Surprises while shopping

I.

If you love/hate television as much as I do, and/or spent a great deal of time growing up on it (specifically, on American TV) like a good child of the '80s, then it will be delightful for you to find, as I did, that the local Kinokuniya has copies of the inimitable Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV. I was going to order it off Amazon anyway, but now I have it in all its corn-yellow and crimson-red fury. It's filled with choice entries such as this (also available on the book website):

[David] Hasselhoff is not a master thespian, but he gives 100 percent to whatever role he's in, whether it's muttering urgently into a two-way-radio watch that his car needs to break him out of a small-town jail cell (again) or dashing grimly down the beach to save a drowning swimmer, stomach sucked valiantly in.

... which kept me leafing back and forth through it for far more snarky pop culture commentary than is healthy to absorb in one sitting.

There are at least two more copies still available on the shelves at the Ngee Ann City Kinokuniya's TV section (the elevated area adjacent to Page One's domain).

II.

On our way out, we stopped at Cold Storage to pick up a couple of groceries --- which then vanished without a trace from the checkout counter in the several seconds it took me to pay for them. The likely suspects: the woman in the line before me, who had purchased a bottle of green tea and declined a bag for it (but that suggests she had probably walked straight off without stopping to take anything), or the couple before her, whose credit card payment seemed to have required a little extra fussing and fiddling while they grappled with their plastic bags of groceries.

I don't think anyone swiped my purchase intentionally (hello, $11.50 of ground coffee and no-sugar soy milk isn't terribly attractive booty), but it was surreal to zip up my wallet, look down at the counter and find it completely empty. More surreal was the cashier's response: "Aiya, this always happens." To which Terz astutely noted afterwards, "If it always happens, shouldn't they do something about it?"

Anyway, they replaced my purchased groceries without any further ado (or rather, I walked off to sweep them up for the second time, since that would be faster than waiting for one of the staff to do it). I hope whoever got the bonus coffee and soy milk, er, enjoys it.

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