Made in China

China could easily take over the world. Imagine if they stopped receiving shipment of our raw goods and refused to keep turning our raw materials into cheap crap and shipping it back to us at big-box discount prices that allows local retailers to justify providing no customer service. We'd all be naked and starving because we've long forgotten how to produce our own products from our own natural resources.

Seriously. I was at the grocery store the other day (the one with zero customer service) and bought a bag of fresh green peas. They were grown in North America and packaged in China! How the h*ll can that be justifiable?

So I decided I'd try to support more local products. My next couple of bags of fresh produce were purchased from the Farmer's Market that recently opened in my neighbourhood. I even went to a local bakery for bread one day. Eight bucks for 2 loaves nearly killed me, but I did my part for the economy. The bread was good.

Today is payday. I haven't really done a full-fledged grocery shopping for a while, so off I headed to my neighbourhood-no-service-but-cheaper-priced-made-in-china-products grocery store with my reusable grocery bags that were made in China.

I find that 2:30-3:30 is a good time to go cuz all the moms have gone home to pick up children after school. There was plenty of parking and a quick glance towards the tills told me I was smart in arriving at this time - there were only 1 or 2 people in each line. I had my trusty made-in-china fake one dollar coin in my hand ready to insert into the shopping cart. I was stopped dead in my tracks. There were no carts in the store and I hadn't brought one in with me.

There were two different groups of 3 to 4 employees standing just inside the door chatting amongst each other. One group was deep in discussion about a recent movie they watched. I couldn't hear the other conversation. But neither group heard nor cared about me muttering words from the universal language of cussing as I headed back out the door.

One the short 48-second trek back to my car I thought, "Ya know, the only products I really need are sour cream, stuffing for the turkey that's in my oven and hair dye. I can get those somewhere else. And I had just seen a really cute pair of sandals a couple of weeks ago. I think I'll go get 'em."

I piled my hair products, sour cream and stuffing into a cart and headed off to the shoe department. And wouldn't you know it. There were none left in my size... and it's still winter here!

So home I headed, without new shoes, after handing over my hard earned money to Wal-mart, king of big-box-made-in-China, accomplishing nothing in the process.

I'll get new sandals in May when I go to Vancouver. Probably in China Town.