It started me thinking about our own local supermarket in comparison to the two he wrote about. If the first was Hell and the second is Paradise, our one is Purgatory.

As the limbo place between Heaven and Hell, you never know how long you’re going to be there, what you’re going to find, or where you may end up at the end of it all. Sometimes, you may not even buy anything.

It’s a tough crowd that this particular supermarket needs to service as it’s a mixture between local and expat people – very different expectations in general and not enough aisle space to cater for everyone all of the time.

Their food ranges from the usual fruit and vegetables, some local and the rest imported from all over the world. They have very well travelled strawberries from the US and Korea and other fruits from Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia. Mushrooms are from New Zealand or Korea. As you can see, chickens (and fish) mainly come from China…

I tend to buy the imported chickens and fish from another supermarket. It’s not just the reputation that the food from China has. 

It’s also that the imported animals don’t have their heads.