Shut Up

Most people are comfortable and capable of not telling something as it is. I on the other hand have been struggling with this practice almost since the time I began to talk. With many role models around me, I am beginning, albeit slowly, to improve in what I dub as the “Beat Around The Bush Dance”. But just like my lack of ability and interest in dancing in public, this is something I don’t like to do but have to in order to conform to the norm as dictated by the humans around me. It takes quite a bit of effort to get things right.

At home when I was younger, I was discouraged from giving any opinion because:
1. I am a female
2. I was chronologically too young
3. I ranked too low on the family tree (My dad is the third son of 5 children and my mum is not only the third daughter, she was also the youngest of 5!)
4. I wasn’t a graduate (University qualifications, especially qualifications in careers like medicine, engineering and architecture can advance a person’s status magically.)

In the old country compliant people just knew not to give any opinions on politics or even some social issues that were deemed to be too controversial to discuss at home because of everyone’s fears of getting detained for ‘disturbing’ peace. Being outspoken and investigating options on how to improve human lives, especially via true equality, might also run the risk of causing the original inhabitants to run amok. I didn’t make that up. That ‘reminder’ actually came out of the mouth of an original inhabitant not that long ago.

So you would think that I must now enjoy a total freedom of speech in this country but that is not quite true. Oh, please don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy the extra benefits but nothing comes without strings attached. Here in this country, there are multiple sets of invisible social rules to follow before one opens his/her mouth, and to make things trickier, the rules change without notice, like you are playing a soccer game where the goal posts change location every time you try to kick a goal. I may declare my love for this country but that doesn’t mean that it is perfect. It does have flaws that I should be allowed to talk about without getting told, “If you don’t like it, you know where the airport is.” I shouldn’t be expected to love or pretend to love every aspect of this country.

One thing that I really wish to have a little say is the right to express my feelings to mini offenders when their parents do nothing to stop the appalling behaviour they display during family get togethers. By appalling behaviour I don’t mean the typical rough and tumble play between children and between children and participating adults. If anyone is reading this, and in case you don’t already know, I work with children and over the years I have received plenty of compliments from parents and virtually no complaints on my work. True, some of them probably shower me with compliments hoping that I don’t mistreat their precious little Vegemites but I do believe that most of the compliments are genuine. LOL. At least a couple of fathers have remarked on my high tolerance towards boisterous children. (I really don’t like the word ‘tolerance’.) Outside work, for instance, during family get togethers that I get dragged to, I expect parents to do their job when their children cross the line, especially if they do not welcome a so-called ‘aunty’ from meddling in how to deal with such situations. I believe that if I do ‘meddle’, I am likely to be blasted with a popular phrase: “Wait till you are a parent!” OUCH! DOUBLE OUCH, applicable to people like us. Some parents can be very defensive and so I know full well to shut my mouth and not give any advice until they ask but I should at least be allowed to express my feelings (hurt, anger etc) to a child hell bent on ‘attacking’ me verbally or physically. In expressing my feelings, I don’t mean storming off to the backyard to find a stick so I could thrash the little offender with it. Seriously, what do parents think their children could gain from ‘attacking’ another human being for fun? Is this another skill for a child to learn to prepare them for school and the ‘Real World’ and so we should just let the child safely practice without any protest? I guess the answers will only be revealed to us when we are blessed with a child of our own. LOL

In my spare time, I read a lot of blogs on the internet. If the blogs are not related to Montessori or Homeschooling, most of the blogs I read are written by bloggers who are in inter-racial relationships and/or are living in their spouse’s homeland. Some of these women are very gutsy in expressing their feelings about their new home. Maybe they are brave enough to write about their negative experiences because they are not as acutely affected as I about being ‘accepted’ by people in their new home. Then again most of these bloggers probably have a very different experience to me because they already belong to a specific group that is ‘venerated’ by the local people in their new home. Anyway they don’t just criticize their new home all day everyday. They write also about other (good) aspects of life as well; revealing to readers many hidden gems that one doesn’t always find in textbooks or tour guides about a particular country. I admire these women’s guts in expressing their true feelings. I wish I could write eloquently like them to convey messages clearly without sounding too abrupt or rude. Better still, I wish I could write a piece about an issue peppered with humour and mild sarcasm effortlessly so it will go down easier with any reader that happens to read this blog.

