“Hey guys… Asians share their food…”

The ride down to Rotorua from Auckland was reasonably easy; I’d slipped in and out of unconsciousness listening to my ipod whilst thinking “wait… I never heard the end of that song…”, but the one upside to having been tardy to school was that I landed the front passenger’s seat in the second of the two minivans that we’d taken down.

Dinner, however, was a different story. Much to my surprise and horror, we rocked up to a place called… New Zealand Gourmet Food or something – which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant promoting veal – with a couple of taxidermised deer around the place for decoration! Ordering food was quite a fiasco. For once I felt such an asian, and I had to explain to everyone that, no, they shouldn’t order a dish each because in asian restaurants the portions are designed to be shared – “that’s why the thing in the middle of the table that you guys keep playing with spins, you know”, haha. Mind you, the funny thing about dinner was that it turned out to be the most Chinese food I’d ever eaten, since we ordered mostly “safe” food, like (way too much) fried rice, and chicken dishes.

Highlight of the day so far: we had to push-start the van after dinner!

“Healthy” rip off

See this drink here? This sloshy pinky liquid with what looks like pink biofoam on top? It cost $7.90.

Now normally I wouldn’t have gone near such an atrocious rip off, but my friend had a voucher for “buy 1 get 1 free”, so when I said that I was thirsty, we couldn’t help but endulge in a ‘bargain’ of a free drink… so technically that drink cost me $3.95. Regardless… it was supposed to be a berry smoothie, the menu frolicking with delicious descriptions of a multitude of berries and frozen yoghurt. What I got turned out to be about as viscous as a cup of tea. I don’t know whether the lady that made it forgot the part about frozen yoghurt and ice, or whether their recipe was just an uber-fail, regardless, the smoothie – no it doesn’t even qualify that title – juice thing was revolting. Not only did it taste awful, but it also had a lot of pips in it… from the boysenberry, maybe? Twenty minutes and a sore stomach later, I thoroughly regretted being firstly coerced into buying that drink, and then feeling too guilty about wasting and downing the whole damn thing. Never again.

What I don’t understand though, is the whole franchise of healthy, “tasty” alternatives to fizzy drinks and other smoothies/drinks of high sugar/calorie content being so expensive. $7.90 could’ve bought enough for a meal for two from the supermarket, or at least a burger combo at any buger joint, but no, instead, I merely got a disgusting, and disgustingly expensive healthy drink. It seems that people these days will pay an arm and a leg not to satisfy their tastebuds, but to mend their conscience by telling themselves they consumed something “healthy”. Next time I’m that thirsty, I’ll settle for a glass of tap water, thanks.

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