What the Hell?

What the Hell?


Here on the other side of the world occasionally I find myself looking at something and asking the age old question: “What the Hell”? This most often happens in the grocery or drug store where there is an endless supply of items and products I have never seen before. Pictures can be deceiving. For example a picture of a sweet little baby on the package doesn’t mean that the product is actually for babies. It also doesn’t mean that baby is actually an ingredient; however one can never be sure. Conversely the sweet little baby on the box may mean that “you will poop with the ease of baby” after consuming this product full of “ancient Chinese secret”.

Getting my apartment stocked for everyday living has been very challenging. Shopping in a grocery store where most of the items are in a foreign language is definitely tough. And local customs and tastes result in unusual alterations of the formerly familiar. Take Lay’s potato chips for example a simple choice, but not really when the flavors include such tempting combinations as Abalone and Shrimp flavor? Or, how about a box of Quaker instant oatmeal that costs $62.00 dollars (HK)? That is a whopping $ 8.00 US for those who don’t care to do the math. So between the constant currency conversion and the strange product mix, shopping for enough groceries to fill up even my microscopic fridge takes about an hour. Fortunately the grocery store is close so I can joyfully do this every day until I get the hang of it. Don’t worry I know I can always eat out. In fact there is a well known restaurant right around the corner. And the specialty of the house is very tempting….

Just like Mom used to make

There are other things that make absolutely no sense at all – the drugstore is a complete nightmare, 4 floors of utter nonsense. Like why would you have to go to one floor for a toothbrush but a completely different floor for mouthwash?! And did you know that they had ONE single can of hairspray in the whole store? One brand, one can…. that is it, take it or leave it. But, you have 5 aisles of things called Robot Man Hair Mouse and So Strong Gel, “to super amplification your hairstyle” (Not lying).

I think the drug store is confusing me today. You know I went in for 4 items, Q-tips, hairspray, mouthwash, and lotion  and it took 1/2 an hour to find these 4 thing. So the odd thing is that even though everyone lives in an apartment the size of a shoe box, the only cotton swabs sold were this ridiculously huge package, I mean like 1800 q-tips. Seriously if I cleaned both ears religiously every day – it would take me 2. 5 years to use that many and I might add that the bottle of mouthwash… well see for yourself.

I know there is a bad fortune cookie joke in there somewhere,such as "Confucious say: Dirty mouth not matter to clean ear"