When I was younger, I was controlled by others to keep my mouth shut. Nowadays I find myself doing the controlling. As I compose this post, I am debating with myself as to whether to post it on the blog. Am I revealing too much about myself to people? Are my views offending anyone? If this piece makes it to the blog, it is highly likely that another similar piece will be posted in the near future and many more after that. I have been debating whether I should remove all the posts tagged under “My Soap Box” for months because I was and still am toying with the idea of keeping a “Happy 24/7 Blog” that mentions nothing negative. Should I? But this is my Blog, I should be allowed to say whatever I want and that includes whingeing.

Cash Is Money Too

I love purchasing things or paying bills by cash. It helps me to keep things under control in a concrete way. There was a time in my life when credit cards were attractive to me. To be given them as a young adult was a status symbol. Better still because they were supplementary cards, I didn’t have to worry about paying anything at the end of each month. Nowadays I prefer to complete transactions using cash. It is just so much easier to keep track of everything. Interestingly, cash is becoming less ‘welcomed’ these days. I suspect that people are getting ‘told’ and are subscribing to the idea that cash is ‘uncool’ and low tech. LOL

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At IKEA, the self-check machines do not accept cash like the machines at Safeway/Woolworths. When paying bills over the counter, customers are now getting charged a Cash Payment Fee/Payment Handling Fee. I just don’t get it. Why do customers have to pay extra for making a payment? I am so glad that Independent Senator Xenophon is looking into this issue. It just doesn’t seem right for customers to be slugged so many different type of fees even when they are doing the right thing. So there must be other people out there who are bothered by this for Xenophon to take an interest.

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Imagine one day when department stores start charging shoppers a fee if they choose not to check out at the self-check machines.

Absolutely Fuming Still (Super Long Rant)

The last 10 days or so have been horrible. It has not been fun sorting out the junk in the pigeon hole. The amount of junk is also forever increasing. We keep finding things that we thought we chucked out long ago. M, the much needed helper turned into a slave driver insisting that I speed up my effort. Instead of sorting things out systematically, his way was to box everything up and send them all to the storage unit. I was apparently spending too much time deciding what to keep and what to chuck. 3/4 of what we want to store in the ‘shed’ is complete and nasty M seems to think that the success has every bit to do with his push to speed things up. He totally believes that if he didn’t help out last week, nothing would have been accomplished so far. M is not a very nice person when the bully within him comes out of the closet and I know very well from whom he inherited this nasty trait from.

We completed our trips to the ‘shed’ on Friday and I was allowed two days to rest to prepare me for hell. His so-called ‘holidays’ started on Monday. He had to take time off work for a specific duty that I can’t reveal for now but it has nothing to do with the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ or any other personal reasons. We were hoping that the whole kerfuffle would turn out to be nothing and we could use the time off work to tackle the ugly pigeon hole even though I don’t really like working with him. That was not to be. We found out today that M will have to perform a special duty for the next 15 week days. That’s just absolutely great! He is going to be stressed and when he gets home, he is likely to have a go at me for doing things too slowly.

On Monday, we spent the afternoon moving things around within the living areas to make way for when we have to empty the bedrooms. I also spent some time re-arranging my Montessori bookcase and my ECE bookcase. Everything was going great until we stopped work early in the evening. M went to take a shower and he apparently used my freshly laundered PINK towel by accident. I love the feel of freshly laundered towels and had been looking forward to using it all day. I instantly chucked a hissy fit of course. M didn’t seem to see what the big deal was about. He stormed into the ‘cave’ (spare bedroom) to retrieve another one for me but the slave driver had forgotten that I had been so busy of late that a big pile of dirty clothes (including towels) were still waiting to be laundered and there were no fresh bath towels left in the wardrobe. He offered me a beach towel only to aggravate me even more. The beach towels we have received as gifts over the years are all poorly made. They shed a hell of a lot of fluff when used. Anyone reading this probably thinks that I was behaving like a spoilt brat but I think the pent up emotions gathered from previous days just exploded. I love doing things my own way and hate to be forced to do a crappy job just to fit someone else’s timetable. I also do not believe that M picked the wrong towel up by accident because someone like him wouldn’t choose anything PINK unless he had been forced to. Sad to reveal this bit of info but M was conditioned to think from a young age that all things PINK are for girls.

