I usually go shopping for groceries around 10PM or later, as my local supermarket is open to midnight. Which is awesome. The reason for going late at night is that it’s generally much less crowded, and I don’t usually buy perishables vegetables and bread.

Early Saturday morning, Dad and I had to go to the bank to take care of some stuff with his account, and afterwards we dropped by the supermarket. It was a different world. Vegetables were fresher! The finest cuts of meat (cough usda choice only, though) were plentifully stocked. And there were lots of food-tasting stations, which I’d never seen outside of CostCo. When I go shopping late at night, most people are there to buy cartons of cigarettes and TV dinners…it’s an entirely different vibe.

Also new to me were the crowds of senior citizens, leisurely making their rounds of the aisles. One of them, a war veteran I think, stopped my Dad to ask him how long he’d been in this country…5 or 6 years? I told him that he’d been in the States since 1957, which took him by surprise. The woman behind him wasn’t so impressed, because our impromptu cultural exchange had disrupted the delicate flow of traffic. As we resumed our shopping, I noticed that we were the only asians in the entire supermarket; I keep forgetting that we probably stand out, especially at 1030AM on a Saturday morning at Hannaford’s.