill.

All that being said, getting groceries in this country still is no easy task. I used to be an obsessive menu planner and coupon clipper. I actually enjoyed the whole process of making a list, putting coupons in order, and knowing what was for dinner every week. That all came to a screeching halt when we moved here. First off, there are no coupons. Fine. I can deal with that. The real issue is that, while I make a list, I can no longer be bound to it, nor make a menu based on it. I can’t guarantee that the things on my list will be in the store, even if they were there last week. I don’t know which produce will be fresh and which will be a bit past its prime. I just don’t know what’s going to happen once I push through those doors and grab a shopping cart. Shall I demonstrate with an example? Allow me to take you inside my head during my most recent grocery buying experience:

Thanks, old dude in the white sarong and jacket whose job it is to open the door. I’m going to miss you. Have you considered getting your visa and moving to the States to be a greeter at Wal-Mart? I’ll bet they let you keep the sarong with the uniform blue vest.

Oooh, the produce looks nice today. I love living on a tropical island where the fruit is so yummy and tropical. Pineapples are in season. I wish I wasn’t allergic. Perhaps I’ll get one for the rest of the family. Dragonfruit. I love dragonfruit. Here are cucumbers. I’ll get a bunch of those for Gertrude Bell since she loves them so much. Carrots, check. Apples, check. Mangoes and papaya, check. Onions and bell pepper, or as they call it here, capsicum, check. Capsicum is a weird word. Ok, now to line up and get this stuff weighed and priced.

I’ll just get behind this old lady with the cart full of produce. Maybe it won’t take as long as I imagine. I’d better push my cart up to the side to be out of the way of other shoppers. Ooh, I guess I should get closer before that lady in the red blouse cuts in front of me. Obviously, I’m not in line if there are more than three inches between me and the old lady. The International Man of Intrigue uses the euphemism “butts to nuts” to describe lines here, but, as I have none of the latter, and as my brain is supposed to be PG, I’ll refrain. Good, the old lady is finished. Wait, what is she saying? Something in Sinhalese. Oh, that is a scary look. What? WHAT?? Oh. My. God. I think she just cursed me. She did! She gave me the evil eye and cursed me and I was just trying to buy cucumbers! What the heck?! I’m sorry I’m foreign! I’m sorry I smiled at you! I’m sorry I have to buy groceries and now I’m cursed! Aaaagh!

Okay, the produce is weighed. Calm down. On to the noodles. I really want some soba noodles but I bet they don’t have those here. Nope. Tons of ramen. What are these bags? “Special Noodles.” More “special noodles.” I have no idea what that means. Hey, Sri Lanka…If you tell all the noodles they’re special, they’re going to think everything they do is perfect. You want a bunch of noodles who think they all deserve the tee ball cricket trophy just for participating? No? Well then stop labeling them all special. While you’re at it, maybe consider getting some soba noodles, okay?

 

Mmmm. Maldivian dried fish, complete with eyeballs, on display on an endcap. Won’t see that in the States.

I’m hot. Why is it that I sweat as much getting groceries as I do exercising? Move over Jillian Michaels and your 30 Day Shred. Dorothy Gale’s 30 Minute Shop is coming for you!

Okay, now I need yogurt and cheese. Aaah, they have lots of curd. Who knew it could somewhat replace both Greek yogurt and sour cream in my diet. I’m glad there’s no nutrition info on the side. Here’s the brand I like. Should I buy the stuff in the terra cotta pot with the rubber band holding the cover on or the one in the unsealed plastic container? We’ll base that on expiration. Well, this one is expired, so the plastic tub it is! Good. Now, cheese. I really want some feta cheese. I don’t care if it costs nine dollars. I am totally hungry for pasta with feta cheese. NO! Of course! The one day I am willing to pay exorbitant prices for feta cheese and there is none! Fine. Just fine.

What am I listening to? What is this music? I can’t possibly be hearing what I think I’m hearing. Oh, but I am. Get a load of this. Traumatizing, at best.

 

Frozen foods. Five hundred kinds of chicken sausages. One brand of chicken nuggets, and why are they so tiny? I mean, it would take an entire box just to fill up Arthur Dent. Maybe they’ll have those yummy chicken fingers stuffed with some sort of curry mashed potatoes they had last week. Nope. Of course not. What I wouldn’t give for frozen pizza. Oh, well. Really, I just need to finish my shopping. I need to get out of here before I lose my mind, or before that curse kicks in, but first I have to grab eggs off the unrefrigerated shelf. Hmm. That doesn’t really bother me anymore. Weird. I guess that’s a good thing.

CHECKOUT! I made it. No, lady, I do not have exact change. What is it with the fascination for having exact change? Every single place I go, ever, wants you to always be able to magically produce exact change. Please, stop trying to look into my wallet like I have it, too! I need those small bills sometimes, okay. Don’t make me feel guilty. I’m already cursed. Doesn’t that count for something?