Things calmed down after we walked to Safeway to buy bread and milk but it didn’t stay that way for long. M was surfing the net after dinner and at one point he walked away from the computer for a brief moment and I happened to see a photo of him on the screen. It turned out to be his Facebook account and he had placed a photo of himself on it. The photo looked familiar and I didn’t recognise it right away. When asked, he explained that it was a photo of the two of us but he had cut me out of it. The photo didn’t look like a digital image. I next asked him to show me the original photo and to my utter horror, he clicked on his Facebook photo album to find it. I really believed that M had thoughtfully cut me out of the photo because he knew full well that I prefer to not be shown online. When he showed me the original photo of the two of us from within the photo album, I flew into a complete rage. At that instant, I realised that he had placed a photo of me online without my permission. It was not a digital image and so it was not from our collection. The scanned photo was taken a long time ago by his VIP and I look absolutely UGLY in that series of photos. I am not joking. Whenever the media makes fun of Michael Jackson, they always show a famous mug-shot of the singer. Well, in this series of photos (including the one he had added online), I actually looked just like an oriental/Asian version of MJ in that mug-shot pose. Again M didn’t seem to see why I was offended. The thing is that it didn’t matter if he had posted that photo or another one, I just do not want hideous me to be posted online for the world to see. It is hard enough to put up with stares on a daily basis to worry about what the rest of the world could be thinking as well. I do not wish to interfere with what is going on with his Facebook. I had long accepted that the thing is used by him to maintain contact with his family and other shallow beings but he has absolutely no rights to add a photo of me without asking me first. I have no proof as to who whipped up the idea of adding my photo; it probably was him like he said but I know full well where he got the photo from.

To make matters worse, I also found out that he had decided to tell the world what he had found in my collection of old CD’s. He thought that most of my CD choices were hilarious and had to share it. He conveniently left out the fact that the CD collections he was referring to were ones that I bought as a teenager. Some teens have shonky taste and I admit that I belong to that group but that doesn’t mean that he had to go around mocking me behind my back. As predicted, one shallow being responded with a “Hahahaha...haha…haha…ha”.

OK. If I don’t like him mocking me online and showing a photo of me without my permission, I therefore shouldn’t do the same here on my blog. I don’t think I am contradicting myself though. Here, so far in this post, I have not mocked him. With regards to posting a photo of him, I did indeed post one not so long ago but he was well aware of it and it was a shot of him from behind. When I started this blog, I had never intended to say so many nasty things about M but lately, I honestly feel that he has turned into someone else altogether. I wonder if him being testy has anything to do with how his parents react (ever so positively) to recent events that has happened to his siblings.

Anyway, when I woke up on Tuesday morning, I showed him my dissatisfactions by verbally blasting away at him for 3 hours straight. It wasn’t a good idea because I developed a slight fever after that and conked out after lunch. He probably enjoyed the peaceful hours that afternoon when I was knocked out by a couple of paracetamol tablets.
When I finally got up, I gave him the cold shoulder for the rest of the day and refused to work, full-stop. The Cold War would have lasted longer but there is just so much to do around here. I don’t believe that I have achieved anything by yelling at him.

One of the first things I was taught when I came to Australia is that no one can change another person. The changes have to come from within. This is why I found it amusing on Sunday when I saw people marching down Swanston Street. Are these people so naïve? Do they really think that they are capable of bringing forth true harmony by walking together once in a blue moon? It was just one big media publicity stunt. I found it more interesting to observe the facial expressions of shoppers and visitors who were ‘interrupted’ by the loud and colourful procession.

I have not been very happy since I last blogged. I don’t think I will be cheerful for a while. Oh yeah, there was another thing that happened on Sunday night that ruined the start of this week. It was German Grand Prix 2009. Not only did my favourite driver do poorly, the one and only driver that I had always wished to never win ended up winning! He wasn’t just up on the podium coming in third or second, he won! He came first! Believe it or not, Mark Webber won? I was really hoping that his engine would stall just metres from the finishing line. That would have been a great start to the week. LOL. Mark Webber is actually quite cute but I have never liked him since he started racing in F1. Not his fault actually. My dislike for Mark Webber has a lot to do with how Eddie McGuire ‘introduced’ him to the world during his first race. I won’t go into it too much now or this post will never end.

Pricey Collectibles/Rubbish

Note: I am ranting again. If you don’t like reading anything negative, there are heaps of other blogs out there.

