The Not So Super
Supermarket
by Alister Thorpe
I am sure most
of you have experienced the pleasures of shopping
in a modern air-conditioned supermarket with
everything you could possibly want on the well-stocked
shelves. This is not a story about that. This, my
dear friends, is about reality in the deep dark
Palm oil plantations of Borneo.
My local supermarket had, I've been told, come
into existence a mere 20 years ago, but to the
uninitiated, it appears to be at least three
score years plus ten. ( older than me)
The owners
haven't felt the need to modernise with a coat of
paint or a dab of plaster since construction. The
interior has the ambiance of a post nuclear
apocalypse, cans and packets of food are strewn
across the aisles as the highly motivated staff (
cough, cough) unpack to stack the shelves
during all of the opening hours. This would
normally not be a problem, but the two-and-a-half-foot
wide aisles don't cope well. Large sections of
the supermarket are unreachable on any one visit,
so this clever marketing ploy, coupled with the
unavailability of the most of the common produce
on a given day ( tomatoes maybe on a Monday or if
not Wednesday or if you're really unlucky the
next week. Lettuce to go with your salad, on the
other hand, never arrives the same day) makes you
return again and again to enhance the shopping
experience.
Yes, it's a
total lottery; as a behavioural psychologist
would put it - intermittent positive
reinforcement. Nothing like it to make you
salivate.
Talking about
fruit and veg, the produce, all of it is tightly
wrapped multiple times in plastic film. You can
look but not touch. This gives the appearance of
conformity. The only way to recognise a bulk of
it is by colour. Impossible to tell if it's fresh
or not - plastic all smells the same. Needless to
say, we do have some little surprises when we
open up at home.
The plastic
thing reminds me of the time I found cheese with
mould growing inside an unopened plastic
wrapper. Expiry date was ok. That's real skill
you must admit.
May have
something to do with the leaking freezers. The
tiles or what's left of them next to the deep
freeze bubble and burp with what I think is
rising damp. The owners do their very best to
ignore it by throwing broken down cardboard boxes
over it. They, in turn get saturated and
disintegrate. Word of warning here; never wear
flip flops or sandals. Body weight will force the
brown fluid over your toes. My wife says it
smells like rats urine. I told her I didn't think
so. Never seen more than a couple of rats there
at anyone time, the stench being so strong it
would rot your socks off. You would need an army
of rats to create that smell, but I must admit it's
hard to identify. What does concrete cancer mixed
with effluent smell like?
Buying sliced
bread is a bit of an art form. I used to, back
home, feel the bread to see if it was soft and
springy to the touch. Being warm was a bonus
because it meant it was very fresh; doesn't work
here though. It's always hot because it sits in
the window with the tropical sun as company.
You know what
I think?
I have a
sneaky suspicion the uncooked dough is placed
into the plastic bags to bake by solar energy.
How's that for efficiency!
|
