My Longkang

The consumer is king, right? Well, not always so. The cash is in our hands but the power to buy is not?

It happened this morning. I was at my regular market buying some vegetables. Prior to this, I had bought vegetables at another stall. My hands were full with plastic bags etc containing among others vegetables, fruits, fish, prawns, chicken, dry groceries etc. I spied a stall selling ginger, the local variety.

Any body will tell you the local variety smells and tastes better than the imported from China ginger. So this lady smiled as I approached her stall. She asked me to buy her vegetables. I said, “ Oh, I had already bought my vegetables. Your ginger looks very nice.”

Then she launched into her tirade with a furious contemptuous expression on her face. This is the gist of her message, “ Business is to be spread out. You always buy from that stall. Now just because I have ginger and she doesn’t, you come to my stall! What is wrong with my vegetables?” If looks and a loud voice could kill, I would have been struck dead at that particular moment.

I explained to her, the other stall was near the entrance so it was convenient for me. It had become a habit to just buy from her and then leave for another section of the market. Furthermore the lady could speak my dialect well so it was easier to communicate.

In my mind I wanted to say, “After all, I had a right to buy from whomever I wanted as it was my money.” But I held myself in check. The lady then gave me an icy stare and then ignored me. Obviously I wasn’t welcome at her stall. I just moved on. I can live on ginger from China if I have to.

The point I want to make is that I had no idea she had this vendetta against me at all. I hadn’t been rude or anything. She must have seen me always buying from the same lady and it irritated her I never went near her stall. In a way she is right. I will never go near her stall again.

( In case any body is interested, local ginger costs Rm12.00/kg and the above costs Rm13.00 )

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 3:47 pm and is filed under My personal stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.