Queuing for Noodles

There is a new Asian grocery store in the City. This one is located at the old Commonwealth Bank site (corner of Little Bourke Street and Swanston Street). I found out a week and a half ago that they are offering customers a special instant noodles deal for the month of August. At 5 pm each day, 50 customers are welcome to purchase Nong Shim brand Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup at $0.10 per pack but each customer is limited to a maximum of 10 packs. When Safeway had them, these noodles were going for $1.49 per pack and at an Asian grocery store nearby, 5 packs of these noodles were priced just under $3.00. Seeing that it was such a bargain, we rocked up on the 1st of August thinking that no one would be there. How wrong we were. The queue was so long, we missed out. So we tried again last Tuesday. This time, we were two of the first 10 customers. I reckon that M and one other customer must have super thick skin because they were the odd ones out. LOL. I watched and listened with great interest to see if they were looked upon differently or picked on. I am super happy to say that no one gave a damn that they were there. It is nice to know that when you are an odd one out no one attempts to freeze you out passively or actively turns your experience into a negative one.

OK, Ok I already know that instant noodles are no good. As a small child, one of the first jingles I learnt from TV was an ad for Maggi noodles. My parents would buy them occasionally but I was never allowed to eat the noodles with the sachet’s contents added until I was in my teens when I would add it behind their backs. After I came to Australia, I was exposed to a big variety of instant noodles from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and more, to my parents’ utter horror. LOL. I learned very early that here you can buy Aussie style Maggi at places like Safeway & Coles, but if I fancy some Asian style Maggi, they are available at the Asian grocery stores. After sampling instant noodles from all over East Asia over the years, Maggi is no longer within my personal top 10. I can’t even remember when I last bought that brand. The brand of noodles on special at the new Asian grocery store is one of my current favourites. As two separate customers, we have bought 20 packs the other day. They are still sitting on the dining table because there is just no room to fit all of them in the pantry for now. LOL. Greedy us originally planned to go queue everyday to purchase 10/20 packs per trip. That was just a stupid idea. I can’t even see us finishing this lot anytime soon. Where are we going to put the others if we buy more? We might end up going completely bald like someone said if we eat this type of junk food too often. LOL.