Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Who's Hungry?


Just a quick note to share some of the more entertaining sights we have come across lately. Naturally we expected to find some really outrageous foods while here...
(This was spotted last fall during our recon mission, but it gave me such a laugh that I have to share it again here:
)

In Malaysia I was entertained to find Cheesecake Slurpees at the 7-11. I thought Black Fungus Juice was the strangest, most unappetizing thing I would come across here, until I found this:

I didn't think it would be possible but I've gotten so used to seeing the cured, whole chicken, cuttlefish, whatever, laid out in heaps in the grocery store for everyone to simply paw through that I don't even notice them anymore but the great cleaver next to the pile in this case did give me pause.
I guess you are supposed to use the big stone chopping block as you hack off your own piece of cured ham. Everyone around me thought nothing of it but they were freaked out by me taking a picture of it. Something else that cracked me up the other day, although I was unable to get a picture of it: I was visiting a school to apply for Conrad to join their Kindergarten. As I dropped the application off at the admin's desk, I noticed that she had her afternoon snack ready to go, sitting next to her stack of paperwork: 2 enormous chicken feet, each individually wrapped in it's own shrink-wrap package, like a Slim Jim. Yum. I didn't think to ask if they provided those to the students. That might be a good detail to know.

But perhaps you'd like something a little lighter. Here, as in Malaysia, we have Soft Shell Crab and Seaweed flavored Pringle's. Lay's has taken a different route: 
If, like me, you are not a tea drinker, there is another choice:

These I have tried. If you're having a sweet craving, they might do the trick. The blueberry is strong, the first flavor to come through, along the lines of a blueberry Poptart. But then the salt and potato catch up, and it just doesn't work.

This sign was seen in the Shanghai Ikea. Perhaps if you take this English phrase and turn it into Chinese, and then back into the Original Swedish, it will make sense to someone. I am not that someone. Are you?

This one falls under the heading "Doesn't work when translated literally":
And this was on a vending machine in the metro station, selling key chains.

I thought it was funny and it made me happy.

Hope they gave you a chuckle. Let me know if you've seen anything you like and I can bring some to you when we come home for a visit this summer. Blueberry Lay's, you know you want 'em!