I am very angry at the moment. I just found out on Friday that M had gone around to ordering online and purchasing from JB Hi-Fi a big stash of DVDs behind my back. He had decided foolishly that he needed to splash out on more rubbish to celebrate his birthday. There are times when I feel sick just looking at the stuff he had collected over the years. Depending on the price tag, I usually turn a blind eye these days but if the item is pricey, he does get yelled at. This time though, M had exceeded my highest level of tolerance. He didn’t buy just one or two DVDs; he actually bought more than 10! The Get Smart ones were $40 each when he paid for them a few days ago. When I found out about the secret shopping spree, I told him that he should have waited because I am absolutely sure that the price for them will come down. Guess what? The same Get Smart DVDs are now priced $27.99 each in the latest Target (Mother’s Day) catalogue! M can be such an idiot.

During one of my many phone calls home last month, I told my mum how M is spending less on his hobbies these days. I was full of praise. He overheard it and felt really good about that. Little did I know that he was about to embark on a senseless spending spree. He probably thought that I was too blindly in love to realise his secret purchases. I wonder what else he is hiding from me. He had better cough up everything before my birthday.

From die-cast cars to comics to DVDs, M buys all sorts of collectibles. It’s like an addiction. M does not take drugs or smoke and rarely drinks (alcohol) but when it comes to buying all this stuff he thinks that he virtually has unlimited funds like Lindsay Fox. I totally believe that he was encouraged to collect these things since childhood because I now witness the next generation (nephews and nieces) getting encouraged into such hobbies. (It is scary just visualizing that.) This supposedly gold-digger had tried to take control but as you can see, I was not very successful. One should also see the looks I get from a certain someone if I dare say anything negative (however minute) about M.

We had a big talk on Friday. M was defensive at first and when he is like that he tends to exaggerate things. He suggested selling what he bought to recoup what he had paid. I had to laugh but that must have been the dumbest idea. Now that the DVDs have been viewed, they would have to be sold as ‘Used’ and would therefore fetch literally nothing on EBay. LOL. He looked utterly miserable all day but I am still not sure if that was all one big act. I refused to offer any suggestions but I will give all the support if he needed help moderating his hobbies. To some people, telling M what to do is like controlling him excessively. I don’t want to be that nasty gold-digger. Eventually it was he who concluded that he needed to practice moderation. Interestingly, he also decided to work on some (self-esteem) issues after I ‘painted’ him what his life and childhood were like before we were together. Apparently I was spot on. I have ‘painted’ similar pictures for him in the past but he mostly rejected them probably because they brought back too many painful memories that he simply didn’t want to face up to. He is probably ready to do something about those issues now. As said before, I will support or help if requested. He will have to do the bulk of the work because he has to be the agent of change, not me.

Drongos

Note: I am ranting in this post. If you don’t like reading anything negative, there are heaps of other blogs out there. I believe I do have the right to not like every human to be patriotic or loyal.

On our way to buy groceries on Saturday, we went to cheer on the diggers parading down St Kilda Road. M stepped away a little to help me take some photos and I was approached by a guy talking about the weather. Small talk is never my forte but I tried my very best to be sociable. As I was in the middle of expressing how delightful it was that the rain stayed away as opposed to what the weather man had predicted on the evening news on Friday, the guy looked at the people around me before calling out “Ngeee-Hoa” repetitively. I was glad when he started to walk away but he came back yelling out the same words over and over. He looked amused. I know what he was trying to say. (To those who are a bit confused, the guy was trying to say “Ni Hao” – a Mandarin Chinese way of saying hello.) I suppose I should be grateful that this human was so friendly but he wasn’t. He sounded more like he was trying to make fun of me. I was very tempted to call out “Konnichiwa” but I was sure that M wouldn’t be impressed if I had created a scene or worse, ignited a war. LOL.

