Supermarket conversation
22nd September 2012, Saturday
It has been the second day since I have been back in Manchester. I arrived yesterday at 7.30am and managed to stay awake the entire day, running errands and all sorts. Best bit of yesterday was that I sorted out the mess of my luggage and stuff I kept away in storage. Exhaustion was just pushing me on… if only this continues for work, etc.
What happened today reminded me of my plan to blog daily so that I do not just go on about every day, mindlessly living life but appreciating and feeling about things that happen. This incident has got to be the first that has happened in a supermarket, where a stranger comes up and talk to me. If only it was a good-looking boy or so, but no, it was a Spanish guy I believe and he’s a postgraduate student. You can only imagine his age, give or take around 26 years, well at least that’s what he looked like.
I was in Tesco with Shin Yee and decided to take a look at the on-going offers for the cider they had. I stood in front of the bottles, deciding whether or not to get some just for casual drinks. This man (if I remember correctly, his name is Anton, or it least starts with A, and had a very Spanish surname) came up to me and said ‘Not nice.’ after I pointed out that I wanted Bulmers strawberry flavoured cider. First of all, in my head, I was thinking he’s mad for thinking so. Then, he went on.
‘You’re a girl. You shouldn’t be drinking cider, it will go to your stomach. Boys can drink… Look at you, take care of yourself and don’t drink. Are you going for a party? It starts off with cider, then beer, then… you will become an alcoholic. Are you a student?...’
He went on and on, and I was getting quite annoyed to be honest. To be honest, at that moment, as he pointed to my stomach and my face, I was becoming all sensitive because of the weight I have put on and my acne. People were starting to look and I got fed up enough to give off a very uninterested body language so he would just back off, which he did.
Oh and may I also mention that he asked if I was Chinese, to which I answered yes and only realized he actually meant ‘Are you from China?’ -.- How do I know for sure?
We were leaving Tesco, going up the escalator and my basket was empty and he exclaimed (causing a lot of people to look) ‘Oh good! You didn’t get anything! You really shouldn’t drink. You (pointing to Shin Yee) should take care of her! Here take my card, you can add me on Facebook or on QQ. You have a QQ account right?’ At this point, I was already rolling my eyes. He was so engrossed into this whole ‘talking people out of drinking’ that he was not even paying attention to where he was going because we were walking out and he only realized that he was carrying his basket out after I mentioned it to him. Also, in my head, I was thinking ‘WTF is QQ?!’ and Shin Yee enlightened me by saying it was a China version of MSN? Whaaaaat?!
So all in all, it’s such an insignificant yet significant incident that has successfully managed to annoy me quite badly that even as I stepped into Aldi (another supermarket), my eye was twitching, lol. Whether I should look at this as a blessing in disguise is up to me because let’s face it, he saved me from not gaining that slight bit of weight from calories, and also save my life (rather insignificantly in the long run). Most importantly, he helped me save money, lol.