And there you have it, Fellow Adventurers. Exhausting. I’m going to put my feet up and sip on a Coke Light while I cool off. Think of me when you’re cooking dinner tonight, especially if you’re making frozen pizza.

Homesickness and Randomness

Yes, I know, Fellow Adventurers, AWOL again. I’ve been pretty grouchy lately and it’s hard for me to write a funny blog post when the only humor I have is the biting, sarcastic kind. Nothing is really wrong, I’m just generally kind of out of sorts. Kevin is gone. I haven’t heard her since we got back from India. I miss her wakeup call. I miss America and stuff like cheese and Target and restaurants that open for dinner before 7:30 pm. I don’t need that stuff to be happy, I just kind of feel a bit nostalgic for all of that lately. I love living overseas and I will be sad when our time here ends, but I think it’s part of the human condition to miss one’s homeland. I'm pretty sure people have been doing it since the first cavemen walked over ice floes to other continents. That’s why people call their home countries the Motherland and wax poetic about it throughout human history. I totally understand why people kiss the ground when they return to the land of their birth. It doesn’t matter how rotten things were in your motherland, it’s somehow part of your soul. I think the Irish are the biggest offenders. (See Angela's Ashes or pretty much anything written by an Irish expat.) Lucky for me, I’m about 98% German. Luckier for me, part of that other 2% is Irish and is enough to give me a really cool maiden name and the ability to wax poetic with the best of them. The jury is still out on which side gave me my mad alcohol consumption skills. (See, that was pretty funny…now we’re getting somewhere.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that I haven’t been very inspired by the idea of blogging lately. I did start writing a piece about the henchmen working on our plumbing. They’re still at it, so I’ll save it until all the hijinks are over, hopefully sooner rather than later. It’s been going on for almost three weeks now, though, so it could be a while. In the mean time, how about some random weird snippets of our life that really don’t fit anywhere else?

-When we first moved here and were staying at the residence hotel, I was very worried that our kids’ large inflatable pool rings would seem like “too much” in the hotel pool. One afternoon, we saw a family give something to the pool boy to inflate. The poor kid spent the next thirty minutes blowing up an inflatable raft with his mouth. When I say inflatable raft, I don’t mean the kind you float around on, napping. I mean an actual boat. After the pool boy finished and went inside (I’m assuming to find an oxygen tank), the family climbed in and proceeded to use oars to paddle around the pool. Tiny inflatable inner tubes? Yeah, we’re good.

-Remember that time Amelia Earhart threw up just before we arrived at the Taj Mahal? I neglected to mention that she rallied and ate four plates of Chinese noodles for lunch.

-Did you know there are thousands of varieties of bananas? In the U.S., almost all the bananas we eat are Cavendish variety, and the small percentage of the rest are primarily made up of what we call plantains. In Sri Lanka, Cavendish bananas are much harder to find. While there are many different kinds of bananas eaten on the island, including red ones, most of the bananas here are the Kolikuttu. They are much smaller than Cavendish bananas, about four inches long, and about a half inch to an inch thicker than what we’re used to. They taste different, too. They’re not bad, but after growing up on Cavendish, I’m sick of the short, fat little buggars.

-Pretty much everyone in this country wears flip flops all day, every day. Case in point: Almost every road construction worker I’ve seen is wearing a hard hat and flip flops. Safety first!

-Everywhere I go in Sri Lanka, I see mothers out with their babies. The babies are usually wearing shorts or sundresses and a knitted stocking cap. Now, this is a tropical island. It’s hot here, Fellow Adventurers. The average temperature is 80 degrees, and these poor tiny things are wearing toasty warm knitted woolen caps with little pompoms on the top. I always want to pull up next to them and snatch the hats off the babies and drive away, eventually collecting a car full of little knitted stocking caps that I would send to babies in Siberia, kind of like Robin Hood for sweaty babies. Babies wearing hats on 90 degree days is such a normal thing that the other day, when we were out driving and I spotted a baby without a hat on, I screeched at The International Man of Intrigue, “LOOK! That baby’s head is uncovered!!! It’s going to catch pneumonia! Someone call Lankan Social Services or whatever they have here!” The International Man of Intrigue sighed. He’s used to me by now. For what it’s worth, he thinks the hat business is weird, too. His theory is that if babies wear hats when they’re small, they get used to being super hot, so once they grow out of the hats, the blasting tropical island heat doesn’t seem so stifling.

- The Little Explorers might be too well traveled. They enjoy playing “airport.” They’re actually quite detailed. They check bags, go through the metal detector, get a wand and do pat downs and check passports and stamp boarding passes. They are more thorough and a whole lot nicer than TSA.

I think that's all I've got for today. My driver just came to the front door, delivering beer that The International Man of Intrigue sent home. I think it's time for a cold one! Have a great weekend, Fellow Adventurers!