It’s a long-running joke that I’m a little obsessed with grocery shops, to say the least. With the weary exasperation of a parent of toddlers, one of my friends shook his head with an “Again?” when I tried to convince him to make a mini Cold Storage detour before we went skating. Whether it’s a quick shop to pick up milk en-route home from school, or on one occasion, dragging my good friend Katya to help me choose the ingredients for a ten-person portion of Pad Thai, it’s no secret that I have a spending problem, but specifically for anything within the well-lit shelves of my local FairPrice.
It’s the kind of hallowed land where time doesn’t exist, a limbo between pure utopia and the mundane banality of everyday life. A spiritual experience, a cathartic journey, a safe space for all who find themselves while walking past shelves of kimchi and frozen udon. When I pick up a head of broccoli to examine, it’s almost as if the nourishment and vitality of the produce osmosis-es through my fingertips and floods my entire being with life. Once catastrophic problems suddenly don’t seem so insurmountable, and the air seems lighter, the birds chirp louder when you’re browsing the dry-goods aisle.
I’ve mused over this for a while, and have come to the conclusion that my sheer love for grocery shopping boils down to three things. One, you’re surrounded by food. What’s there not to love about that? Two, as an avid chef and enjoyer of Bake-Off, even the air of a grocery store carries the promise of a delicious home-cooked meal to come, with so many potential options to choose from. It’s like being a kid in a candy store all over again.
And three? There’s just something so cosy, so domestic about the act of choosing out food for meals. I don’t take this privilege for granted, to have the ability and resources to choose what I want to eat everyday. It’s one thing to have friends you make small talk to in large social gatherings, or acquaintances that you nod to in the hallway. It’s another to have close relationships with people you treasure enough to want to spend every moment with, even the mundane. If I’m attempting to sweet-talk you into making a grocery pitstop with me, it’s my way of showing that I’m comfortable enough to want to include you in my everyday, and even without the buffer of a loud, social environment or a fun activity, your presence alone is something that I crave. Basically the equivalent of a friendship proposal. And if I haven’t attempted to cajole you into making a supermarket trip with me, I must inform you that contrary to what you may think, we’re not actually friends. Sorry.
But if you offer to swing by NTUC with me to pick up some coconut water, I might be sorely tempted to reconsider.
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what i'm currently reading: emma by jane austen
song recommendation of the day: psychic lover by itzy
favourite recent discovery: kiki's delivery service