Why do I take so long in the Super Market?

Over the years I have been to quite a few super markets and more so nowadays to do my weekly shopping of groceries and what have you. Every Friday evening or Saturday perhaps, we troop down to the supermarkets be it Emart, Carrefour or Lotte depending upon the group mood swings.

However to give you a better picture, let me start from the beginning. When we came to Seoul first we were in the exploration mode. So week after week we were visiting different stores to figure out who sells the cheapest potatoes or peas or milk or clothes! The end of the month economics however showed that all the profits we had made were offset by the transportation costs we had incurred trying to scurry from one store to another. So finally sanity prevailed and we now go to the stores next door and thank you no more experimentations please.

But, that’s not the end of this story. I have other quirks of mine that I would like to share. Like, I am confused in front of the milk counter. The reasons could be any of the following:

1. Should I pickup the green tetrapak or the blue one?
2. The labels are all in Korean, but you could make out the content percentages of fat, calories etc. However, this confuses me further?
3. Price performance ratio. I am not even sure of the methodology for this calculation and the one, which is applicable to me.
4. Taste, but then I need to try 50 brands and by the time I am done with, I would have forgotten my baseline.

I face a similar dilemma in front of the egg counter. Do you? But my friends have a simple solution. They follow the extremely simple method of price to volume/weight ratio. Though I am not sure of this approach over time I have subjected myself to this incompetent way of purchase.

Then one day I had to shift residence due to some reasons as explained in one of my previous pieces. In the new pad, the drinking water filter was defective and I decided of not taking the risk of consuming the normal tap water where you get free harmful bacteria along with other invisible bonus dirt. So I went to check out the bottled water stuff. I tried to pick up pointers from my milk and egg expeditions but they all turned out to be non productive. Even the ingredients are all in zeroes, in the sense zero fat, zero cal, zero this and zero that. Have you ever tasted water with lots of fat in them? Am I missing something? Then there are processed water and mineral water. They tell me that mineral water is from the springs. Pure natural water from the mountains is what they print. Possibly it has a fair share of Mountain Wild Bore excretions!!

Juice counter. Tomato juice or Pineapple? Should I buy a pack of three (its cheaper), but I do not like the third one – carrot juice!!! Almond cornflakes, bran flakes, wheat flakes or muesli? Which one is going to serve as the elixir for my life?
I could carry on and on. But then, probably you wouldn’t. I rest my case. Sphere: Related Content