A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

Since I don’t take possession of my new pad in Saskatoon until December, I will be staying with my parents in Wilkie, Saskatchewan for the time being. Even though I grew up in this small town of 1400 people, you tend to forget the way some things are here. Living in Saskatoon for eight years, and then Guelph for six, I got used to lots of things that come with living in a city. Here’s just a few examples of what I am talking about.

Despite having the best Chinese food in the western world, the service is a little questionable at a local restaurant. About a week ago my dad and I decided to order some stellar Ginger Beef from the aforementioned eatery, so I called in to place my order. After the phone rang about ten times, someone finally picked up. Expecting to get a standard greeting such as, “Thanks for calling, how can I help you?”, I instead got a, “What you want?” Taken by surprise, it took me a couple seconds to respond. I placed my order and the person on the other side hung up without saying anything. It was a little strange, but when I went to pick up the order, everything was right – and the ginger beef was in fact, stellar.

Yesterday I was feeling a little bored so I decided to go watch some high school 6 man football playoffs – yes 6 man football. Despite freezing my butt off for the entire game, I managed to stick around and watch my alma mater lose. I did manage to fire off a few good photos during the game, so it wasn’t a complete write-off. Following the game I headed to one of the grocery stores to pick up a few things (during my high school years I actually worked at this grocery store as a bag / delivery boy).

Since I was going to be buying a few things I grabbed a shopping cart. You know those little shopping carts they have for kids at the ‘big’ grocery stores to keep them occupied? Well, I kid you not, that is what these carts were like. Anyway, the first order of business was to grab a few things from the meat department. I’m usually accustomed to having a pretty good choice of stuff to choose from. Well, that wasn’t quite the case at my old place of employment. I needed a couple chicken breasts and a beef roast. Lucky I got there when I did because there was exactly one ‘bulk pack’ of ten breasts and one big-ass beef roast. I then headed over to the bakery section to grab some bulk whole wheat buns, but there were none left so I had to settle for hamburger buns. I guess I did manage to get everything I needed, but I’m not sure that I could shop here all the time. But what I was happy about was the Old Dutch Chips that are not available east of Manitoba. I did miss those.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am looking forward to getting back to Saskatoon so I can do some real grocery shopping (but I will miss the Ginger Beef, and the comical service). This may seem sad, but I love shopping for groceries. It is not odd for me to head to the market when I’m bored – seriously.