After lunch, we dropped by Target because I wanted to find out how the children’s jeans with the adjustable waist are constructed. My next sewing project is a little denim skirt. I was at the little boys department by myself because M was browsing in the basement. Situated right opposite the little boys department is the children’s sleepwear department. I was studying the adjustable waist of a pair of jeans when three shoppers (a couple and a female friend) walked towards my direction. There were no kids so there wasn’t a need for me to do my ‘civic duty’. They stopped near a rack of polar fleece sleep suits (aka blanket suits). The female friend picked up one and said, “Oh my God. This is a size 4!” The couple said something when I realised that their friend was eyeing me like I was some kind of a bug. The female friend checked the label of the sleep suit she was holding and then declared loudly, “It’s made in China! Of course… They just don’t get it. They just don’t get what we need.” The other woman then said, “That’s just not right. Who would wear that?” As they walked away, the female friend gave me another once over. Seriously what did I do wrong? And duh, it’s a well known fact that most clothing these days are made in China. The country is like one big factory, manufacturing what others had ordered. The Chinese is known to have invented a lot of things but that sleep suit is probably not one of them. They have been around for a long time and just because it’s a sleep suit/coverall doesn’t mean that it is only made to fit the under 12 months of age crowd. They do come in larger sizes to fit pre-schoolers and lower primary kids to cater to different home environments. I have seen it used as an alternative to a dressing gown to keep kids warm during breakfast. (Dressing gowns can be annoying if the ties keep getting untied.) Not all Melbourne houses are heated in Winter like a day at the beach on the Gold Coast.

Offending an Asian Dude outside the Ross House

I left home donning a hat for the very first time today. I have hunted for a suitable hat every Spring but have always been disappointed because it has been nearly impossible to find one to fit my grotesque head. Then I came across this cheapo at Big W and it looked pretty good on me when I tried it on. So, I bought it and today, after hiding indoors for the past few days, I wore it for the very first time. As we walked from Southbank to the City, I kept telling M what it was like to wear the hat. It was an all new experience for me. Little did I realise that I was about to commit a heinous crime.

M had wanted to drop by the City Library to pick up an item he had ordered. I didn’t really want to go but gave in because we weren’t planning to stay for long. All I wanted to do was to get the grocery shopping done. As we walked down Flinders Lane, we jostled with other pedestrians along the narrow and busy footpath. Inside my brain, I was trying to remember all of the extra items not listed on my usual shopping list from Safeway. Just outside Ross House, a ute was parked there and a builder/contractor/workman (sorry that I don’t know what the right word to identify such a person is) was busy loading/unloading stuff from the ute. M was walking behind me. Down on my left side just a few steps ahead of me, I saw probably a couple of witches’ hats/traffic cones on the ground but I didn’t pay too much attention to them (that was mistake #1). Kiasu me saw that there was a chance to keep walking along the narrowed part of the footpath before pedestrians from the opposite direction, I went ahead and along the way, my left foot stepped on something the builder had earlier fixed. Believe it or not? I actually wasn't aware of what I precisely did at the time. There standing at the door way of Ross House was an Asian dude who witnessed my heinous crime. This was his opportunity to bombard me with his falsetto voice. “Don’t step on that!” “Didn’t you see that he just fixed this?” Other stuff was said as well but honestly I was both wondering what crime I committed and was also intrigued by the sound of his voice. Obviously caught red handed, I uttered a sorry and kept walking. It was utterly embarrassing to be scolded like this in public. Then I heard the builder asking, “Did she step on that?” and the Asian dude responded, “Yes, she did!” I called out another ‘Sorry’ but that was it. I hit the roof. Ok, there was no roof where I was standing at the time.

After our very brief visit to the library, I came out fuming. I know I was in the wrong. There is no excuse for being so careless. People like me should not cause any inconveniences to anyone. An apology to the builder went straight to the top of the to-do list if he was still there. He was, and I walked over to apologise to him like a sulking spoilt brat as featured in many episodes of the Super Nanny. He accepted it. Standing just inside the automatic sliding door was the Asian dude. I was in no mood to say anything to him. M was extremely worried that I was about to tear the dude into pieces. LOL.

Did this guy need to blast at me like that? He might as well just round up his henchmen and drag me down to the City Square so while kneeling on glass, I can be forced to admit to my wrong doing in front of the masses gathered there to watch the people participating in the Flying Trapeze workshops. Wouldn’t that be more fun? That may be too much for a wee dude to carry out on such a hot day. Besides, I think he already had his jollies yelling at me in front of the other pedestrians. It looks like Cheap Shots and Power Trips are becoming more and more common each day.

A Totally Disgusting Day!

I didn't bother popping up here to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year and/or a Happy Australia Day yesterday because I was fuming. I had a rotten day on the most auspicious day of the year. I did originally plan to post photos of events in the city but I experienced something totally gross that ruined my day. I am still not in the mood to blog about it but lets just say that it involved a couple of middle age idiots hurling a spray of a cheap shot at me and a little Aussie next to me.

