Just popping down to the supermarket. Do you need anything?

Supermarket shopping in Ba is a chance to reconnect with our ancestors and test our hunter/ gatherer skills and stamina. 

Ba has a lovely selection of 4 different supermarket chains. They are all located within a wonderfully accessible 200m radius of the bus stand in town.

There are:
- 2 MH supermarkets
- 1 Shop and Save
- 1 Rajendra Prasad
- 3 New worlds

Although the items available in these supermarkets are essentially the same (sugar, 2 minute noodles, frozen chicken, white flour), there are some (e.g. yogurt) that can only be bought from one chain. Thus a normal, small, bi-weekly supermarket shop often involves visiting at least 3 supermarkets to locate all the items on our list. Not to mention the fact that we have to then visit the market for fresh items and a good dose of haggling, then the 1.5k uphill walk home.

Thus when we have trawled our way through 1/2 the supermarkets, we often stop and weigh up the necessity of the Houdini item vs imposing dehydration, heat exhaustion, shoulder reconstructions and insanity. Often the un-located item loses out, but not always. Some things are necessary.

I have prepared a list of what you can/cant expect to find when I send you off for a spot of grocery shopping.

Items available:
- soy milk in every flavour, except no flavour
- powder milk, (full cream, light etc)
- 15kg bags of rice, flower and sugar (as long as its white and had the bajezus refined out of it)
- fireworks
- frozen chickens in 15 different sizes
- ghee
- bulk multi packs of instant noodles
- tang/ cordial in every flavour of sugar, so long as its coloured orange
- such soft drink (juice) delights as Sprint, Pops and Fanta in 11 different flavours
- loose, scoop your own frozen pea/corn/ carrot mix.

Items not available:
- meat that wont kill you through a slow (or fast) painful death
- chicken off the bone
- lite/ low fat/ skim milk (long life)
- fresh milk
- crushed canned tomatoes
- frozen berries

Items that have been spotted but are never available when you want to buy them:
- butter
- yogurt
- olive oil
- pesto
- m&m's
- brown rice
- single packs of instant noodles
- apple juice

Happy shopping!