I don’t think there is any space like a supermarket which says “we’re not in Kansas anymore” when you are visiting a different country. In theory a supermarket is a known quantity – typically laid out in a familiar pattern with differences usually relating to scale. Fruit and vegetables, bakery, dairy, meat, fish around the border and then as you move into the centre aisles there are frozen foods, drinks, breakfast cereals, baking etc.
And yet they are a culture shock waiting to happen. I have been in supermarkets across the United Kingdom, Hawaii, California and multiple Australian states before I came to Malaysia. There is always a moment when you go to a section and just stand bemused, not so much because you are expecting to see the same brands etc as in New Zealand but because you expect to see at least a similar product. Cheese is a case in point – not special cheese, just a bog standard 1 kg block that is a supermarket trolley staple chosen from a wide selection depending on the week’ special. And which doesn’t exist like that in Australia, or now it seems, in KL.
I am kind of relieved I don’t have small children to feed this time around, because standing looking at a supermarket shelf filled with totally unfamiliar breakfast cereal or no recognisable brand on peanut butter is not sending me into a mind numbing panic the way it has done in the past.
On the flip side there are the moments of affectionate recognition – not only Tip Top ice-cream but Kapiti as well, Watties frozen peas, NZ Gala apples, NZ lamb, plus tucked away at the bottom of the shelf – some Whittikers chocolate.
Before I sound like a whinging expat there is the fascination of some much food diversity. I have never seen (or could have imagined) so many varieties and brands of rice, the spice shelves in even the smallest supermarket are extraordinary, and I realised on Friday that when you live in the middle of the world trade routes, European cheese which is very expensive in NZ is about the same as the imported NZ cheese.
Nevertheless I am reminded of my friend Ismail talking about the process of refugees and new migrants settlement, and how even the most adventurous personalities in their own culture will retreat into the safety of the familiar when they are having to deal with change on every front. Which probably makes sense of Nick’s dinner request, standing in a huge supermarket with food from every corner of the world. He wanted macaroni cheese, sausages and peas – which in the context of his spending a week on site in Indonesia having to a try and manage with chopsticks, is probably understandable.