Almost Done Like a Dodo

M bought a copy of the Herald Sun on the last Saturday in December. We don’t buy newspapers regularly. I decided to read it a few days later and to my disbelief, I came across an article about the storage company where we rented a unit. Back in November, I posted about how our rented storage unit was broken into by its owner. That was the story we were fed and we believed them. Well, I personally didn’t quite believe that a mining hotshot would just break into my unit for no apparent reason but I didn’t want to rock the boat and thought that if we moved to the new unit (on a different level) offered to us, everything would return to normal. We have used this storage facility for a long, long time and we have always tried to pay our rent on time. There had been instances when we paid our rent a day or two late because M was too busy to get there to pay it himself.

A week or so after we moved our stuff to a slightly larger unit with a pretty auspicious number, we received an email requesting us to fill out a new contract. That was fine for us. Then we learned that we weren’t allowed to pay cash for the rent anymore. We had to pay via direct debit. We also learned that the storage facility would no longer open on the weekends. Now, that’s totally inconvenient for inner city residents like us. Imagine not being able to access one’s shed on the weekends. Since there was no other payment option, we reluctantly went along with paying via direct debit. Then we received a phone call from a lady telling M that he had filled in the wrong form and that they couldn’t find our details. We were asked to fill in another form and M did as he was told. I personally do not like internet banking, direct debit or credit cards. When it comes to using our hard earned money, I prefer a ‘concrete’ experience over an ‘abstract’ one. So, before Moosh sent off the second form, I photocopied it. I kept copies of all of the forms we had to fill. Guess what I noticed? The first and second Direct Debit Request forms were slightly different! I won’t go into great details here but was something fishy going on?

After I read the article at the end of December, I made the decision to move to another storage facility ASAP. We patiently waited for the ‘investments company’ to extract the rent for January and luckily it went without a glitch. With the rent paid till the end of the month, I called and emailed to let them know of our interest to move out. That went without much trouble also. Well, they did tell us that they won’t be refunding us any unused rent if we moved early. That was fine to us because I just wanted to be out of there. M and I spent two days moving out. On the second day of the move, we decided to have brekkie at McDonald’s before we start. M got hold of a copy of the day’s Herald Sun for restaurant patrons to read. When we got to page 39, I nearly choked on my hash brown. The headlines made me very angry. Up until just before that moment, I was actually feeling sad that we had to move out of a facility we had used for such a long time. After we read the article, we just wanted to rush out and start moving the rest of our stuff quickly. Because our car is small, we had to move four more loads before the move was completed. As we moved our stuff, we noticed that many units next to us were still occupied. These people probably aren’t aware of things going on behind the scene at this facility. We wouldn’t have known if we didn’t read these two articles in the newspapers. On the first day of our move, some people were moving out just like us but on the next day, we saw at least two parties moving in or dropping off more stuff to be stored. Bizarre! Maybe some people are just not bothered by what is going on. I am just glad that we had moved on our own terms. Imagine if everyone is asked to move out ASAP because the facility is shutting down suddenly. I can see tempers flaring because everyone wants to use the loading bays.

Potential Con Job in Progress!

I am absolutely fuming at the moment (and it is only the second day in the New Year). The reason is because I think we have been lied to again. I had suspected something was not quite right in November but M thought that I was thinking too deeply into things. (M has a tendency to think the best of everyone.) Then I came across an article/story in last Saturday’s Herald Sun proving that something fishy is indeed going on. Luckily I did flip through the paper out of boredom. We are going to sort out this issue on Monday (5th of January) and will blog more about it later. It’s hard to believe that there are so many (heartless) local weasels out and about aiming to make a quick buck without giving a damn to damages they cause others during their greedy process.

‘Boring Housewife Look’

While looking for a gift at Big W, I overheard a lady describing how ugly the shopper trolleys look and was adamant to not ever be seen using one. She was referring to the exact model that we bought. That was the only type there. While she is entitled to her opinion, I am glad to learn that I am finally beginning to grow out of pleasing strangers. Instead of being constantly bothered by how people see me if I use a certain thing, I am increasingly thinking that it is quite OK at my age to value practicality a little higher than just the looks of things. This is definitely a pro in the ageing process. The shopper trolley makes it so much easier for me or M to wheel the groceries home. With so many of them being wheeled around on the streets, it is obvious that many people agree on their practicality as well.