Monday, February 1, 2010

My roomate, corn flakes & the min swipe amt comedy

One evening me and my room mate (Libin) stopped by at Spencer's Daily, Velachery. He wanted to buy Cornflakes! He never knew what Cornflakes was until about a few weeks back. That was when I decided to have Cornflakes for breakfast before going to work. This wasn't my idea of an ultimate breakfast however, so when the pack of Cornflakes I bought got exhausted I never bothered buy one again...

But my roomy was convinced that this was an ultimate breakfast solution. After my pack of cornflakes got over he brought a new one; and started having it for breakfast each morning after he'd come back from work. I thought well, nice that he actually loves it. He'd pour half litre milk in a 1 litre mug; saturate it with the flakes to give you the illusion that there aint no milk at all! And then he'd spoon into it as if he's literally trying to fish the cornflakes out. Everthing until this point is watchable, until the spoon goes into his mouth; its like a sad nirvana, you don't want to know! But at least he enjoys it.

Today was the day he decided he replenish his stock of cornflakes. So we were at spencers to buy the only thing - Kellog's Cornflakes. It was probably about 7.30 pm in the evening. People were listlessly waiting for their turn to pay in the queue. My roomate also joined this queue. I went and stood afar. It was when I observed the queue from that position that I remembered a strange quote: if you think God doesn't have fun, just look at people waiting...

I wasn't actually laughing out loud per se. I was thinking to myself: we are such a mess and sometimes we don't even know we actually enjoy all of it.

My roomate reached the end of the queue. He waved out to me. Seemed like it was a matter of having no money. He wasn't sure he could purchase the pack of cornflakes with just the debit card: your purchases should total a min of Rs. 150/- if you want to swipe your card. He looked clueless. I went behind the cashier and politely enquired about the min amount to swipe in. She confirmed it was Rs. 150/-.

The cornflakes costed around Rs. 125/-. Damn, he thought. I just gave him a gesture of confusion out of realizing something, and told him that was what the two ice creams were for...He forgot about them. Before I broke off from the queue, I thought, why not an ice cream; picked up two moderately expensive cone ice creams, and gave it to my roomate. He happily received it and kept it in the basket beside the cornflakes.

He scanned the price on one of the ice creams and looked amused. Hell, even I was amused; I never thought about the minimum amount you had to swipe for...I just thought about having an ice cream. And incidentally this was what saved him from the immediate embarassment that was to come.

2 comments:

  1. this is seriously freaky.. i headed to the Indian store here to pick up some microwaveable lunch, and picked up 2 products when a third caught my eye. Only when I paid for them did I realize that the min. swipe amt was $5 - had I bought two it'd hv only cost me $4.30 :D

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  2. @Rags: I've another story coming. Frankly don't know whats with this bizarre inspiration of blogging lately...but I seem to be enjoying it. :)

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